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U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), a member of the U.S. Congress since 1983, a two-time U.S. presidential candidate, and the nominee of the Republican Party in the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, has taken positions on many political issues through his public comments, his presidential campaign statements, and his senatorial voting record.
Online, McCain uses his Senate web site[1] and his 2008 campaign web site[2] to describe his political positions.
Regarding the general notion of consistency of political positions over time, McCain said in June 2008: "My principles and my practice and my voting record are very clear. Not only from 2000 but 1998 and 1992 and 1986. And you know, it's kind of a favorite tactical ploy now that opponents use, of saying the person has changed. Look, none of my principles or values have changed. Have I changed position on some specific issues because of changed circumstances? I would hope so! I would hope so!"[3] It is often reported that McCain has grown more conservative throughout his tenure in the Senate, according to various studies.[4]
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McCain's 2006 rating by the Almanac of American Politics (2008) on Economic Policy is 64% conservative, 35% liberal (52% conservative, 47% liberal in 2005).[5] McCain fleshed out the main points of his economic plan in an April 15, 2008 speech at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania.[6][7] In summary, McCain would make the Bush tax cuts permanent instead of letting them expire, he would eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax in order to assist the middle-class, he would double the personal exemption for dependents, reduce the corporate tax rate, and offer a new research and development tax credit.[7] At the same time, he pledges to eliminate pork-barrel spending, freeze nondefense discretionary spending for a year or more, and reduce Medicare growth.[7] He is also opposed to extravagant salaries and severance deals of corporate CEOs.[7][8]
Projected Federal tax changes in 2009 if their tax proposals fully approved by Congress. |
||
McCain | Obama | |
---|---|---|
Income | Average tax bill |
Average tax bill |
Over $2.9M | -$269,364 | +$701,885 |
$603K and up | -$45,361 | +$115,974 |
$227K-$603K | -$7,871 | +$12 |
$161K-$227K | -$4,380 | -$2,789 |
$112K-$161K | -$2,614 | -$2,204 |
$66K-$112K | -$1,009 | -$1,290 |
$38K-$66K | -$319 | -$1,042 |
$19K-$38K | -$113 | -$892 |
Under $19K | -$19 | -$567 |
CNN,[9][10] Tax Policy Center,[11] BarackObama.com,[12] JohnMcCain.com[13] |
While McCain has historically opposed tax cuts in favor of deficit reduction,[14][15] he now favors tax cuts.[16] He says that he would reduce government spending to make up for the tax cuts.
McCain had declined to sign the pledge of the group Americans for Tax Reform to not add any new taxes or increase existing taxes.[17] However, after he lost the presidential election in 2008, McCain became a signer of Americans for Tax Reform’s Taxpayer Protection Pledge.[18] In 2002, Sen. McCain was one of only two Republicans to twice vote against the permanent repeal of the Estate Tax,[14] and has recently stated opposition to a permanent repeal of the Estate Tax.[19] McCain was one of two Republicans who voted against Bush's tax cuts in 2001. He opposed accelerating the cuts in 2003, saying that he was not in favor of cutting taxes during a time of war.[15][17] In 2004 McCain appeared on Meet The Press with Tim Russert where he was asked about his opposition to the Bush tax cuts. McCain explained himself by saying, "I voted against the tax cuts because of the disproportional amount that went to the wealthiest Americans. I would clearly support not extending those tax cuts in order to help address the deficit."[20] However, McCain supported the Bush tax cut extension in May 2006,[21] and January 2008 he told Russert that he favors making those tax cuts permanent to prevent an increase in taxes while the economy was "shaky." He also said that his tax proposal would focus more on middle-income Americans than on the wealthy.[22]
McCain has stated that he believes in keeping marginal tax rates low, but that lower taxes work best "when accompanied by lower spending."[23]
In January 2008, McCain said "“People talk about a stimulus package. Fine, if that's what we want to come up with. But stop the spending first.”[24]
In a major economic speech on April 15, 2008, McCain proposed a number of tax reductions and backed away from his pledge to balance the budget by the end of his first term, saying it would take him eight years. His speech focused on cuts to corporate tax rates and the extension of the Bush tax cuts, and also called for eliminating the alternative-minimum tax and doubling the value of exemptions for dependents to $7,000. This is in contrast to McCain's historical emphasis on deficit reduction over tax cuts.[16] McCain's proposal for decreasing the federal budget deficit includes reforming the "self-serving largesse that defines the current budget process." In the speech, McCain said that the savings from eliminating earmarks, reviewing federal programs and other budget reforms would be “on the order of $100 billion annually.”[25]
On July 8, 2008, in an interview, McCain said that "historically when you raise people's taxes, revenue goes down. Every time we cut capital gains taxes, there has been an increase in revenues."[26]
McCain supports ending the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, the Boeing YAL-1 Airborne Laser, and the Boeing and Science Applications International Corporation Future Combat Systems.[27]
McCain has been called one of the Senate's most outspoken critics of pork barrel spending.[28] On April 16, 2007, McCain gave a speech on the U.S. economy to the Economic Club of Memphis. He criticized wasteful spending and reiterated his promise to make any sponsors of pork or earmarks "famous" when he becomes president.[29]
In March 2008, Gannett News Service reported that McCain's home state of Arizona ranked last in federal earmarks, because three of the state's ten lawmakers in Washington – McCain and House Republicans Jeff Flake and John Shadegg – refuse to ask for any federal money for local projects.[30] In March 2008, he was one of twenty-nine U.S. Senators, including Obama and Clinton, to vote in favor of a one-year moratorium on earmarks.[31]
McCain says he hopes to stop special interests from lobbying for special projects. His 2008 campaign website includes the statement that "The federal government spends too much money, squanders precious resources on questionable projects pushed by special interests, and ignores the priorities of the American taxpayer."[32] Earmarks total about $18 billion a year, according to independent estimates.[33] However, on August 2, 2007, he voted against a bi-partisan bill to provide greater transparency in the legislative process and to regulate lobbyists.[34][35]
McCain is a strong proponent of free trade.[36] He supports the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the existing General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) agreements, U.S. participation in the World Trade Organization,[36] and opposes renegotiation of trade agreements,[37] saying, "...the U.S. should engage in multilateral, regional and bilateral efforts to reduce barriers to trade, level the global playing field and build effective enforcement of global trading rules."[38] In 2004, when McCain was asked, "Should trade agreements include provisions to address environmental concerns and to protect workers' rights?", he answered, "No."[37]
Regarding protectionism, in 2007 McCain said, "I'm a student of history. Every time the United States has become protectionist ... we've paid a very heavy price. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Acts in the 1930s were direct contributors to World War II. It sounds like a lot of fun to bash China and others, but free trade has been the engine of our economy. Free trade should be the continuing principle that guides this nation's economy."[36]
In June 1999, McCain said "The only way to increase the yield on Social Security dollars is by allowing workers to make investment decisions for themselves; by empowering American families to invest, in most robust portfolios, a portion of their earnings for Social Security that they would otherwise pay in taxes to Social Security."[39] In January 2000, he repeated his strong support for creating partially private Social Security accounts.[40] In 2004, he said, "Without privatization, I don't see how you can possibly, over time, make sure that young Americans are able to receive Social Security benefits."[41][42]
In April 2008, McCain proposed that seniors with higher incomes should pay higher premiums for government-provided prescription drug benefits (Medicare Part D) as a way to reduce federal spending on health care.[43]
As of May 2008, McCain's web site says:
John McCain will fight to save the future of Social Security and believes that we may meet our obligations to the retirees of today and the future without raising taxes. John McCain supports supplementing the current Social Security system with personal accounts – but not as a substitute for addressing benefit promises that cannot be kept.[44]
On June 12, 2008, McCain fielded a question in a town hall meeting, saying, "But I'm not for quote privatizing Social Security, I never have been, I never will be."[45]
On July 7, 2008, McCain criticized the traditional pay-as-you-go financing of Social Security, saying: "Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that's a disgrace."[46][47] The next day, he reiterated that Social Security uses current workers' tax payments to fund current retirees' benefits, and he said, "That’s why it’s broken, that’s why we can fix it."[48]
McCain has not offered a specific plan to address the possible Social Security shortfall, but has stated that although he prefers not to raise taxes, all options, including payroll tax increases, are "on the table".[49]
Regarding the subprime mortgage crisis, McCain said its root cause was loose credit and greed. On January 31, 2008, he said, "I think there are some greedy people on Wall Street that perhaps need to be punished." He also praised the George W. Bush administration's handling of the crisis.[50] McCain later addressed the situation in a speech:
I will not play election year politics with the housing crisis. I will evaluate everything in terms of whether it might be harmful or helpful to our effort to deal with the crisis we face now. I have always been committed to the principle that it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers. Government assistance to the banking system should be based solely on preventing systemic risk that would endanger the entire financial system and the economy.
McCain went on to say he would entertain the thought to only give temporary assistance to homeowners for their primary homes, but not to others who owned homes to rent out nor to speculators. He also proposed that mortgage lenders do more to help the economy by helping their customers. He suggested an approach that General Motors did after the attacks of September 11, 2001 when they reduced interest rates for their customers. "We need a similar response by the mortgage lenders. They've been asking the government to help them out. I'm now calling upon them to help their customers, and their nation out. It's time to help American families."[51]
McCain's speech on the Senate floor during debate of Federal Housing Regulatory Act Of 2005:
“OFHEO’s report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay. I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.”
S.190 was a bill to address the regulation of secondary mortgage market enterprises, and for other purposes. introduced January 2005 McCain was a co-sponsor.[52][53]
As of mid-September 2008, McCain had not introduced any banking or housing bills in the 110th Congress, which began in January 2007.[54]
In October 2008, McCain proposed that the federal government buy troubled mortgages, and provide low-interest mortgages to qualified homeowners. For people with 401(k) plans, he wanted to allow more flexibility about when money can be withdrawn, and would lower the tax on that money, as well as lowering the tax on unemployment insurance benefits. McCain also proposed to cut the capital gains tax on stock held for more than one year, while increasing the tax write-off for stock losses.[55]
In 1999, McCain voted for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which passed in the Senate by a vote of 54–44.[56] The deregulation bill loosened restrictions on the activities of banks, brokerage houses, and insurance companies. In 2002 he voted for the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which passed the Senate without opposition.[57] In 2007, however, McCain stated that he regretted his vote in favor of Sarbanes-Oxley,[58] which strengthened financial reporting requirements for publicly held companies but which has been the subject of complaints from businesses.
In 2008, McCain expressed approval of the results of financial deregulation by pointing to it as a model for health care policy, writing: "Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation."[59]
Later in 2008, in the wake of the widely publicized crises involving the insurance company American International Group and the brokerage houses Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, McCain stated: "In my administration, we're going to hold people on Wall Street responsible. And we're going to enact and enforce reforms to make sure that these outrages never happen in the first place."[58]
In 2009, McCain temporarily expressed support for reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act that he had voted to repeal in order to respond to banking regulation failures in the Financial Crisis, though he also ultimately voted against the Obama Administration-backed Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
“ | [In an ownership society], the key to health care reform is to restore control to the patients themselves. | ” |
McCain is against publicly funded health care, universal health care, or health coverage mandates.[60] Instead, he favors tax credits of up to $5,000 for families to get health insurance.[61] His plan focuses on enhancing competition in the health care industry as a way to lower costs.[62] To that end, McCain favors the Health Care Choice Act,[63] which would allow citizens to purchase health insurance nationwide instead of limiting them to in-state companies, and to buy insurance through any organization or association they choose as well as through their employers or buying direct from an insurance company. In an October 2007 statement, McCain said: "In health care, we believe in enhancing the freedom of individuals to receive necessary and desired care. We do not believe in coercion and the use of state power to mandate care, coverage or costs."[61]
On April 29, 2008, McCain detailed his health care plan in the context of his campaign for President. His plan focused on open-market competition rather than government funding or control. At the heart of his plan are tax credits – $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families who do not subscribe to or do not have access to health care through their employer. He says the money could be used to purchase insurance and force insurance companies to be competitive with their costs in order to attract consumers.[64] To help people who are denied coverage by insurance companies due to pre-existing conditions, McCain would work with states to create what he calls a "Guaranteed Access Plan". He did not provide details, but pointed to states such as Florida and North Carolina where such systems are in place.[65] His health care plan has an estimated annual cost of $7 billion, according to McCain's health-policy experts.[66] On April 30, his campaign acknowledged that the health plan he had outlined would have the effect of increasing tax payments for some workers, primarily those with high incomes and expensive health plans.[67]
McCain would pay for individual tax credits primarily by eliminating the tax break currently offered to employers for providing health insurance to employees.[68] On October 5, 2008, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain's senior policy adviser, said the tax credits would also be funded in part from eliminating Medicare (United States) fraud and by changing Medicare and Medicaid payment policies to lower the overall cost of medical care.[69]
On August 14, 2008, McCain released a policy paper titled "John McCain and American Innovation" that proposed a ten-percent tax credit for wages paid employees doing research and development. The plan reiterated McCain's positions against Internet taxes and against laws guaranteeing net neutrality.[70]
Crypto notes that Senator McCain and Senator [Bob Kerrey] introduced a bill in mid-1997 that would have refused the services of future government-sponsored certificate authorities to those who refused key escrow. However, it notes that by 1999, McCain had flipped on the issue of encryption, becoming "Mr. Crypto."[71]
McCain voted against the Telecommunications Act of 1996, on the grounds that it would not ensure competition enough in practice.[72]
In 2002, McCain introduced the Consumer Broadband Deregulation Act of 2002, a deregulation measure aimed at preventing the government from requiring broadband providers to offer access to competing ISPs in the residential broadband market.[73][74]
In 2006, McCain advocated easing of regulations to allow cable television companies to offer programming on an à la carte, per channel basis, along the lines of the Family and Consumer Choice Act of 2007.[72]
McCain is against government regulation of network neutrality unless evidence of abuse exists.[75] He is quoted as saying "let's see how this thing all turns out, rather than anticipate a problem that so far has not arisen in any significant way." Until such a time, he supports allowing network owners to control what sites consumers view, saying, in May 2007, "When you control the pipe you should be able to get profit from your investment".[76][77]
In October 2009, McCain introduced the Internet Freedom Act which would prevent the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from regulating broadband providers and enforcing net neutrality rules, and characterized such regulation as "onerous" amounting to a government takeover.[78][79] McCain has received over $890,000 in campaign contributions over his career from companies opposed to net neutrality.[79]
McCain is opposed to federal funding of Amtrak. He considers it to be a "pork barrel project", particularly as far as longer distance trains are concerned.[80][81] He has also argued for more stringent safety standards with respect to cars.[82]
As a member of the House, McCain sponsored a number of Indian Affairs bills, dealing mainly with giving distribution of lands to reservations and tribal tax status; most of these bills were unsuccessful.[83] He then got the Indian Economic Development Act of 1985 signed into law.[84]
As a senator, McCain often supported the Native American agenda, advocating self-governance and sovereignty and tribe control of adoptions. Along with Senator Daniel Inouye and Representative Mo Udall, McCain was one of the main writers of the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act,[85][86] which codified rules regarding Native American gambling enterprises and established the balance between Indian tribal sovereignty and regulatory oversight by the states of such activity.[87] The Act enabled the growth of what would become, two decades later, the $23 billion Indian gaming industry.[86]
In late 2004, McCain helped pass the Arizona Water Settlements Act, the most extensive Indian water settlement in the country's history.[72] In response to the Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal and other developments regarding Indian gaming, by 2005 and 2006 McCain was pushing for amendments to the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act that would limit creation of off-reservation casinos by Indian tribes[86] as well as tribes moving across state borders.[88] During 2007, he continued to introduce a number of Indian affairs-related legislation.[89]
McCain initially opposed the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act, introduced by Senator Jim Webb, which provides college-tuition benefits for veterans in a manner similar to that of the original G.I. Bill for veterans of World War II.[90] McCain supported the contention of some in the Defense Department that the original bill's provision of offering four years of full college tuition after only three years of active duty service would entice service members to leave the military sooner than they otherwise might.[90] McCain and Senator Lindsey Graham instead introduced a competing bill, that sought to improve current Montgomery G.I. Bill benefits, but provided a lower total amount of benefits than what Webb proposed.[91] McCain's proposal emphasized benefits for service members who were still active.[92] McCain said:
"I want to make sure that we have incentives for people to remain in the military, as well as for people to join the military. I've talked a lot about veterans' health care, so we'll continue to talk about those issues and how to care for vets. I know I can do that, having been one."[90][93]
McCain's alternative would have had a sliding scale of benefits to encourage retention by only offering the top level of benefits to those who stay for six years.[91] McCain also argued that his version would involve less new bureaucracy than Webb's bill.[91] A late May vote on the Webb bill passed 75–22, with McCain missing the vote due to being away from Washington.[94]
In early June 2008, the White House signaled the president might be willing to sign a modified version of the Webb bill, along with the war funding bill, if transferability between spouses and dependents was added onto the new GI Bill. This would make the benefits more valuable to career military personal that would like to pay for their spouse or child's education.[95] On June 19, this provision was added to the war funding bill. With the added transferability provisions for continued military service, McCain said he now supported the bill, because it encouraged additional service beyond three years, mitigating his earlier concerns.[96] McCain, who had not voted in the Senate since April 8, was campaigning in Ohio on June 26 and was not present for the final senate vote on the bill, which passed 92–6 (The only other senator not voting was Ted Kennedy, who was recovering after surgery to remove a brain tumor).[97] Bush signed the war funding bill, along with the veterans education benefits, into law on June 30, 2008.[98]
McCain opposes the federal minimum wage; instead he believes that each state should decide its own minimum wage. On January 24, 2007 he voted Yes on legislation that would allow employers to pay less than the federal minimum wage if the state set a lower minimum.[99][100] He also voted in favor of maintaining the filibuster against a bill to increase the federal minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25.[101] This would effectively repeal the federal minimum wage.[102] McCain has voted 19 times against raising the minimum wage.[103][104]
McCain has said that he favors the concept of equal pay (the abolition of wage differences based on gender).[105] He has, however, opposed specific legislation that would have given workers more time to discover sex discrimination before bringing suit under the Equal Pay Act of 1963.[106] In 2007, the House of Representatives passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which, according to the National Federation of Independent Business, would have allowed "employees to file charges of pay discrimination within 180 days of the last received paycheck affected by the alleged discriminatory decision."[107] The bill would have overturned the Supreme Court decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear. There the Court dismissed a woman's discrimination claim because she had filed it more than 180 days after the first affected paycheck. McCain, who said he opposed the bill, was campaigning in New Orleans, Louisiana at the time of the Senate vote in 2008, when the bill died because Democrats could not break a Republican filibuster (The vote in favor of the bill was 56–42, with 60 needed for cloture).[108]
McCain has been perceived to be relatively hawkish on foreign policy,[who?][citation needed] despite his advocacy of the withdrawal of US troops from Lebanon in 1982 (prior to the attack on the Marine barracks),[109] Somalia in 1993, and Haiti in 1994. He was one of only 27 Republicans to vote against President Ronald Reagan's decision to put "peacekeeping" troops into Lebanon, saying in a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives that:
“ | The fundamental question is: What is the United States’ interest in Lebanon? It is said we are there to keep the peace. I ask, what peace? It is said we are there to aid the government. I ask, what government? It is said we are there to stabilize the region. I ask, how can the U.S. presence stabilize the region?... The longer we stay in Lebanon, the harder it will be for us to leave. We will be trapped by the case we make for having our troops there in the first place.
What can we expect if we withdraw from Lebanon? The same as will happen if we stay. I acknowledge that the level of fighting will increase if we leave. I regretfully acknowledge that many innocent civilians will be hurt. But I firmly believe this will happen in any event.[110] |
” |
In February 2000, during a Republican debate, McCain and other candidates were asked what foreign policy they would change immediately if they became President. "I'd institute a policy that I call 'rogue state rollback,'" McCain said. "I would arm, train, equip, both from without and from within, forces that would eventually overthrow the governments and install free and democratically- elected governments."[111]
McCain's 2006 foreign policy rating, compiled by the Almanac of American Politics (2008), was 58% conservative, 40% liberal. 2005 figures were similar: 54% conservative, 45% liberal.[5] In March 2008, McCain said that the United States should "strengthen our global alliances as the core of a new global compact – a League of Democracies – that can harness the vast influence of the more than one hundred democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests." He said that the United States did not single-handedly win the Cold War, but rather the NATO alliance did so, "in concert with partners around the world."[112]
Among McCain's advisers are Robert Kagan and William Kristol, the co-founders of PNAC and neo-conservatives who were influential in implementing the Iraq War. McCain has also allied himself with President George W. Bush, who brought into his administration a large number of PNAC members and neo-conservatives.
In a speech to AIPAC on April 23, 2002, McCain said that "no American leader should be expected to sell a false peace to our ally, consider Israel's right to self-defense less legitimate than ours, or insist that Israel negotiate a political settlement while terrorism remains the Palestinians' preferred bargaining tool."[113] During the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, McCain said, regarding Israel's role in the conflict with Lebanon and Hezbollah, "What would we do if somebody came across our borders and killed our soldiers and captured our soldiers? Do you think we would be exercising total restraint?"[114]
McCain has called for the release of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, currently serving a life sentence for passing U.S. secrets to Israel.[115]
During the 2008 presidential campaign, McCain's advisors stated that they were not in favor of the peace negotiations then ongoing between Israel and Syria.[116]
It is unclear whether or not McCain supports the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, although McCain has courted the support of individuals and groups that are opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state.[117]
In 2008, McCain's advisors stated that they did not favor continuing the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.[116]
In October 2005, McCain, a former POW, introduced an amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill for 2005. That month, the U.S. Senate voted 90–9 to support the amendment.[118] The amendment was commonly referred to as the Amendment on (1) the Army Field Manual and (2) Cruel, Inhumane, Degrading Treatment, amendment #1977 and also known as the McCain Amendment 1977. It became the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 as Title X of the Department of Defense Authorization bill. The amendment prohibits inhumane treatment of prisoners, including prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, by confining interrogations to the techniques in Army Field Manual 34–52, "Intelligence Interrogation".
On December 15, 2005, Bush announced that he accepted McCain's terms and will "make it clear to the world that this government does not torture and that we adhere to the international convention of torture, whether it be here at home or abroad."[119] Bush made clear his interpretation of this legislation on December 30, 2005, in a signing statement, reserving what he interpreted to be his Presidential constitutional authority in order to avoid further terrorist attacks.[120]
McCain argues that American military and intelligence personnel in future wars will suffer for abuses committed in 2006 by the US in the name of fighting terrorism. He fears the administration's policy will put American prisoners at risk of torture, summary executions and other atrocities by chipping away at Geneva Conventions. He argues that his rival bill to Bush’s plan gives defendants access to classified evidence being used to convict them and will set tight limits on use of testimony obtained by coercion. Furthermore it offers CIA interrogators some legal protections from charges of abuse, but rejects the administration’s plan to more narrowly define the Geneva Conventions’ standards for humane treatment of prisoners. McCain insists this issue overrides politics.[citation needed]
McCain, whose six years of captivity and torture in Vietnam made him a national celebrity, negotiated (in September 2006) a compromise in the Senate for the Military Commissions Act of 2006, suspending habeas corpus provisions for anyone deemed by the Executive Branch an "unlawful enemy combatant" and barring them from challenging their detentions in court. Coming on the heels of a Supreme Court decision adverse to the White House, McCain's compromise gave a retroactive, nine-year immunity to U.S. officials who authorized, ordered, or committed acts of torture and abuse, and permitted the use of statements obtained through torture to be used in military tribunals so long as the abuse took place by December 30, 2005.[121] McCain's compromise permitted the President to establish permissible interrogation techniques and to "interpret the meaning and application" of international Geneva Convention standards, so long as the coercion fell short of "serious" bodily or psychological injury.[122] Widely dubbed McCain's "torture compromise", the bill was signed into law by George W. Bush on October 17, 2006, shortly before the 2006 midterm elections.
McCain said in March 2007 that he would "immediately close Guantanamo Bay, move all the prisoners to Fort Leavenworth and truly expedite the judicial proceedings in their cases".[123] On September 19, 2007, he voted against restoring habeas corpus to detainees.[124]
In October 2007, McCain said of waterboarding that, "They [other presidential candidates] should know what it is. It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture."[125] In February 2008 he voted against HR 2082, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, which included provisions that would have prevented the CIA from waterboarding prisoners.[126][127] The bill in question contained other provisions to which McCain objected, and his spokesman stated: "This wasn't a vote on waterboarding. This was a vote on applying the standards of the [Army] field manual to CIA personnel."[128]
John McCain has called the crisis with Iran "the most serious crisis we have faced – outside of the entire war on terror – since the end of the Cold War." "Nuclear capability in Iran is unacceptable," said McCain. McCain has criticized Russia and China for causing "gridlock" in the UN Security Council and preventing the sanctioning of Iran as well as other areas of conflict such as Darfur and Burma. If elected, McCain pledges to create a "league of democracies" with the purpose of addressing those conflicts without the approval of China and Russia.[129][130]
McCain has cited Iran's stance towards Israel as justification for his aggressive policy towards Iran, saying, "Iran is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. That alone should concern us but now they are trying for nuclear capabilities. I totally support the president when he says we will not allow Iran to destroy Israel."[131]
Regarding military action against Iran, McCain has said, "I pray every night that we will avoid a conflict with Iran." He has also said, "There's a whole lot of things we can do before we seriously consider the military option," but clarifying, "I still say there's only one thing worse than military action against Iran and that is a nuclear-armed Iran." His comments regarding "bombing Iran" made to veterans in South Carolina have come under scrutiny, despite McCain's statement that the comments were made in jest.[132]
McCain tried to persuade FIFA to ban Iran from the 2006 World Cup, referring to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denials as the reason since such denials in Germany, where the competition was held, are illegal.[133]
In June 2008, a group of congressional Democrats criticized McCain for voting against 2005 legislation that would have toughened sanctions against Iran. "McCain tries to give the impression that he's tough on Iran, but when it came time to stand up to party leaders and Big Oil, John McCain stood down," said senator Frank Lautenberg.[134]
Following the 2009 Iranian election protests, McCain said "It really is a sham that [Iranian rulers have] pulled off, and I hope that we will act."[135] He Twittered on the subject as well, saying to a reporter, "@jaketapper USA always stands for freedom and democracy!!".[136]
In February 2000, McCain said "As long as Saddam Hussein is in power, I am convinced that he will pose a threat to our security."[111]
McCain supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the U.S. decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein.[137]
In April 2004, McCain was asked by Peter G. Peterson what the United States should do if the "Iraqi government asks us to leave, even if we are unhappy about the security situation there?" McCain responded, "I think it's obvious that we would have to leave because— if it was an elected government of Iraq...."[138]
Following the invasion he criticized the Bush Administration's conduct of the occupation, and he later pushed for "significant policy changes" in the Iraq War.[139] He criticized The Pentagon on a number of occasions, most notably in December 2004, concerning low troop strength in Iraq,[140] and has called for a diversification of Iraqi national forces to better represent the multiple ethnic groups contained within the country.
In January 2005, McCain said that "one of our big problems has been the fact that many Iraqis resent American military presence. ... as soon as we can reduce our visibility as much as possible, the better I think it is going to be."[141]
In November 2005 McCain said in a speech that the U.S. government must do more to keep public support high for the war, and that more troops were needed, as well as a number of other changes in the U.S. approach to the war. He concluded his speech by saying that "America, Iraq and the world are better off with Saddam Hussein in prison rather than in power…and we must honor their sacrifice by seeing this mission through to victory."[142]
In October 2006, McCain said that he had "no confidence" in then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, but was not calling for his resignation at that time, saying that "the president picks his team, and the president has the right to stay with that team if he wants to."[143]
On January 10, 2007, Bush announced the commitment of more than 20,000 additional troops as a part of the Iraqi troop surge of 2007. McCain was a leading advocate for the move, leading some Democrats to call the policy the "McCain Doctrine". Days after the announcement, McCain appeared on CBS' Face the Nation and said, "This is a chance under the new leadership of General Petraeus and Admiral Fallon to have a chance to succeed. Do I believe it can succeed? Yes, I do."[144] On February 4, he criticised a bipartisan non-binding resolution opposing the troop buildup, calling it a "vote of no confidence" in the US military.[145] The next day, McCain said, "I don't think it's appropriate to say that you disapprove of a mission and you don't want to fund it and you don't want it to go, but yet you don't take the action necessary to prevent it".[146]
McCain's April 11, 2007 speech on Iraq was delivered to the Virginia Military Institute Corps of Cadets after his return from Iraq. He supported a new strategy in Iraq and opposed Democratic efforts towards troop withdrawal.[147] McCain repeated his criticism of the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq War on April 29 in Elko, Nevada, and stated that Rumsfeld would be remembered as "one the worst secretaries of defense in history".[148]
On September 19, 2007, McCain voted against requiring minimum periods between deployments.[149]
In November 2007, on the Charlie Rose show on PBS, Rose asked if South Korea might be an analogy of where Iraq might be, in terms of an American presence, over the next 20 to 25 years. McCain replied that he didn't think so – even if there were no (ongoing) casualties, saying "I can see an American presence for a while. But eventually I think because of the nature of the society in Iraq and the religious aspects of it that America eventually withdraws.[150]
On January 3, 2008 at a campaign stop in Derry, New Hampshire, when a questioner said, "President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years," McCain responded:
"Make it a hundred. We've been in Japan for 60 years, we've been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That'd be fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. That's fine with me. I hope it will be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where Al Qaeda is training, recruiting, equipping, and motivating people every single day."[151]
In March 2008, McCain said of Iraq and terrorism that "Gen. Petraeus is correct when he says that the central battleground in the struggle against al Qaeda is Iraq and Osama bin Laden just confirmed that again with his comments last week."[152] In April 2008 he said, "There are tough decisions ahead and America deserves leaders that are up to the challenge. As president, I will ensure that our troops come home victorious in this war that is part of the larger struggle against radical Islamic extremism and will continue to make keeping our nation secure my highest priority."[153]
In a May 15, 2008 speech in Columbus, Ohio, McCain said:
By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq War has been won….Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced….The United States maintains a military presence there, but a much smaller one, and it does not play a direct combat role.[154][155]
In a June 11, 2008 interview on NBC's Today Show, McCain was asked whether, in light of recent progress from the troop surge in Iraq, he had a clearer idea of when U.S. troops could begin withdrawing. He replied:[156]
No, but that's not too important. What's important is casualties in Iraq. Americans are in South Korea. Americans are in Japan. American troops are in Germany. That's all fine. American casualties, and the ability to withdraw. We will be able to withdraw. ... But the key to it is we don't want any more Americans in harm's way.
McCain was an advocate for strong military measures against those responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks and supported the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.[157] In a late October 2001 Wall Street Journal op-ed piece he wrote, "America is under attack by a depraved, malevolent force that opposes our every interest and hates every value we hold dear." He advocated an overwhelming, not incremental, approach against the Taliban in Afghanistan, including the use of ground forces, saying, "War is a miserable business. Let's get on with it."[158]
In October 2005, McCain said “Afghanistan, we don’t read about anymore, because it’s succeeded. And by the way, there’s several reasons, including NATO participation and other reasons, why Afghanistan is doing as well as it is.”[159]
In December 2006, asked if the U.S. would send more troops to Afghanistan, McCain said, "The British have said that they will be sending additional troops, taking troops out of Iraq and into Afghanistan. If it's necessary, we will, and I'm sure we would be agreeable, but the focus here is more on training the Afghan National Army and the police, as opposed to the increased U.S. troop presence."[160]
In July 2008, McCain said that reducing U.S. forces in Iraq would free up troops for Afghanistan, where "at least" three additional brigades, or about 15,000 troops, must be sent. A campaign aide said later that McCain's proposal included a combination of both U.S. and NATO forces.[161]
On August 14, 2009, McCain, along with Senators Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, met with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in Tripoli "to talk . . . about a transfer of American military equipment."[162] At the meeting, Gaddafi's son Muatassim "emphasized Libya's interest in the purchase of U.S. lethal and non-lethal military equipment," and McCain "assured Muatassim that the United States wanted to provide Libya with the equipment it needs."[162] Following the meeting, McCain sent out a tweet declaring that he had spent "an interesting evening with an interesting man."[162] A year and a half later, during the 2011 Libyan civil war, McCain called for the removal of Gaddafi from power, due to Gaddafi having "'American blood on his hands' from the 1988 Lockerbie bombing."[162] In April 2011, he became the 'highest-profile Western politician' to visit the rebels in Libya, urging Washington to consider a ground attack that aims for the absolute removal of Gaddafi. [163]
"It is time to bring Kosovo – and the Balkans with it – out of the 1990s and into the 21st century by recognizing Kosovo's independence. Eleven years ago, that region was in flames, characterized by ethnic cleansing and widespread violence. For the first time the region is today poised to move forward, with final status for Kosovo and transitioning continuing responsibilities there to increasing European control – at long last closing the door on the region's painful past," stated McCain at the Munich Security Conference in February 2008.[164] During the crisis in the Serbian breakaway province of Kosovo in 1999, McCain urged President Clinton to use all necessary force.[165]
In October 2006, McCain said that he believed the former President Bill Clinton and his administration were to blame for the North Korea's weapons of mass destruction. He said that the U.S. had "concluded an unenforceable and untransparent agreement", allowing North Korea to keep plutonium rods in a reactor.[166] In an article he wrote for the November/December 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, he referred to North Korea as a "totalitarian regime," and said that it was necessary for North Korea be committed to "verifiable denuclearization" and "full accounting of all its nuclear materials and facilities" before any "lasting diplomatic agreement can be reached."[167]
In a 2003 interview with PBS' Frontline he called the Clinton policy towards North Korea "appeasement" and said the U.S. should've attacked North Korea in the Clinton years to prevent a nuclear capability.
"[168] MARTIN SMITH: You called Clinton an appeaser.
Sen. JOHN McCAIN: Well, you know, if it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's appeasement.
MARTIN SMITH: So what was the alternative?
Sen. JOHN McCAIN: The alternative was to say, "You stop this development of nuclear weapons, or we exercise every option we have," not excluding the military option, sanctions, conversations with the Japanese, the Chinese, the South Koreans, the Russians. Exercise every option. Don't engage in bribery, which is what it was. It was bribery.
MARTIN SMITH: But in retrospect, they would have 50, 60 bombs by now, and they don't.
Sen. JOHN McCAIN: In retrospect—in retrospect, if they hadn't stopped doing it, we would have acted militarily. And we wouldn't be facing the magnitude of the threat that we're facing now."
McCain voted in favor of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction in 1991.[169] He voted to ratify the START II strategic arms limitation treaty in 1996.[170]
McCain voted against the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in 1999.[171]
In March 2008, McCain said that United States should reduce its nuclear arsenal to encourage other nations to reduce their arsenals:
"Forty years ago, the five declared nuclear powers came together in support of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and pledged to end the arms race and move toward nuclear disarmament. The time has come to renew that commitment. We do not need all the weapons currently in our arsenal. The United States should lead a global effort at nuclear disarmament consistent with our vital interests and the cause of peace."[172]
McCain maintains a relatively moderate stance concerning Pakistan, although he has recognized the South Asian nation as an important part of US Foreign Policy. In the aftermath of Pakistan's former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's assassination (in December 2007) McCain appeared to rule out the option of US forces entering Pakistan, saying that it was not an appropriate time to "threaten" Pakistan.[173]
McCain has been one of the foremost Senate critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin: "I looked into his eyes and saw three letters: a K, a G and a B", referring to Putin's membership in the KGB during the Soviet era. He has said that Putin is "going to cause a lot of difficulties" and that he is "trying to reassert the Russian empire."[174] In January 2007, McCain said that he thought Putin was using Russia's energy sources as a political weapon.[175]
“ | He bullies his neighbors and he wants to get a control of the energy supply of Western Europe. This is a dangerous person. And he has to understand that there's a cost to some of his actions. And the first thing I would do is make sure that we have a missile defense system in place in Czechoslovakia and Poland, and I don't care what his objections are to it.[176] | ” |
McCain was a fierce opponent of Putin's Invasion of Chechnya describing it as "a bloody war against Chechnya's civilian population." He stated "Yes, there are Chechen terrorists, but there are many Chechens who took up arms only after the atrocities committed by Russian forces serving first under Boris Yeltsin's and then Putin's orders." Like others, he disputes that the Russian apartment bombings had anything to do with Chechens, and that instead "There remain credible allegations that Russia's FSB had a hand in carrying out these attacks". He also blamed Russia's security services for political assassinations as well as the assassinations of independent journalists.[177]
“ | Meanwhile, the FSB has been unable to solve the murder of leading independent journalists. It has failed to bring to justice any suspects in the murder of democratic politicians. It has not been able to identify a single case of corruption inside the Russian government. Not a single Russian has been held to account for committing crimes against humanity in the Soviet Gulag. The FSB can't do any of that – but it can arrest Mikhail Khodorkovsky. What brave men they must be to kick down the doors of a private airplane and arrest an unarmed man. | ” |
In 2005 McCain and Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman brought a draft resolution with the requirement to suspend membership of Russia in the G8, an international forum. The same year he initiated Senate acceptance of a resolution charging the Russian government with "political motivations" in litigation concerning Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev.[citation needed] In October 2007, McCain again called for removal of Russia from the G8:
“ | Today, we see in Russia diminishing political freedoms, a leadership dominated by a clique of former intelligence officers, efforts to bully democratic neighbors, such as Georgia, and attempts to manipulate Europe's dependence on Russian oil and gas. We need a new Western approach to this revanchist Russia. The G8 should again become a club of leading market democracies: it should include Brazil and India but exclude Russia.[178] | ” |
McCain is a strong supporter of ballistic national missile defenses.[179][180] Russia threatened to place short-range nuclear missiles on the Russia’s border with NATO if the United States refuses to abandon plans to deploy 10 interceptor missiles and a radar in Poland and the Czech Republic.[181][182] In April 2007, Putin warned of a new Cold War if the Americans deployed the shield in the former Eastern Bloc.[183] Putin also said that Russia is prepared to abandon its obligations under a Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987 with the United States.[184]
In 2008 McCain accused Russian leader Vladimir Putin of clear aspirations of wanting to restore the czarist empire. McCain stated that Putin is still running Russia, saying he is "still by far the most powerful and influential person in Russia," and that "It's very clear that Russian ambitions are to restore the old Russian Empire. Not the Soviet Union, but the Russian Empire."[185] By attacking Georgia Russian leaders risk "the benefits they enjoy from being part of the civilized world."[185] In his Republican nomination speech, McCain said about Russia concerning the Russian-Georgian conflict that "They invaded a small, democratic neighbor to gain more control over the world’s oil supply."[186]
During the 2008 South Ossetia war, McCain reacted strongly to Russia’s widening assault against Georgia. McCain said Europe and other nations must be united against such acts, and proclaimed support for the U.S.’s closest ally among the democratizing former Soviet republics. He also pointed out that NATO should reconsider its decision to deny Georgia the fast track for NATO membership. That decision “might have been viewed as a green light by Russia for its attacks on Georgia,” McCain said.[187]
McCain also stated that Americans are supporting the "brave little nation" of Georgia against Russia's military attacks.[185] McCain spoke with President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia, and told him "I know I speak for every American when I say, 'Today, we are all Georgians.'"[185] "Russia should immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory. What is most critical now is to avoid further confrontation between Russian and Georgian military forces," McCain said on August 8, 2008.[188]
On August 8, 2008, he said "We should immediately call a meeting of the North Atlantic Council to assess Georgia's security and review measures NATO can take to contribute to stabilizing this very dangerous situation."[189]
On July 14, 2008, McCain expressed concern about Russia's reducing the energy supplies to Czech Republic: "I was concerned about a couple of steps that the Russian government took in the last several days. One was reducing the energy supplies to Czechoslovakia[sic]. Apparently that is in reaction to the Czech’s agreement with us concerning missile defense, and again some of the Russian now announcement they are now retargeting new targets, something they abandoned at the end of the Cold War, is also a concern."[190]
When McCain was running for president in 2000, he supported the normalizing of relations with Cuba, even if Fidel Castro remained in power, provided that the Cuban government did certain things to democratize Cuba. McCain compared the situation to normalizing relations with Vietnam.[191]
According to the JohnMcCain.com: "There is disturbing evidence Russia is already laying the groundwork to apply the same arguments used to justify its intervention in Georgia to other parts of its near abroad – most ominously in Crimea. This strategically important peninsula is part of Ukraine, but with a large ethnic Russian population and the headquarters of Russia's Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol."[192] "Now, I think the Russians ought to understand that we will support – we, the United States – will support the inclusion of Georgia and Ukraine in the natural process, inclusion into NATO""And watch Ukraine. This whole thing has got a lot to do with Ukraine, Crimea, the base of the Russian fleet in Sevastopol," said McCain during the first presidential debate of 2008 on September 26.[193]
John McCain tweeted "Regrettably the time has come for President Mubarak to step down and relinquish power. It's in the best interest of Egypt, its people and its military." The following morning in an interview with Good Morning America he said the following on Egypt "This virus spreading throughout the Middle East proves the universality of human yearnings, and probably the only place where you won't see these demonstrations is Iraq."[194] He also said on Fox News to Gretta Van Susteren "This virus is spreading throughout the Middle East. The president of Yemen, as you know, just made the announcement that he wasn’t running again. This, I would argue, is probably the most dangerous period of history in – of our entire involvement in the Middle East, at least in modern times. Israel is in danger of being surrounded by countries that are against the very existence of Israel, are governed by radical organizations."[195]
McCain is a believer in judges who would, as he sees it, "strictly interpret the Constitution,"[196] and is against what he sees as “the systemic abuse of our federal courts" by judges who “preemptively" decide American social policy.[197]
In 1987, he supported the failed confirmation of Reagan nominee Robert Bork.[196] He then supported and voted for the appointments of both-Bushes nominees David Souter, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, and Samuel Alito.[196] In 1993 and 1994, McCain voted to confirm Clinton nominees Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg,[198][199] whom he considered to be qualified for the Supreme Court. He would later explain that "under our Constitution, it is the president's call to make."[200] He has made clear, though, that he never would have nominated Breyer or Ginsburg himself (or Souter or Gerald Ford appointee John Paul Stevens).[201] He also stated some of his favorite past Supreme Court justices include Sandra Day O'Connor, William Rehnquist, and John Harlan.[citation needed] He has described Alito and, especially, John Roberts as currently sitting judges he likes;[196] he said the two "would serve as the model for my own nominees if that responsibility falls to me."[200]
For lower courts, he stated he would appoint a mix of moderates and conservatives.[citation needed] While McCain is opposed to abortion, he stated that he would not use abortion as the litmus test.[citation needed]
On May 23, 2005, McCain led fourteen Senators to forge a compromise on the Democrats' use of the judicial filibuster, thus eliminating the need for the Republican leadership's attempt to implement the so-called "nuclear option" (also known as the "constitutional option"). Under the agreement, Senators would retain the power to filibuster a judicial nominee, the Democrats would agree to use this power against Bush nominees only in an "extraordinary circumstance", the Republicans involved would agree to vote against the nuclear option if implemented, and three of the most contested Bush appellate court nominees (Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen and William Pryor) would receive a vote by the full Senate. The agreement may have affected the likelihood that a Senate minority would defeat subsequent nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court (e.g. the nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito). Such a defeat by a filibustering Senate minority could have become less likely if the so-called "nuclear option" had been successful, but such a defeat could have become more likely if the nuclear option had been voted down.[202]
On February 28, 2000, during his presidential primary campaign, McCain sharply criticized leaders of the religious right as "agents of intolerance" allied to his rival, Governor George W. Bush, and denounced what he said were the tactics of "division and slander." McCain singled out the evangelists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as "corrupting influences on religion and politics" and said parts of the religious right were divisive.[203][204]
In an interview in March 2007, David Brody for CBN news asked McCain about these comments, "Do you regret saying it? Do you feel like you need to apologize for it at all?" to which McCain responded, "... I was angry. And sometimes you say things in anger that you don't mean. But I have put that behind me. It's over."[205]
When interviewed in 2007 by Beliefnet, a website that covers religious affairs, McCain was asked if he thought a non-Christian should be president of the United States. He answered, "I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles, personally, I prefer someone who has a grounding in my faith." McCain also stated his agreement with the belief that the U.S. is a "Christian nation." On September 30, 2007, he clarified his remarks by saying "What I do mean to say is the United States of America was founded on the values of Judeo-Christian values, which were translated by our founding fathers which is basically the rights of human dignity and human rights."[206] McCain also stated, “I would vote for a Muslim if he or she was the candidate best able to lead the country and defend our political values.”[207]
An advocate of government restrictions on campaign spending and contributions, McCain made campaign finance reform a central issue in his 2000 presidential bid. With Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin he pushed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 which banned unlimited donations to national political parties (soft money) and curtailed issue-advocacy ads.[208] Because of McCain and Feingold's involvement, the law is commonly referred to as the "McCain-Feingold Act."
In May 2008, McCain stated his intention, if elected, to create a Presidential equivalent of the British conditional convention of Prime Minister's Questions.[209] In a policy speech on May 15 which outlined a number of ideas, McCain said, "I will ask Congress to grant me the privilege of coming before both houses to take questions, and address criticism, much the same as the Prime Minister of Great Britain [sic] appears regularly before the House of Commons."[210]
George F. Will of the The Washington Post criticized the proposal in an Op-Ed piece, saying that a Presidential Question Time would endanger separation of powers as the President of the United States, unlike the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, is not a member of the legislature. Will ended the piece by saying, "Congress should remind a President McCain that the 16 blocks separating the Capitol from the White House nicely express the nation's constitutional geography."[211] However, critics of Will's review, such as Steven Spadijer point out that Question Time would be a check and balance in and of itself:
If one is to take Will's logic to its ultimate conclusion, why don't we cancel the State of the Union Address altogether? Congressional consent when judges are appointed? The power for Congress, not the President, to make declarations of war? The power of the President to convene joint sittings of Congress? Clearly, the doctrine of separation of powers, and Question Time are not mutually exclusive forces. The executive and the legislature are already intertwined. They keep a tab on one another and that is the precise purpose of both Question Time and the separation of powers: to keep a tab on decision making of various branches of government and make sure power is not concentrated in one area. Question Time would, as the name suggests, question executive power (true the British PM is part of the House of Commons but the Prime Minister is also part of the executive under a Parliamentary system). For once it might make Congress take interest in secret executive decisions. Imagine Bush taking Congressional Questions regarding his decision to deploy troops to Iraq. By the same token, Question Time allows the President to critique the legislature in person. It would also allow the President to reason, to compromise and to plead with Congress in order to pass necessary reforms more efficiently. As noted, the President can already convene joint sittings of Congress. Unlike the UK system, however, Members of Congress can speak out against their own party's policy without being dropped from Cabinet or Congress. This is yet another reason why Question Time is suited more for the US system of government more rather than the UK system of fusion of powers. Therefore, Question Time is a check and balance in and of itself, whether the executive is clarifying his or her qualms with the legislature, or the legislature clarifying their qualms and problems with the President. There is dialogue and accountability between the branches: a very welcomed reform indeed.
McCain has a lifetime pro-environment rating of 24 on a scale of 100 on the League of Conservation Voters's National Environmental Scorecard, which reflects the consensus of experts from about 20 leading environmental organizations.[212] According to the League of Conservation Voters' 2006 National Environmental Scorecard, McCain took an "anti-environment" stance on four of seven environmental resolutions during the second session of the 109th congress. The four resolutions dealt with issues such as offshore drilling, an Arctic national wildlife refuge, low-income energy assistance, and environmental funding.[213]
McCain is a member of the Honorary Board of the Republicans for Environmental Protection organization.[214]
In a June 2008 analysis of McCain's positions, the Los Angeles Times said that "the Arizona senator has swerved from one position to another over the years, taking often contradictory stances on the federal government's role in energy policy."[215]
On April 23, 2007, McCain gave a major speech on his energy policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in the Ronald Reagan Building & International Trade Center in Washington, D.C. He said that U.S. dependence on foreign oil is "a major strategic vulnerability, a serious threat to our security, our economy and the well-being of our planet,"[216][217] explicitly connecting energy independence with national security, climate change, and the environment.[218]
In 2008, he said that this dependence "has been thirty years in the making, and was caused by the failure of politicians in Washington to think long term about the future of the country."[219]
McCain generally supports increased energy efficiency, but has not announced specific targets. He has called for raising gas mileage standards to 35 m.p.g.[220]
"I believe there needs to be a thorough and complete investigation of speculators to find out whether speculation has been going on and, if so, how much it has affected the price of a barrel of oil." "I am very angry, frankly, at the oil companies. Not only because of the obscene profits they've made, but their failure to invest in alternative energy to help us eliminate our dependence on foreign oil," McCain said on June 13, 2008.[221]
In McCain's campaign for the presidency in 2000, he supported the federal ban on offshore drilling for oil.[222] In June 2008, McCain reversed his longstanding objection to offshore drilling. Stating that he had changed his views because of high gas prices and dependence on imports, he endorsed legislation that would give each coastal state the power to determine whether to allow offshore drilling.[223]
McCain has generally opposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but did vote in favor of preserving the budget for ANWR oil drilling.[220][224]
McCain has voted to reduce federal funds for renewable and solar energy.[225] He opposed tax credits in 2001 and 2006 for companies that generate power from solar, wind, geothermal and ocean wave energy.[215]
In 2000, McCain skipped most of the Iowa caucuses during his presidential bid, in large part because his opposition to ethanol subsidies was a nonstarter in a state where making corn into fuel was a large and profitable business.[226]
While campaigning in 2006 in the Midwest, McCain called ethanol a "vital, vital alternative energy source."[215]
In April 2007, McCain proposed increasing ethanol imports.[218]
In May 2008, in response to rising food prices linked to an increased production of ethanol, McCain along with 23 other Republican Senators asked the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce requirements established by Congress in 2007 that more ethanol and other renewable fuels be blended into the U.S. gasoline supply.[227] The group wrote:
Although many factors may contribute to high food costs, food-to-fuel mandates are the only factors that can be reconsidered in light of current circumstances.[228]
McCain voted five times in the 1990s against taxpayer aid for research on new-generation nuclear reactors. Through 2003, he opposed federal loan guarantees to help the nuclear industry finance new plants.[215]
In 2005, McCain began supporting more taxpayer assistance for nuclear energy, as part of his proposed legislation to cap greenhouse gas emissions.[215] In April 2007, McCain proposed better harnessing of nuclear power, much as Europe has managed to do.[218] McCain is now calling for 45 new nuclear reactors to be built in the United States by 2030.[229] In 2008, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group and Public Citizen estimated that one version of McCain's bill would authorize more than $3.7 billion in subsidies for new nuclear plants.[215]
McCain has long been a supporter of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada. In 2008, however, on the eve of a campaign appearance in Nevada, he called for the establishment of "an international repository for spent nuclear fuel", which, he said, might make it unnecessary to open Yucca Mountain.[230]
The Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters, and the Obama campaign have charged that, in a videotaped interview in 2007, McCain reiterated his support for transporting nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain but said he would not be comfortable with such transports going through Phoenix, Arizona.[231][232][233] The McCain campaign responded by attacking Obama's record on energy issues.[234]
McCain has also been criticized for failing to deal with nuclear waste contamination problems in his home state of Arizona.[235]
McCain has repeatedly cited France as a role model because it gets nearly 80% of its electricity from nuclear power, which helps the country to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions, and has made it one of the world's leading net exporters of energy.[236]
The McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act of 2003 was defeated in October 2004 by a margin of 43–55.[237] This bill however would have required power stations to reduce their emissions to the same levels that they were in 2000, three years previous by the year 2010. An act that though stated to be "a very minimal proposal" by Senator McCain to the Senate, "that while woefully inadequate should be the first step." The Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2007[238] was introduced by Senator Joseph Lieberman, McCain and other co-sponsors in January 2007, with McCain commenting "we continue to learn more about the science of climate change and the dangerous precedence of not addressing this environmental problem. The science tells us that urgent and significant action is needed."[239]
In April 2007, McCain called global warming "a serious and urgent economic, environmental and national security challenge" and said that the problem "isn't a Hollywood invention."[240]
In September 2007, McCain said that he supported a 65% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050.[241]
In a campaign video in January 2008, McCain said "I believe that America did the right thing by not joining the Kyoto treaty, but I believe that if we could get China and India into it, then the United States should seriously consider on our terms joining with every other nation in the world to try and reduce greenhouse gases. It's got to be a global effort."[242][243]
In a February 2010 Arizona radio interview, after the host had made lengthy comments claiming that “80 percent” of global warming science “is based on fraud and misinformation,” McCain, who had previously countered such inaccurate statements, made no correction.[244]
McCain's position on greenhouse gas emissions calls for a timetable mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency that gradually reduces greenhouse ceilings. McCain's stance also includes an emission credit system that regulates each metric ton of greenhouse a company produces. This plan is to be put in to effect by 2012.[245]
McCain is co-sponsor of a Senate cap-and-trade bill designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions,[246] and is seen as a bipartisan leader on the issue.[220] However, in a radio interview in February 2010, he denied ever supporting cap-and-trade.[244]
By September 2009, McCain had largely disengaged from the climate change debate, and criticized the Waxman-Markey Climate Change Bill out of the House as "appear[ing] to be a cap & tax bill that I won't support" and having "a lot of special deals for a lot of special interests."[247] The senator also had both substantive and procedural objections to the cap-and-trade bill being worked on in the Senate.[247]
In February 2007, McCain and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called for a nationwide roll-out of California's new low carbon fuel standard.[248] In April 2007, McCain proposed moving from exploration to production of plug-in electric vehicles.[218]
In late June 2008, McCain said he favored nationwide limits on carbon emissions from cars, saying "my goal would be to see a federal standard that every state could embrace".[249] In mid-July, McCain, regarding whether states such as California should be permitted to set tough greenhouse gas limits on vehicles, that "It's hard for me to tell states that they can't impose ... whatever standards that would apply within their own states."[250] He said "I guess at the end of the day, I support the states being able to do that."[251]
In 2007, McCain sided with Bush against Florida Republicans in opposing a Congressional override of Bush's veto of a water projects bill that would have approved $2 billion for restoration of the Everglades, despite $7.8 billion that had been earmarked for the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) in 2000. The State of Florida has, since the passing of CERP, spent $2 billion on CERP initiatives, though the federal government has declined to fund initiatives written in CERP.[252] In 2004, a group of real estate developers, led by a major fundraiser to McCain's campaign, Al Hoffman, worked to block state efforts to follow through on restoration works.[253] McCain said on June 4, 2008 while touring the Everglades, that he supported "adequate funding" for restoration but that it had to be achieved "without sacrificing fiscal responsibility", though he declined to state which CERP programs were irresponsible.[253]
The Colorado River Compact allocates the water of the Colorado River among seven states. McCain has called for renegotiating the Compact,[254] a statement that has been interpreted as a suggestion that less water be reserved for the Upper Basin states (Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming) in order to provide more for the Lower Basin states (California, Arizona, and Nevada).[255]
McCain's 2006 rating by the Almanac of American Politics (2008) on Social Policy is 46% conservative, 53% liberal. (2005: 64% conservative, 23% liberal.)[5] McCain also has an 83% rating from the Christian Coalition, which indicates many socially conservative views such as voting yes on $75M for abstinence education, yes on recommending a Constitutional ban on flag desecration, and voting yes on memorial prayers and religious symbols at school.
McCain has stated that he believes life begins at the moment of conception and that embryos should be afforded full human rights.[256]
In June 1984, McCain voted for H.AMDT.942, the Siljander amendment, to H.R.5490, "An amendment to define "person" as including unborn children from the moment of conception".[257]
In 1999, McCain said of Roe v. Wade, "I'd love to see a point where it is irrelevant, and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary. But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations."[258][259]
However, on February 18, 2007, McCain stated, "I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned."[260] McCain has said he supports amending the U.S. Constitution to ban abortion, except in cases of rape, incest, or risk to the mother's life.[261]
McCain has voted 119 times on anti-abortion measures in the Senate[262] including co-sponsoring the Federal Abortion Ban.
McCain has a consistent 0 percent rating from the Pro-Choice group, NARAL, and a 75% rating from the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC).[263]
McCain is against federal funding of birth control and sex education; his opposition included a vote against spending $100 million to reduce teen pregnancy by education and contraceptives.[264]
McCain voted in 2003 and 2005 against legislation requiring insurance plans that cover prescription drugs to also cover birth control.[265]
In 1998 McCain opposed an Arizona ballot proposal to end affirmative action. He stated, "Rather than engage in divisive ballot initiatives, we must have a dialogue and cooperation and mutual efforts together to provide for every child in America to fulfill their expectations."[266] That same year, McCain voted to keep a program which directed ten percent of federal surface transportation funds to firms owned by women and racial minorities.[267] In 1999 McCain pushed legislation which would give companies tax breaks for selling media properties to minorities.[268] In 2003 McCain reintroduced the legislation.[269]
In July 2008, USA Today reported that "McCain said Sunday that he favors a proposed referendum in Arizona that would ban affirmative action, reversing a position he took a decade ago." He also said that he had always been against quotas.[270][271]
McCain backs reauthorization of the Americans with Disabilities Act, saying in a July 26, 2008 address to the Americans with Disabilities Conference that he will support the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 passed by the House of Representatives when it comes to a Senate vote.[272] McCain has not completed a questionnaire on disability issues furnished to his campaign by the American Association of People with Disabilities.[273]
McCain's family has close ties to Anheuser-Busch through its Hensley & Co. distributor.[274] McCain has recused himself from voting on bills before Congress dealing with alcohol-related matters.[274]
McCain voted Yes on a 2004 crime bill which mandated prison terms for crimes involving firearms and stricter penalties for other gun and drug law violations.[275]
McCain has indicated that he supports the use of the death penalty, mandatory prison terms for selling illegal drugs, and stronger restrictions on the purchase and possession of guns.[276][277][278] McCain is a proponent of mandatory sentencing in general.[279]
McCain voted in support of the USA PATRIOT Act.[280] In a speech in Westport, Connecticut, he said that "sometimes democracies overreact" during times of national security crises, and pledged to periodically review the Patriot Act in order to safeguard civil liberties.[281]
McCain voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act, extending the measure with some amendments clarifying the rights of an individual who has received FISA orders to challenge nondisclosure requirements and to refuse disclosure of the name of their attorney. Voting against this bill would have terminated the Patriot Act.[282]
McCain voted to extend the Patriot Act’s Wiretap Provision. This piece of legislation would allow the FBI to use roaming wiretaps on U.S. residents and would concede to the Federal Agents entry and access to corporate accounts. Voting for this bill would extend the Patriot Act to December 31, 2009, thereby making its provisions permanent whereas voting against this bill would keep the Patriot Act provisional.[282]
In 2010, McCain cosponsored a bill, the Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act, that would authorize the U.S. military to arrest anyone, U.S. citizen or otherwise, who is suspected of terrorist associations and detain them indefinitely, without right to a trial or a lawyer.[283][284][285]
In 1999, when the U.S. military was experiencing significant recruiting shortfalls, McCain was one of several members of Congress who mused publicly about reinstating the draft.[286]
In a December 2007 interview, McCain said that reinstating the draft would be a "terrific mistake" and that "the all-volunteer force is working, and it's the most professional and best trained and equipped we've ever had."[287]
In a November/December 2007 essay in Foreign Affairs, McCain wrote, "In 1947, the Truman administration launched a massive overhaul of the nation's foreign policy, defense, and intelligence agencies to meet the challenges of the Cold War. Today, we must do the same to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. Our armed forces are seriously overstretched and underresourced. As president, I will increase the size of the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps from the currently planned level of roughly 750,000 troops to 900,000 troops. Enhancing recruitment will require more resources and will take time, but it must be done as soon as possible."[288]
At a town hall meeting on June 24, 2008, McCain stated, "I don't know what would make a draft happen unless we were in an all-out World War III."[289] He further stated, "I do not believe the draft is even practicable or desirable."[289]
In September 2007, while speaking about issuing a draft, McCain said, "One, it's the best military we've ever had, it just isn't big enough. Two, there's never been a draft that I've ever heard of since World War II that was fair. What we've done is we find rich people find a way out, and lower income people are the ones that serve. I might consider it, I don't think it's necessary, but I might consider it if you could design a draft where everybody equally would serve. But it just doesn't happen. And the other thing is that, because you know from here in Brauman, it takes intensive training with the equipment and the technical skills that now our people are required to engage in, that it makes it not conducive to a short term. Now they enlist for 4 years. We used to draft people almost for 2 years or even 18 months so it's much more difficult."[290][291]
McCain supports the use of school vouchers.[292] Some of McCain's votes include voting yes on school vouchers in DC, yes on education savings accounts, yes on allowing more flexibility in federal school rules, and voting no on $5 billion for grants to local educational agencies.[292] He supports merit pay for teachers, along with firing them if they don't meet certain standards. He sponsored the Education A-Plus bill in 1997 and again in 1999, which would have allowed parents to open tax-free savings accounts for their children's school expenses, such as tutoring, computers and books. McCain co-sponsored the Child Nutrition Act, which would provide federal funding for at-risk children. He said when running for President in 2000 that he would take $5.4 billion away from sugar, gas and ethanol subsidies and pour that money into a test voucher program for every poor school district in America. He voted against diverting $51.9 million away from the Department of Labor and putting it towards after-school community learning centers, and he voted against an amendment which would fund smaller class sizes rather than providing funds for private tutors.
In 2005, McCain announced that he supported the inclusion of intelligent design teaching in schools.[293] He told the Arizona Daily Star that, "I think that there has to be all points of view presented. But they've got to be thoroughly presented. So to say that you can only teach one line of thinking … or one belief on how people and the world was created I think there's nothing wrong with teaching different schools of thought."[293][294] In 2006 he seemed to back off the position a bit, saying, "Should [intelligent design] be taught as a science class? Probably not."[294] McCain's 2005 book Character Is Destiny had included a highly complimentary chapter on Charles Darwin, in which McCain wrote, "Darwin helped explain nature's laws. He did not speculate, in his published theories at least, on the origin of life. The only undeniable challenge the theory of evolution poses to Christian beliefs is its obvious contradiction of the idea that God created the world as it is in less than a week."[294]
In 2006, McCain voted to increase the Pell Grant scholarship to a maximum of $4,500, increases future math and science teacher student loan forgiveness to $23,000, and restore education program cuts slated for vocational education, adult education, GEAR UP, and TRIO.[295][296] On July 29, 2007, McCain voted against a bill increasing federal student loans and Pell Grants and expanding eligibility for financial aid.[297][298] In 2008, he expressed support for increasing the funding of Pell Grants, saying, "We should not burden our young men and women after college with debt."[299]
In a speech before the National Rifle Association in September 2007, McCain said "For more than two decades, I've opposed the efforts of the anti-gun crowd to ban guns, ban ammunition, ban magazines, and paint gun owners as some kind of fringe group; dangerous in 'modern' America. Some even call you 'extremists.' My friends, gun owners are not extremists, you are the core of modern America."[300] McCain was a signatory of an amicus brief (friend of the court) filed on behalf of 55 U.S. Senators, 250 Representatives and Vice-President Dick Cheney, advising that the Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller be affirmed, overturning the ban on handguns not otherwise restricted by Congress.
McCain has received fair to poor ratings on gun issues from the National Rifle Association, garnering a C+.[301] According to a review by Gun Owners of America (GOA), "in 2001, McCain went from being a supporter of anti-gun bills to being a lead sponsor".[302] McCain's GOA rating went from a "C-" in 2000 to an "F-" in 2006.[303]
McCain has said that as president he would push for more money and military help to drug-supplying nations such as Colombia. He supports expanding the use of federally funded drug treatment and prevention programs and forging public/private partnerships. McCain supported the Drug Free Borders Act of 1999, which provided $1 billion to increase detection of illegal drugs entering the country and also supported the authorization of $53 million in international development funds to stop illegal narcotics.[304]
In 1999, in a Republican presidential debate at Dartmouth College, McCain opposed the legalization of marijuana. He said, "We’re losing the war on drugs. We ought to say, 'It’s not a war anymore,' or we really ought to go after it. And there was a time in our history when we weren’t always losing the war on drugs. It was when Nancy Reagan had a very simple program called 'Just Say No.' And young Americans were reducing the usage of drugs in America." At the debate, McCain called marijuana a "gateway drug".[304]
McCain has promoted the legislation and eventually the granting of citizenship to the estimated 12–20 million illegal aliens in the United States and the creation of an additional guest worker program with an option for permanent immigration. His prominent role in promoting the Senate's 2006 immigration legislation, including an initial cosponsorhip role with Ted Kennedy, made him a focus of the debate in 2006, and his support for S.1348 did so again in 2007. The immigration issue caused intense friction within his own party, such as when The Washington Times reported that McCain and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham "first checked with Mr. Kennedy before deciding to vote with the Massachusetts Democrat on an amendment to the Senate bill."[305] McCain's immigration stance was widely cited as a major reason for his presidential campaign's difficulty during most of 2007.
In his bid for the 2000 Presidential nomination, McCain supported expansion of the H-1B visa program, a temporary visa for skilled workers.[306] In 2005, he co-sponsored a bill with Ted Kennedy that would expand use of guest worker visas.[307]
McCain campaigned against Proposition 200, a 2004 Arizona state initiative intended to prevent illegal immigrants from voting, receiving welfare benefits, and mandated state agencies to report illegals to the federal government. McCain argued Prop 200 would be overly expensive to execute, that it would be ineffectual, and that immigration regulation falls only under the purview of the federal government.[308]
McCain has repeatedly argued that low-skilled immigrant labor is necessary to supply service roles that native-born Americans refuse. In one widely remarked-upon incident, he insisted to a union group that none of them would be willing to pick lettuce for fifty dollars an hour. The audience interrupted with offers and several weeks later demonstrators showed up at his Phoenix office to apply for lettuce picking work.[309]
In May 2007, McCain conceded to Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly that passage of amnesty will permanently change the ethnic makeup of the country. He supports a path to citizenship for an estimated twelve to twenty million immigrants, on the condition of a thirteen year waiting period.[310]
In June 2007, McCain voted in favor of declaring English as the official language of the federal government.[311]
McCain has subsequently stated that the nation's first priority must be to emphasize border security, and that debate over immigration is a secondary issue.[312]
Shortly before its April 2010 passage in the Arizona State Senate, McCain supported Arizona SB1070, which gained national attention as the broadest and strictest anti-illegal immigration measure in decades within the United States.[313]
In 1996 McCain voted against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would have prohibited discrimination against employees on the basis of sexual orientation.[314] When the bill was reintroduced in 2006, McCain told ABC's This Week, "I don't think we need specific laws that would apply necessarily to people who are gay."[314]
In October 2006, McCain said he would consider changing the U.S. military's don't ask, don't tell policy: "The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, 'Senator, we ought to change the policy,' then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it."[315] In December 2007, McCain said he supported the policy, citing reports from military leaders that "this policy ought to be continued because it's working."[316] In January 2010, when Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen – the top civilian and uniform leadership of the military – came out in favor of repealing the policy, McCain said he was "disappointed" by their stance: "At this moment of immense hardship for our armed services, we should not be seeking to overturn the Don't ask, don't tell policy," which he described as "imperfect but effective."[315] McCain also criticized Gates for what he saw as an attempt to usurp Congressional authority over the policy.
In 2004, McCain voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment, arguing that each state should be able to choose whether to recognize same-sex marriage.[317][318] He supported the failed 2006 Arizona initiative to ban same-sex marriage[319] and the successful California Proposition 8.[320] He also voted in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 which barred the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.[321]
When asked if he supported civil unions for homosexuals, McCain said: "I do not."[322] Still, on the Ellen Degeneres Show on May 22, 2008, McCain said that people ought to be able to enter "legal agreements ... particularly in the case of insurance and other areas", but that the "unique status of marriage" should be retained between a man and a woman."[323]
In July 2008, McCain told The New York Times that "I think that we’ve proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no I don’t believe in gay adoption."[324] Two days later, McCain's Director of Communications said "McCain could have been clearer in the interview in stating that his position on gay adoption is that it is a state issue, just as he made it clear in the interview that marriage is a state issue."[325] John McCain has later said, that despite his opposition, he could see the benefit of a child being adopted by a same-sex couple rather than being at an orphanage.
In 1983, McCain opposed creating a federal holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr..[326]
McCain continued his opposition to a holiday for King by supporting Governor of Arizona Evan Mecham's rescinding of the Arizona state holiday for King in 1987.[327] By 1989, McCain reiterated his opposition to the federal holiday,[327] but reversed position on the state holiday, due to the economic boycotts and image problems Arizona was receiving as a result of it not having one.[327]
In 1990, McCain persuaded Reagan to issue a statement of support for the holiday through McCain’s office, asking Arizonans to "join me in supporting a holiday to commemorate these ideals to which Dr. King dedicated his life."[328][329][330] The 1990 referendum failed, and in 1992 McCain supported another referendum for a state holiday, which passed.[330][331]
In April 2008, McCain said
We can be slow as well to give greatness its due, a mistake I made myself long ago when I voted against a federal holiday in memory of Dr. King. I was wrong and eventually realized that, in time to give full support for a state holiday in Arizona. We can all be a little late sometimes in doing the right thing, and Dr. King understood this about his fellow Americans.[332]
McCain saw a tape of the first UFC events and immediately found it abhorrent. McCain himself led a campaign to ban UFC, calling it "human cockfighting," and sending letters to the governors of all fifty US states asking them to ban the event.[333]
McCain believes that more Americans should get involved in public service. "If you find fault with our country, make it a better one...When healthy skepticism sours into corrosive cynicism, our expectations of our government become reduced to the delivery of services. For too many Americans, the idea of good citizenship does not extend beyond walking into a voting booth every two or four years and pulling a lever – and too few Americans demand of themselves even that first obligation of self-government."[334]
McCain has expressed his strong support for NASA and the space program.[335]
McCain is a member of The Republican Main Street Partnership and supports embryonic stem cell research. McCain had earlier opposed embyronic stem cell research[336] and credits former First Lady Nancy Reagan, a prominent Republican supporter of such research, with changing his mind in 2001.[337] He states that he believes that stem cell research, and indeed embryonic stem cell research, will continue whether or not the U.S. sanctions it, and so it would be the wisest course of action to support it to the extent that the United States will be able to regulate and monitor the use.[citation needed] In July 2008 he said “At the moment I support stem cell research [because of] the potential it has for curing some of the most terrible diseases that afflict mankind.”[338]
McCain opposes embryonic stem cell research that uses cloned human embryos. In 2006 he supported a trio of U.S. Senate bills designed to increase federal funding for adult stem cell research, ban the creation of embryos for research and offer federal support for research using embryos slated for destruction by fertility clinics. In 2007, in what he described as "a very agonizing and tough decision," he voted to allow research using human embryos left over from fertility treatments. [5] Pew Forum, 2008
In 1998, McCain supported an unsuccessful bill that would have imposed a federal tax of $1.10 per pack on cigarettes to fund programs to cut underage smoking. "I still regret we did not succeed", he said in October 2007. In 2007, McCain voted against legislation that would have used a 61-cents-per-pack tax to expand a children's health program, saying that he disagreed with the concept: "We are trying to get people not to smoke, and yet we are depending on tobacco to fund a program that's designed for children's health?"[339] In February 2008 he said that he would have a "no new taxes" policy as president.[340]
On February 28, 2008 McCain told ABC News' Bret Hovell, "It's indisputable that (autism) is on the rise amongst children, the question is what's causing it. And we go back and forth and there's strong evidence that indicates that it's got to do with a preservative in vaccines."[341]
The following table provides external links regarding bills and amendments that John McCain has either sponsored or cosponsored during his years in Congress, courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Years covered | All bills sponsored | All amendments sponsored | All bills cosponsored | All amendments cosponsored | Bills originally cosponsored | Amendments originally cosponsored |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2007–08 | 22 | 16 | 133 | 74 | 101 | 57 |
2005–06 | 75 | 68 | 152 | 42 | 113 | 36 |
2003–04 | 77 | 112 | 181 | 47 | 116 | 39 |
2001–02 | 54 | 178 | 121 | 55 | 97 | 53 |
1999-00 | 102 | 65 | 175 | 37 | 110 | 33 |
1997–98 | 74 | 150 | 147 | 59 | 79 | 50 |
1995–96 | 80 | 137 | 118 | 61 | 66 | 56 |
1993–94 | 53 | 91 | 201 | 89 | 98 | 82 |
1991–92 | 159 | 52 | 353 | 66 | 175 | 63 |
1989–90 | 39 | 24 | 247 | 86 | 150 | 81 |
1987–88 | 24 | 15 | 342 | 79 | 171 | 76 |
1985–86 | 12 | 10 | 335 | 0 | 117 | 0 |
1983–84 | 6 | 1 | 286 | 0 | 107 | 0 |
|
John McCain | |
---|---|
United States Senator from Arizona |
|
Incumbent | |
Assumed office January 3, 1987 Serving with Jon Kyl |
|
Preceded by | Barry Goldwater |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona's 1st district |
|
In office January 3, 1983 – January 3, 1987 |
|
Preceded by | John Jacob Rhodes Jr. |
Succeeded by | John Jacob Rhodes III |
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs |
|
In office January 3, 1995 – January 3, 1997 |
|
Preceded by | Daniel Inouye |
Succeeded by | Ben Nighthorse Campbell |
In office January 3, 2005 – January 3, 2007 |
|
Preceded by | Ben Nighthorse Campbell |
Succeeded by | Byron Dorgan |
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation | |
In office January 3, 1997 – January 3, 2001 |
|
Preceded by | Larry Pressler |
Succeeded by | Ernest Hollings |
In office January 20, 2001 – June 3, 2001 |
|
Preceded by | Ernest Hollings |
Succeeded by | Ernest Hollings |
In office January 3, 2003 – January 3, 2005 |
|
Preceded by | Ernest Hollings |
Succeeded by | Ted Stevens |
Personal details | |
Born | John Sidney McCain III August 29, 1936 Coco Solo Naval Air Station, Panama Canal Zone |
Nationality | American |
Political party | Republican |
Spouse(s) | Carol Shepp (m. 1965, div. 1980) Cindy Lou Hensley (m. 1980 - present) |
Relations | John S. McCain, Jr. (father, deceased) Roberta McCain (mother) |
Children | Douglas (b. 1959, adopted 1966) Andrew (b. 1962, adopted 1966) Sidney (b. 1966) Meghan (b. 1984) John Sidney IV "Jack" (b. 1986) James "Jimmy" (b. 1988) Bridget (b. 1991, adopted 1993) |
Residence | Phoenix, Arizona |
Alma mater | U.S. Naval Academy (B.S.) |
Profession | Naval Aviator, politician |
Religion | Baptist congregant (Brought up Episcopalian)[1] |
Signature | |
Website | www.mccain.senate.gov |
Military service | |
Service/branch | United States Navy |
Years of service | 1958–1981 |
Rank | Captain |
Battles/wars | Vietnam War |
This article is part of a series about
The life of John McCain |
John Sidney McCain III (born August 29, 1936) is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican presidential nominee in the 2008 United States election.
McCain followed his father and grandfather, both four-star admirals, into the United States Navy, graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1958. He became a naval aviator, flying ground-attack aircraft from aircraft carriers. During the Vietnam War, he was almost killed in the 1967 USS Forrestal fire. In October 1967, while on a bombing mission over Hanoi, he was shot down, seriously injured, and captured by the North Vietnamese. He was a prisoner of war until 1973. McCain experienced episodes of torture, and refused an out-of-sequence early repatriation offer. His war wounds left him with lifelong physical limitations.
He retired from the Navy as a captain in 1981 and moved to Arizona, where he entered politics. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982, he served two terms, and was then elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986, winning re-election easily four times, most recently in 2010. While generally adhering to conservative principles, McCain at times has had a media reputation as a "maverick" for his willingness to disagree with his party on certain issues. After being investigated and largely exonerated in a political influence scandal of the 1980s as a member of the Keating Five, he made campaign finance reform one of his signature concerns, which eventually led to the passage of the McCain-Feingold Act in 2002. He is also known for his work towards restoring diplomatic relations with Vietnam in the 1990s, and for his belief that the war in Iraq should be fought to a successful conclusion. McCain has chaired the Senate Commerce Committee, opposed spending that he considered to be pork barrel, and played a key role in alleviating a crisis over judicial nominations.
McCain ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000 but lost a heated primary season contest to George W. Bush. He secured the nomination in 2008 after coming back from early reversals, but lost to Democratic candidate Barack Obama in the general election. He subsequently adopted more orthodox conservative stances and attitudes and largely opposed actions of the Obama administration.
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John McCain was born on August 29, 1936, at Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone, to naval officer John S. McCain, Jr. (1911–1981) and Roberta (Wright) McCain (b. 1912).[2] At that time, the Panama Canal was under U.S. control.[3]
McCain's family tree includes Scots-Irish and English ancestors.[4] His father and his paternal grandfather, John S. McCain, Sr., both became four-star United States Navy admirals.[5] His family, including his older sister Sandy and younger brother Joe,[2] followed his father to various naval postings in the United States and the Pacific.[6] Altogether, he attended about 20 schools.[7]
In 1951, the family settled in Northern Virginia, and McCain attended Episcopal High School, a private preparatory boarding school in Alexandria.[8] He excelled at wrestling and graduated in 1954.[9]
Following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, McCain entered the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. There, he was a friend and informal leader for many of his classmates,[10] and sometimes stood up for targets of bullying.[5] He also became a lightweight boxer.[11] McCain came into conflict with higher-ranking personnel, and he did not always obey the rules, which contributed to a low class rank (894 of 899), despite a high IQ.[10][12] He did well in academic subjects that interested him, such as literature and history, but studied only enough to pass subjects he struggled with, such as mathematics.[5][13] McCain graduated in 1958.[10]
John McCain's early military career began when he was commissioned an ensign and started two and a half years of training at Pensacola to become a naval aviator.[14] While there, he earned a reputation as a partying man.[7] He completed flight school in 1960, and became a naval pilot of ground-attack aircraft, assigned to A-1 Skyraider squadrons[15] aboard the aircraft carriers USS Intrepid and USS Enterprise[16] in the Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas.[17] McCain began as a sub-par flier[17] who was at times careless and reckless;[18] during the early-to-mid 1960s, the planes he was flying crashed twice and once collided with power lines, but he received no major injuries.[18] His aviation skills improved over time,[17] and he was seen as a good pilot, albeit one who tended to "push the envelope" in his flying.[18]
On July 3, 1965, McCain married Carol Shepp, a model originally from Philadelphia.[19] McCain adopted her two young children Douglas and Andrew.[16][20] He and Carol then had a daughter named Sidney.[21][22]
McCain requested a combat assignment,[23] and was assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal flying A-4 Skyhawks.[24] His combat duty began when he was 30 years old, in mid-1967, when Forrestal was assigned to a bombing campaign, Operation Rolling Thunder, during the Vietnam War.[19][25] McCain and his fellow pilots became frustrated by micromanagement from Washington, and he would later write that "In all candor, we thought our civilian commanders were complete idiots who didn't have the least notion of what it took to win the war."[25][26]
On July 29, 1967, McCain, by then a lieutenant commander, was near the center of the Forrestal fire. He escaped from his burning jet and was trying to help another pilot escape when a bomb exploded;[27] McCain was struck in the legs and chest by fragments.[28] The ensuing fire killed 134 sailors and took 24 hours to control.[29][30] With the Forrestal out of commission, McCain volunteered for assignment with the USS Oriskany, another aircraft carrier employed in Operation Rolling Thunder.[31] Once there, he would be awarded the Navy Commendation Medal and the Bronze Star for missions flown over North Vietnam.[32]
John McCain's capture and subsequent imprisonment began on October 26, 1967. He was flying his 23rd bombing mission over North Vietnam when his A-4E Skyhawk was shot down by a missile over Hanoi.[33][34] McCain fractured both arms and a leg ejecting from the aircraft,[35] and nearly drowned when he parachuted into Truc Bach Lake.[33] Some North Vietnamese pulled him ashore, then others crushed his shoulder with a rifle butt and bayoneted him.[33] McCain was then transported to Hanoi's main Hoa Lo Prison, nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton".[34]
Although McCain was badly wounded, his captors refused to treat his injuries, beating and interrogating him to get information; he was given medical care only when the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a top admiral.[36] His status as a prisoner of war (POW) made the front pages of major newspapers.[37][38]
McCain spent six weeks in the hospital while receiving marginal care.[33] By then having lost 50 pounds (23 kg), in a chest cast, and with his hair turned white,[33] McCain was sent to a different camp on the outskirts of Hanoi[39] in December 1967, into a cell with two other Americans who did not expect him to live a week.[40] In March 1968, McCain was put into solitary confinement, where he would remain for two years.[41]
In mid-1968, John S. McCain, Jr. was named commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater, and the North Vietnamese offered McCain early release[43] because they wanted to appear merciful for propaganda purposes,[44] and also to show other POWs that elite prisoners were willing to be treated preferentially.[43] McCain turned down the offer; he would only accept repatriation if every man taken in before him was released as well. Such early release was prohibited by the POW's interpretation of the military Code of Conduct: To prevent the enemy from using prisoners for propaganda, officers were to agree to be released in the order in which they were captured.[33]
In August 1968, a program of severe torture began on McCain.[45] He was subjected to rope bindings and repeated beatings every two hours, at the same time as he was suffering from dysentery.[33][45] Further injuries led to the beginning of a suicide attempt, stopped by guards.[33] Eventually, McCain made an anti-American propaganda "confession".[33] He has always felt that his statement was dishonorable, but as he later wrote, "I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine."[46][47] Many American POWs were tortured and maltreated in order to extract "confessions" and propaganda statements;[48] virtually all of them eventually yielded something to their captors.[49] McCain subsequently received two to three beatings weekly because of his continued refusal to sign additional statements.[50]
McCain refused to meet with various anti-war groups seeking peace in Hanoi, wanting to give neither them nor the North Vietnamese a propaganda victory.[51] From late 1969 onward, treatment of McCain and many of the other POWs became more tolerable,[52] while McCain continued actively to resist the camp authorities.[53] McCain and other prisoners cheered the U.S. "Christmas Bombing" campaign of December 1972, viewing it as a forceful measure to push North Vietnam to terms.[47][54]
Altogether, McCain was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for five and a half years. He was released on March 14, 1973.[55] His wartime injuries left him permanently incapable of raising his arms above his head.[56]
McCain's return to the United States reunited him with his family. His wife Carol had suffered her own crippling ordeal due to an automobile accident in December 1969.[57] McCain became a celebrity of sorts, as a returned POW.[57]
McCain underwent treatment for his injuries, including months of grueling physical therapy,[58] and attended the National War College at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. during 1973–1974.[59] Having been rehabilitated, by late 1974, McCain had his flight status reinstated, and in 1976 he became commanding officer of a training squadron stationed in Florida.[57][60] He improved the unit's flight readiness and safety records,[61] and won the squadron its first-ever Meritorious Unit Commendation.[60] During this period in Florida, McCain had extramarital affairs, and the McCains' marriage began to falter, for which he later would accept blame.[62][63]
McCain served as the Navy's liaison to the U.S. Senate beginning in 1977.[64] In retrospect, he has said that this represented his "real entry into the world of politics and the beginning of my second career as a public servant."[57] His key behind-the-scenes role gained congressional financing for a new supercarrier against the wishes of the Carter administration.[58][65]
In April 1979,[58] McCain met Cindy Lou Hensley, a teacher from Phoenix, Arizona, whose father had founded a large beer distributorship.[63] They began dating, and he urged his wife Carol to grant him a divorce, which she did in February 1980, with the uncontested divorce taking effect in April 1980.[20][58] The settlement included two houses, and financial support for her ongoing medical treatments due to her 1969 car accident; they would remain on good terms.[63] McCain and Hensley were married on May 17, 1980, with Senators William Cohen and Gary Hart attending as groomsmen.[19][63] McCain's children did not attend, and several years would pass before they reconciled.[22][58] John and Cindy McCain entered into a prenuptial agreement that kept most of her family's assets under her name; they would always keep their finances apart and file separate income tax returns.[66]
McCain decided to leave the Navy. It was doubtful whether he would ever be promoted to the rank of full admiral, as he had poor annual physicals and had been given no major sea command.[67] His chances of being promoted to rear admiral were better, but McCain declined that prospect, as he had already made plans to run for Congress and said he could "do more good there."[68][69] McCain retired from the Navy on April 1, 1981[70] as a captain.[32] He was designated as disabled and awarded a disability pension.[71] Upon leaving the military, he moved to Arizona. His 17 military awards and decorations include the Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star and Navy Commendation Medal, for actions before, during, and after his time as a POW.[32]
McCain set his sights on becoming a Congressman because he was interested in current events, was ready for a new challenge, and had developed political ambitions during his time as Senate liaison.[63][72][73] Living in Phoenix, he went to work for Hensley & Co., his new father-in-law Jim Hensley's large Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship.[63] As Vice President of Public Relations at the distributorship, he gained political support among the local business community, meeting powerful figures such as banker Charles Keating, Jr., real estate developer Fife Symington III and newspaper publisher Darrow "Duke" Tully.[64][74] In 1982, McCain ran as a Republican for an open seat in Arizona's 1st congressional district.[75] A newcomer to the state, McCain was hit with charges of being a carpetbagger.[63] McCain responded to a voter making that charge with what a Phoenix Gazette columnist would later describe as "the most devastating response to a potentially troublesome political issue I've ever heard":[63]
Listen, pal. I spent 22 years in the Navy. My father was in the Navy. My grandfather was in the Navy. We in the military service tend to move a lot. We have to live in all parts of the country, all parts of the world. I wish I could have had the luxury, like you, of growing up and living and spending my entire life in a nice place like the First District of Arizona, but I was doing other things. As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi.[63][76]
With the assistance of local political endorsements, his Washington connections, as well as money that his wife lent to his campaign,[64] McCain won a highly contested primary election.[63] He then easily won the general election in the heavily Republican district.[63]
In 1983, McCain was elected to lead the incoming group of Republican representatives,[63] and was assigned to the House Committee on Interior Affairs. Also that year, he opposed creation of a federal Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, but admitted in 2008: "I was wrong and eventually realized that, in time to give full support [in 1990] for a state holiday in Arizona."[77][78]
McCain's politics at this point were mainly in line with President Ronald Reagan, including support for Reaganomics, and he was active on Indian Affairs bills.[79] He supported most aspects of the foreign policy of the Reagan administration, including its hardline stance against the Soviet Union and policy towards Central American conflicts, such as backing the Contras in Nicaragua.[79] McCain opposed keeping U.S. Marines deployed in Lebanon citing unattainable objectives, and subsequently criticized President Reagan for pulling out the troops too late; in the interim, the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing killed hundreds.[63][80] McCain won re-election to the House easily in 1984,[63] and gained a spot on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.[81] In 1985, he made his first return trip to Vietnam,[82] and also traveled to Chile where he met with its military junta ruler, General Augusto Pinochet.[83][84][85]
In 1984, McCain and Cindy had their first child together, daughter Meghan, followed two years later by son John Sidney (Jack) IV, and in 1988 by son James (Jimmy).[86] In 1991, Cindy McCain brought an abandoned three-month old girl needing medical treatment to the U.S. from a Bangladeshi orphanage run by Mother Teresa.[87] The McCains decided to adopt her and named her Bridget.[88]
McCain's Senate career began in January 1987, after he defeated his Democratic opponent, former state legislator Richard Kimball, by 20 percentage points in the 1986 election.[64][89] McCain succeeded longtime American conservative icon and Arizona fixture Barry Goldwater upon the latter's retirement as United States Senator from Arizona.[89]
Senator McCain became a member of the Armed Services Committee, with which he had formerly done his Navy liaison work; he also joined the Commerce Committee and the Indian Affairs Committee.[89] McCain continued to support the Native American agenda.[90] As first a House member and then a senator – and as a life-long gambler with close ties to the gambling industry[91] – McCain was one of the main authors of the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act,[92][93] which codified rules regarding Native American gambling enterprises.[94] McCain was also a strong supporter of the Gramm-Rudman legislation that enforced automatic spending cuts in the case of budget deficits.[95]
McCain soon gained national visibility. He delivered a well-received speech at the 1988 Republican National Convention, was mentioned by the press as a short list vice-presidential running mate for Republican nominee George H. W. Bush, and was named chairman of Veterans for Bush.[89][96]
McCain became enmeshed in a scandal during the 1980s as one of five United States Senators comprising the so-called Keating Five.[97] Between 1982 and 1987, McCain had received $112,000 in lawful[98] political contributions from Charles Keating Jr. and his associates at Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, along with trips on Keating's jets[97] that McCain belatedly repaid in 1989.[99] In 1987, McCain was one of the five senators whom Keating contacted in order to prevent the government's seizure of Lincoln, and McCain met twice with federal regulators to discuss the government's investigation of Lincoln.[97] In 1999, McCain said: "The appearance of it was wrong. It's a wrong appearance when a group of senators appear in a meeting with a group of regulators, because it conveys the impression of undue and improper influence. And it was the wrong thing to do."[100] In the end, McCain was cleared by the Senate Ethics Committee of acting improperly or violating any law or Senate rule, but was mildly rebuked for exercising "poor judgment".[98][100] In his 1992 re-election bid, the Keating Five affair was not a major issue,[101] and he won handily, gaining 56 percent of the vote to defeat Democratic community and civil rights activist Claire Sargent and independent former Governor Evan Mecham.[102]
McCain developed a reputation for independence during the 1990s.[103] He took pride in challenging party leadership and establishment forces, becoming difficult to categorize politically.[103]
As a member of the 1991–1993 Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, chaired by Democrat and fellow Vietnam War veteran John Kerry, McCain investigated the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue, to determine the fate of U.S. service personnel listed as missing in action during the Vietnam War.[104] The committee's unanimous report stated there was "no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia."[105] Helped by McCain's efforts, in 1995 the U.S. normalized diplomatic relations with Vietnam.[106] McCain was vilified by some POW/MIA activists who, unlike the Arizona senator, believed large numbers of Americans were still held against their will in Southeast Asia.[106][107][108] Since January 1993, McCain has been Chairman of the International Republican Institute, an organization partly funded by the U.S. Government that supports the emergence of political democracy worldwide.[109]
In 1993 and 1994, McCain voted to confirm President Clinton's nominees Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg whom he considered to be qualified for the U.S. Supreme Court. He would later explain that "under our Constitution, it is the president's call to make."[110] McCain had also voted to confirm nominees of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, including Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas.[111]
McCain attacked what he saw as the corrupting influence of large political contributions – from corporations, labor unions, other organizations, and wealthy individuals – and he made this his signature issue.[112] Starting in 1994, he worked with Democratic Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold on campaign finance reform; their McCain-Feingold bill attempted to put limits on "soft money".[112] The efforts of McCain and Feingold were opposed by some of the moneyed interests targeted, by incumbents in both parties, by those who felt spending limits impinged on free political speech and might be unconstitutional as well, and by those who wanted to counterbalance the power of what they saw as media bias.[112][113] Despite sympathetic coverage in the media, initial versions of the McCain-Feingold Act were filibustered and never came to a vote.[114]
The term "maverick Republican" became a label frequently applied to McCain, and he has also used it himself.[112][115][116] In 1993, McCain opposed military operations in Somalia.[117] Another target of his was pork barrel spending by Congress, and he actively supported the Line Item Veto Act of 1996, which gave the president power to veto individual spending items[112] but was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1998.[118]
In the 1996 presidential election, McCain was again on the short list of possible vice-presidential picks, this time for Republican nominee Bob Dole.[101][119] The following year, Time magazine named McCain as one of the "25 Most Influential People in America".[120]
In 1997, McCain became chairman of the powerful Senate Commerce Committee; he was criticized for accepting funds from corporations and businesses under the committee's purview, but in response said the small contributions he received were not part of the big-money nature of the campaign finance problem.[112] McCain took on the tobacco industry in 1998, proposing legislation that would increase cigarette taxes in order to fund anti-smoking campaigns, discourage teenage smokers, increase money for health research studies, and help states pay for smoking-related health care costs.[112][121] Supported by the Clinton administration but opposed by the industry and most Republicans, the bill failed to gain cloture.[121]
McCain won re-election to a third senate term in November 1998, prevailing in a landslide over his Democratic opponent, environmental lawyer Ed Ranger.[112] In the February 1999 Senate trial following the impeachment of Bill Clinton, McCain voted to convict the president on both the perjury and obstruction of justice counts, saying Clinton had violated his sworn oath of office.[122] In March 1999, McCain voted to approve the NATO bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, saying that the ongoing genocide of the Kosovo War must be stopped and criticizing past Clinton administration inaction.[123] Later in 1999, McCain shared the Profile in Courage Award with Feingold for their work in trying to enact their campaign finance reform,[124] although the bill was still failing repeated attempts to gain cloture.[114]
In August 1999, McCain's memoir Faith of My Fathers, co-authored with Mark Salter, was published;[125] a reviewer observed that its appearance "seems to have been timed to the unfolding Presidential campaign."[126] The most successful of his writings, it received positive reviews,[127] became a bestseller,[128] and was later made into a TV film. The book traces McCain's family background and childhood, covers his time at Annapolis and his service before and during the Vietnam War, concluding with his release from captivity in 1973. According to one reviewer, it describes "the kind of challenges that most of us can barely imagine. It's a fascinating history of a remarkable military family."[129]
McCain announced his candidacy for president on September 27, 1999 in Nashua, New Hampshire, saying he was staging "a fight to take our government back from the power brokers and special interests, and return it to the people and the noble cause of freedom it was created to serve".[125][130] The leader for the Republican nomination was Texas Governor George W. Bush, who had the political and financial support of most of the party establishment.[131]
McCain focused on the New Hampshire primary, where his message appealed to independents.[132] He traveled on a campaign bus called the Straight Talk Express.[125] He held many town hall meetings, answering every question voters asked, in a successful example of "retail politics", and he used free media to compensate for his lack of funds.[125] One reporter later recounted that, "McCain talked all day long with reporters on his Straight Talk Express bus; he talked so much that sometimes he said things that he shouldn't have, and that's why the media loved him."[133] On February 1, 2000, he won New Hampshire's primary with 49 percent of the vote to Bush's 30 percent. The Bush campaign and the Republican establishment feared that a McCain victory in the crucial South Carolina primary might give his campaign unstoppable momentum.[125][134]
The Arizona Republic would write that the McCain–Bush primary contest in South Carolina "has entered national political lore as a low-water mark in presidential campaigns", while The New York Times called it "a painful symbol of the brutality of American politics".[125][135][136] A variety of interest groups that McCain had challenged in the past ran negative ads.[125][137] Bush borrowed McCain's earlier language of reform,[138] and declined to dissociate himself from a veterans activist who accused McCain (in Bush's presence) of having "abandoned the veterans" on POW/MIA and Agent Orange issues.[125][139]
Incensed,[139] McCain ran ads accusing Bush of lying and comparing the governor to Bill Clinton, which Bush said was "about as low a blow as you can give in a Republican primary".[125] An anonymous smear campaign began against McCain, delivered by push polls, faxes, e-mails, flyers, and audience plants.[125][141] The smears claimed that McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock (the McCains' dark-skinned daughter was adopted from Bangladesh), that his wife Cindy was a drug addict, that he was a homosexual, and that he was a "Manchurian Candidate" who was either a traitor or mentally unstable from his North Vietnam POW days.[125][135] The Bush campaign strongly denied any involvement with the attacks.[135]
McCain lost South Carolina on February 19, with 42 percent of the vote to Bush's 53 percent,[142] in part because Bush mobilized the state's evangelical voters[125][143] and outspent McCain.[144] The win allowed Bush to regain lost momentum.[142] McCain would say of the rumor spreaders, "I believe that there is a special place in hell for people like those."[88] According to one report, the South Carolina experience left McCain in a "very dark place".[135]
McCain's campaign never completely recovered from his South Carolina defeat, although he did rebound partially by winning in Arizona and Michigan a few days later.[145] He made a speech in Virginia Beach that criticized Christian leaders, including Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, as divisive conservatives,[135] declaring "... we embrace the fine members of the religious conservative community. But that does not mean that we will pander to their self-appointed leaders."[146] McCain lost the Virginia primary on February 29,[147] and on March 7 lost nine of the thirteen primaries on Super Tuesday to Bush.[148] With little hope of overcoming Bush's delegate lead, McCain withdrew from the race on March 9, 2000.[149] He endorsed Bush two months later,[150] and made occasional appearances with the Texas governor during the general election campaign.[125]
McCain began 2001 by breaking with the new George W. Bush administration on a number of matters, including HMO reform, climate change, and gun legislation; McCain-Feingold was opposed by Bush as well.[114][151] In May 2001, McCain was one of only two Senate Republicans to vote against the Bush tax cuts.[151][152] Besides the differences with Bush on ideological grounds, there was considerable antagonism between the two remaining from the previous year's campaign.[153][154] Later, when Republican Senator Jim Jeffords became an Independent, throwing control of the Senate to the Democrats, McCain defended Jeffords against "self-appointed enforcers of party loyalty".[151] Indeed, there was speculation at the time, and in years since, about McCain himself leaving the Republican Party, but McCain has always adamantly denied that he ever considered doing so.[151][155][156] Beginning in 2001, McCain used political capital gained from his presidential run, as well as improved legislative skills and relationships with other members, to become one of the Senate's most influential members.[157]
After the September 11, 2001 attacks, McCain supported Bush and the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.[151][158] He and Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman wrote the legislation that created the 9/11 Commission,[159] while he and Democratic Senator Fritz Hollings co-sponsored the Aviation and Transportation Security Act that federalized airport security.[160]
In March 2002, McCain-Feingold passed in both Houses of Congress and was signed into law by President Bush.[114][151] Seven years in the making, it was McCain's greatest legislative achievement.[151][161]
Meanwhile, in discussions over proposed U.S. action against Iraq, McCain was a strong supporter of the Bush administration's position.[151] He stated that Iraq was "a clear and present danger to the United States of America", and voted accordingly for the Iraq War Resolution in October 2002.[151] He predicted that U.S. forces would be treated as liberators by a large number of the Iraqi people.[162] In May 2003, McCain voted against the second round of Bush tax cuts, saying it was unwise at a time of war.[152] By November 2003, after a trip to Iraq, he was publicly questioning Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, saying that more U.S. troops were needed; the following year, McCain announced that he had lost confidence in Rumsfeld.[163][164]
In October 2003, McCain and Lieberman co-sponsored the Climate Stewardship Act that would have introduced a cap and trade system aimed at returning greenhouse gas emissions to 2000 levels; the bill was defeated with 55 votes to 43 in the Senate.[165] They reintroduced modified versions of the Act two additional times, most recently in January 2007 with the co-sponsorship of Barack Obama, among others.[166]
In the 2004 U.S. presidential election campaign, McCain was once again frequently mentioned for the vice-presidential slot, only this time as part of the Democratic ticket under nominee John Kerry.[167][168][169] McCain said that Kerry had never formally offered him the position and that he would not have accepted it if he had.[168][169][170] At the 2004 Republican National Convention, McCain supported Bush for re-election, praising Bush's management of the War on Terror since the September 11 attacks.[171] At the same time, the Senator defended Kerry's Vietnam war record.[172] By August 2004, McCain had the best favorable-to-unfavorable rating (55 percent to 19 percent) of any national politician;[171] he campaigned for Bush much more than he had four years previously, though the two remained situational allies rather than friends.[153]
McCain was also up for re-election as Senator in 2004. He defeated little-known Democratic schoolteacher Stuart Starky with his biggest margin of victory, garnering 77 percent of the vote.[173]
In May 2005, McCain led the so-called Gang of 14 in the Senate, which established a compromise that preserved the ability of senators to filibuster judicial nominees, but only in "extraordinary circumstances".[174] The compromise took the steam out of the filibuster movement, but some Republicans remained disappointed that the compromise did not eliminate filibusters of judicial nominees in all circumstances.[175] McCain subsequently cast Supreme Court confirmation votes in favor of John Roberts and Samuel Alito, calling them "two of the finest justices ever appointed to the United States Supreme Court."[111]
Breaking from his 2001 and 2003 votes, McCain supported the Bush tax cut extension in May 2006, saying not to do so would amount to a tax increase.[152] Working with Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy, McCain was a strong proponent of comprehensive immigration reform, which would involve legalization, guest worker programs, and border enforcement components. The Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act was never voted on in 2005, while the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 passed the Senate in May 2006 but failed in the House.[164] In June 2007, President Bush, McCain, and others made the strongest push yet for such a bill, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, but it aroused intense grassroots opposition among talk radio listeners and others, some of whom furiously characterized the proposal as an "amnesty" program,[176] and the bill twice failed to gain cloture in the Senate.[177]
By the middle of the 2000s (decade), the increased Indian gaming that McCain had helped bring about was a $23 billion industry.[93] He was twice chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, in 1995–1997 and 2005–2007, and his Committee helped expose the Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal.[178][179] By 2005 and 2006, McCain was pushing for amendments to the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act that would limit creation of off-reservation casinos,[93] as well as limiting the movement of tribes across state lines to build casinos.[180]
Owing to his time as a POW, McCain has been recognized for his sensitivity to the detention and interrogation of detainees in the War on Terror. In October 2005, McCain introduced the McCain Detainee Amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill for 2005, and the Senate voted 90–9 to support the amendment.[181] It prohibits inhumane treatment of prisoners, including prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, by confining military interrogations to the techniques in the U.S. Army Field Manual on Interrogation. Although Bush had threatened to veto the bill if McCain's amendment was included,[182] the President announced in December 2005 that he accepted McCain's terms and would "make it clear to the world that this government does not torture and that we adhere to the international convention of torture, whether it be here at home or abroad".[183] This stance, among others, led to McCain being named by Time magazine in 2006 as one of America's 10 Best Senators.[184] McCain voted in February 2008 against a bill containing a ban on waterboarding,[185] which provision was later narrowly passed and vetoed by Bush. However, the bill in question contained other provisions to which McCain objected, and his spokesman stated: "This wasn't a vote on waterboarding. This was a vote on applying the standards of the [Army] field manual to CIA personnel."[185]
Meanwhile, McCain continued questioning the progress of the war in Iraq. In September 2005, he remarked upon Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers' optimistic outlook on the war's progress: "Things have not gone as well as we had planned or expected, nor as we were told by you, General Myers."[186] In August 2006, he criticized the administration for continually understating the effectiveness of the insurgency: "We [have] not told the American people how tough and difficult this could be."[164] From the beginning, McCain strongly supported the Iraq troop surge of 2007.[187] The strategy's opponents labeled it "McCain's plan"[188] and University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato said, "McCain owns Iraq just as much as Bush does now."[164] The surge and the war were unpopular during most of the year, even within the Republican Party,[189] as McCain's presidential campaign was underway; faced with the consequences, McCain frequently responded, "I would much rather lose a campaign than a war."[190] In March 2008, McCain credited the surge strategy with reducing violence in Iraq, as he made his eighth trip to that country since the war began.[191]
John McCain formally announced his intention to run for President of the United States on April 25, 2007 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.[192] He stated that: "I'm not running for President to be somebody, but to do something; to do the hard but necessary things not the easy and needless things."[193]
McCain's oft-cited strengths as a presidential candidate for 2008 included national name recognition, sponsorship of major lobbying and campaign finance reform initiatives, his ability to reach across the aisle, his well-known military service and experience as a POW, his experience from the 2000 presidential campaign, and an expectation that he would capture Bush's top fundraisers.[194] During the 2006 election cycle, McCain had attended 346 events[56] and helped raise more than $10.5 million on behalf of Republican candidates. McCain also became more willing to ask business and industry for campaign contributions, while maintaining that such contributions would not affect any official decisions he would make.[195] Despite being considered the front-runner for the nomination by pundits as 2007 began,[196] McCain was in second place behind former Mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani in national Republican polls as the year progressed.
McCain had fundraising problems in the first half of 2007, due in part to his support for the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, which was unpopular among the Republican base electorate.[197][198] Large-scale campaign staff downsizing took place in early July, but McCain said that he was not considering dropping out of the race.[198] Later that month, the candidate's campaign manager and campaign chief strategist both departed.[199] McCain slumped badly in national polls, often running third or fourth with 15 percent or less support.
The Arizona senator subsequently resumed his familiar position as a political underdog,[200] riding the Straight Talk Express and taking advantage of free media such as debates and sponsored events.[201] By December 2007, the Republican race was unsettled, with none of the top-tier candidates dominating the race and all of them possessing major vulnerabilities with different elements of the Republican base electorate.[202] McCain was showing a resurgence, in particular with renewed strength in New Hampshire – the scene of his 2000 triumph – and was bolstered further by the endorsements of The Boston Globe, the New Hampshire Union Leader, and almost two dozen other state newspapers,[203] as well as from Senator Lieberman (now an Independent Democrat).[204][205] McCain decided not to campaign significantly in the January 3, 2008, Iowa caucuses, which saw a win by former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee.
McCain's comeback plan paid off when he won the New Hampshire primary on January 8, defeating former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney in a close contest, to once again become one of the front-runners in the race.[206] In mid-January, McCain placed first in the South Carolina primary, narrowly defeating Mike Huckabee.[207] Pundits credited the third-place finisher, Tennessee's former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson, with drawing votes from Huckabee in South Carolina, thereby giving a narrow win to McCain.[208] A week later, McCain won the Florida primary,[209] beating Romney again in a close contest; Giuliani then dropped out and endorsed McCain.[210]
On February 5, McCain won both the majority of states and delegates in the Super Tuesday Republican primaries, giving him a commanding lead toward the Republican nomination. Romney departed from the race on February 7.[211] McCain's wins in the March 4 primaries clinched a majority of the delegates, and he became the presumptive Republican nominee.[212]
McCain, having been born in the (Panama) Canal Zone, if elected would have become the first president who was born outside the current 50 states. This raised a potential legal issue, since the United States Constitution requires the president to be a natural-born citizen of the United States. A bipartisan legal review[213] and a unanimous but non-binding Senate resolution[214] both concluded that he is a natural-born citizen. Also, if inaugurated in 2009 at age 72 years and 144 days, he would have been the oldest U.S. president upon ascension to the presidency,[215] and the second-oldest president to be inaugurated.[216]
McCain has addressed concerns about his age and past health concerns, stating in 2005 that his health was "excellent".[217] He has been treated for a type of skin cancer called melanoma, and an operation in 2000 for that condition left a noticeable mark on the left side of his face.[218] McCain's prognosis appears favorable, according to independent experts, especially because he has already survived without a recurrence for more than seven years.[218] In May 2008, McCain's campaign briefly let the press review his medical records, and he was described as appearing cancer-free, having a strong heart and in general good health.[219]
Upon clinching enough delegates for the nomination, McCain's focus shifted toward the general election, while Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton fought a prolonged battle for the Democratic nomination.[220] McCain introduced various policy proposals, and sought to improve his fundraising.[221][222] Cindy McCain, who accounts for most of the couple's wealth with an estimated net worth of $100 million,[66] made part of her tax returns public in May.[223] After facing criticism about lobbyists on staff, the McCain campaign issued new rules in May 2008 to avoid conflicts of interest, causing five top aides to leave.[224][225]
When Obama became the Democrats' presumptive nominee in early June, McCain proposed joint town hall meetings, but Obama instead requested more traditional debates for the fall.[226] In July, a staff shake-up put Steve Schmidt in full operational control of the McCain campaign.[227] Throughout these summer months, Obama typically led McCain in national polls by single-digit margins,[228] and also led in several key swing states.[229] McCain reprised his familiar underdog role, which was due at least in part to the overall challenges Republicans faced in the election year.[200][229] McCain accepted public financing for the general election campaign, and the restrictions that go with it, while criticizing his Democratic opponent for becoming the first major party candidate to opt out of such financing for the general election since the system was implemented in 1976.[230][231] The Republican's broad campaign theme focused on his experience and ability to lead, compared to Obama's.[232]
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was revealed as McCain's surprise choice for running mate on August 29, 2008.[233] McCain was only the second U.S. major-party presidential nominee to select a woman for running mate and the first Republican to do so; Palin would have become the first female Vice President of the United States if she had been elected. On September 3, 2008, McCain and Palin became the Republican Party's Presidential and Vice Presidential nominees, respectively, at the 2008 Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota. McCain surged ahead of Obama in national polls following the convention, as the Palin pick energized core Republican voters who had previously been wary of him.[234] However, by the campaign's own later admission, the rollout of Palin to the national media went poorly,[235] and voter reactions to Palin grew increasingly negative, especially among independents and other voters concerned about her qualifications.[236]
On September 24, McCain said he was suspending his campaign, called on Obama to join him, and proposed delaying the first of the general election debates with Obama, in order to work on the proposed U.S. financial system bailout before Congress, which was targeted at addressing the subprime mortgage crisis and liquidity crisis.[237][238] McCain's intervention helped to give dissatisfied House Republicans an opportunity to propose changes to the plan that was otherwise close to agreement.[239][240] After Obama declined McCain's suspension suggestion, McCain went ahead with the debate on September 26.[241] On October 1, McCain voted in favor of a revised $700 billion rescue plan.[242] Another debate was held on October 7; like the first one, polls afterward suggested that Obama had won it.[243] A final presidential debate occurred on October 15.[244] During and after it, McCain compared Obama's proposed policies to socialism and often invoked "Joe the Plumber" as a symbol of American small business dreams that would be thwarted by an Obama presidency.[245][246] McCain barred using the Jeremiah Wright controversy in ads against Obama,[247] but the campaign did frequently criticize Obama regarding his purported relationship with Bill Ayers.[248] Down the stretch, McCain was outspent by Obama by a four-to-one margin.[249]
The election took place on November 4, and Barack Obama was projected the winner at about 11:00 pm Eastern Standard Time; McCain delivered his concession speech in Phoenix, Arizona about twenty minutes later.[250] In it, he noted the historic and special significance of Obama becoming the nation's first African American president.[250] In the end, McCain won 173 electoral college votes to Obama's 365;[251] McCain failed to win most of the battleground states and lost some traditionally Republican ones.[252] McCain gained 46 percent of the nationwide popular vote, compared to Obama's 53 percent.[252]
Following his defeat, McCain returned to the Senate amid varying views about what role he might play there.[253] In mid-November 2008 he met with President-elect Obama, and the two discussed issues they had commonality on.[254] Around the same time, McCain indicated that he intended to run for re-election to his Senate seat in 2010.[255] As the inauguration neared, Obama consulted with McCain on a variety of matters, to an extent rarely seen between a president-elect and his defeated rival,[256] and President Obama's inauguration speech contained an allusion to McCain's theme of finding a purpose greater than oneself.[257]
Nevertheless, McCain emerged as a leader of the Republican opposition to the Obama economic stimulus package of 2009, saying it had too much spending for too little stimulative effect.[258] McCain also voted against Obama's Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor – saying that while undeniably qualified, "I do not believe that she shares my belief in judicial restraint"[259] – and by August 2009 was siding more often with his Republican Party on closely divided votes than ever before in his senatorial career.[260] McCain reasserted that the Afghanistan War was winnable[261] and criticized Obama for a slow process in deciding whether to send additional U.S. troops there.[262] McCain also harshly criticized Obama for scrapping construction of the U.S. missile defense complex in Poland, declined to enter negotiations over climate change legislation similar to what he had proposed in the past, and strongly opposed the Obama health care plan.[262][263] McCain led a successful filibuster of a measure that would allow repeal of the military's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy towards gays.[264] Factors involved in McCain's new direction included Senate staffers leaving, a renewed concern over national debt levels and the scope of federal government, a possible Republican primary challenge from conservatives in 2010, and McCain's campaign edge being slow to wear off.[262][263] As one longtime McCain advisor said, "A lot of people, including me, thought he might be the Republican building bridges to the Obama Administration. But he's been more like the guy blowing up the bridges."[262]
In early 2010, a primary challenge from radio talk show host and former U.S. Congressman J. D. Hayworth materialized in the 2010 U.S. Senate election in Arizona and drew support from some but not all elements of the Tea Party movement.[265][266] With Hayworth using the campaign slogan "The Consistent Conservative", McCain said (despite his own past use of the term),[266] "I never considered myself a maverick. I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities."[267] The primary challenge coincided with McCain reversing or muting his stance on some issues such as the bank bailouts, closing of the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, campaign finance restrictions, and gays in the military.[265] When the health care plan, now called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, passed Congress and became law in March 2010, McCain strongly opposed the landmark legislation not only on its merits but also on the way it had been handled in Congress. As a consequence, he warned that congressional Republicans would not be working with Democrats on anything else: "There will be no cooperation for the rest of the year. They have poisoned the well in what they've done and how they've done it."[268] McCain became a vocal defender of Arizona SB 1070, the April 2010 tough anti-illegal immigration state law that aroused national controversy, saying that the state had been forced to take action given the federal government's inability to control the border.[266][269] In the August 24 primary, McCain beat Hayworth by a 56 to 32 percent margin.[270] McCain proceeded to easily defeat Democratic city councilman Rodney Glassman in the general election.[271]
In the lame duck session of the 111th Congress, McCain voted for the compromise Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, but against the DREAM Act (which he had once sponsored) and the New START Treaty. Most prominently, he continued to lead the eventually losing fight against "Don't ask, don't tell" repeal, with his opposition .[272] In his opposition, he sometimes fell into anger or hostility on the Senate floor, and called its passage "a very sad day" that would compromise the battle effectiveness of the military.[272]
While control of the House of Representatives went over to the Republicans in the 112th Congress, the Senate stayed Democratic and McCain continued to be the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. As the 2011 Middle East and North Africa protests took center stage, McCain urged that embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak step down and thought the U.S. should push for democratic reforms in the region despite the associated risks of religious extremists gaining power.[273] McCain was an especially vocal supporter of the 2011 military intervention in Libya. In April of that year he visited the Anti-Gaddafi forces and National Transitional Council in Benghazi, the highest-ranking American to do so, and said that the rebel forces were "my heroes".[274] In August, McCain voted for the Budget Control Act of 2011 that resolved the U.S. debt ceiling crisis.[275] In November, McCain and Senator Carl Levin were leaders in efforts to codify in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 that terrorism suspects, no matter where captured, could be detained by the U.S. military and its tribunal system; following objections by civil libertarians, some Democrats, and the White House, McCain and Levin agreed to language making it clear that the bill would not pertain to U.S. citizens.[276][277]
In the 2012 Republican Party presidential primaries, McCain endorsed former 2008 rival Mitt Romney and campaigned for him, but compared the contest to a Greek tragedy due to its drawn-out nature with massive Super PAC-funded attack ads damaging all the contenders.[278]
Various advocacy groups have given Senator McCain scores or grades as to how well his votes align with the positions of each group.[280] The American Conservative Union awarded McCain a lifetime rating of 83 percent through 2010, while McCain has an average lifetime 12 percent "Liberal Quotient" from Americans for Democratic Action through 2010.[281]
The non-partisan National Journal rates a Senator's votes by what percentage of the Senate voted more liberally than he or she, and what percentage more conservatively, in three policy areas: economic, social, and foreign. For 2005–2006 (as reported in the 2008 Almanac of American Politics), McCain's average ratings were as follows: economic policy: 59 percent conservative and 41 percent liberal; social policy: 54 percent conservative / 38 percent liberal;, and foreign policy: 56 percent conservative / 43 percent liberal.[282]
Columnists such as Robert Robb and Matthew Continetti have used a formulation devised by William F. Buckley, Jr. to describe McCain as "conservative" but not "a conservative", meaning that while McCain usually tends towards conservative positions, he is not "anchored by the philosophical tenets of modern American conservatism."[283][284] Following his 2008 presidential election loss, McCain began adopting more orthodox conservative views; National Journal magazine rated McCain along with seven of his colleagues as the "most conservative" Senators for 2010[285] and he achieved his first 100 percent rating from the American Conservative Union for that year.[279]
From the late 1990s until 2008, McCain was a board member of Project Vote Smart (PVS) which was set up by Richard Kimball, his 1986 Senate opponent.[286] PVS provides non-partisan information about the political positions of McCain[287] and other candidates for political office. Additionally, McCain uses his Senate web site to describe his political positions.[288]
McCain is a signer of Americans for Tax Reform's Taxpayer Protection Pledge.[289]
John McCain's personal character has been a dominant feature of his public image.[290] This image includes the military service of both himself and his family,[291] his maverick political persona,[112] his temper,[292] his admitted problem of occasional ill-considered remarks,[89] and his close ties to his children from both his marriages.[22]
McCain's political appeal has been more nonpartisan and less ideological compared to many other national politicians.[293] His stature and reputation stem partly from his service in the Vietnam War.[294] He also carries physical vestiges of his war wounds, as well as his melanoma surgery.[295] When campaigning, he quips: "I am older than dirt and have more scars than Frankenstein."[296]
Writers often extolled McCain for his courage not just in war but in politics, and wrote sympathetically about him.[56][290][294][297] McCain's shift of political stances and attitudes during and especially after the 2008 presidential campaign, including his self-repudiation of the maverick label, left many writers expressing sadness and wondering what had happened to the McCain they thought they had known.[298][299][300][301]
In his own estimation, the Arizona senator is straightforward and direct, but impatient.[302] Other traits include a penchant for lucky charms,[303] a fondness for hiking,[304] and a sense of humor that has sometimes backfired spectacularly, as when he made a joke in 1998 about the Clintons widely deemed not fit to print in newspapers: "Do you know why Chelsea Clinton is so ugly? — Because Janet Reno is her father."[305][306] McCain subsequently apologized profusely,[307] and the Clinton White House accepted his apology.[308] McCain has not shied away from addressing his shortcomings, and apologizing for them.[89][309] He is known for sometimes being prickly[310] and hot-tempered[311] with Senate colleagues, but his relations with his own Senate staff have been more cordial, and have inspired loyalty towards him.[312][313]
McCain acknowledges having said intemperate things in years past,[314] though he also says that many stories have been exaggerated.[315] One psychoanalytic comparison suggests that McCain was not the first presidential candidate to have a temper,[316] and cultural critic Julia Keller argues that voters want leaders who are passionate, engaged, fiery, and feisty.[292] McCain has employed both profanity[317] and shouting on occasion, although such incidents have become less frequent over the years.[318][319] Senator Lieberman has made this observation: "It is not the kind of anger that is a loss of control. He is a very controlled person."[318] Senator Thad Cochran, who has known McCain for decades and has battled him over earmarks,[320][321] expressed concern about a McCain presidency: "He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."[318] Ultimately Cochran decided to support McCain for president, after it was clear he would win the nomination.[322]
All of John McCain's family members are on good terms with him,[22] and he has defended them against some of the negative consequences of his high-profile political lifestyle.[323][324] His family's military tradition extends to the latest generation: son John Sidney IV ("Jack") graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 2009, becoming the fourth generation John S. McCain to do so, and is a helicopter pilot; son James served two tours with the Marines in the Iraq War; and son Doug flew jets in the Navy.[22][325][326] His daughter Meghan became a blogging and Twittering presence in the debate about the future of the Republican Party following the 2008 elections, and showed some of his maverick tendencies.[327][328]
This article is part of a series about the life of John McCain |
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United States House of Representatives | ||
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Preceded by John Jacob Rhodes |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona's 1st congressional district 1983–1987 |
Succeeded by John Jacob Rhodes III |
United States Senate | ||
Preceded by Barry Goldwater |
United States Senator (Class 3) from Arizona 1987–present Served alongside: Dennis DeConcini, Jon Kyl |
Incumbent |
Preceded by Daniel Inouye D-Hawaii |
Chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee 1995–1997 |
Succeeded by Ben Nighthorse Campbell R-Colorado |
Preceded by Larry Pressler R-South Dakota |
Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee 1997–2001 |
Succeeded by Ernest Hollings D-South Carolina |
Preceded by Ernest Hollings D-South Carolina |
Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee 2003–2005 |
Succeeded by Ted Stevens R-Alaska |
Preceded by Ben Nighthorse Campbell R-Colorado |
Chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee 2005–2007 |
Succeeded by Byron Dorgan D-North Dakota |
Party political offices | ||
Preceded by George W. Bush |
Republican Party presidential candidate 2008 |
Succeeded by Mitt Romney Presumptive nominee |
Preceded by Barry Goldwater |
Republican Party nominee for United States Senator from Arizona (Class 3) 1986, 1992, 1998, 2004, 2010 |
Most recent |
United States order of precedence | ||
Preceded by Richard Shelby R-Alabama |
United States Senators by seniority 16th |
Succeeded by Harry Reid D-Nevada |
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Representatives to the 98th–112th United States Congresses from Arizona (ordered by seniority) | ||
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98th | Senate: B. Goldwater | D. DeConcini | House: M. Udall | E. Rudd | B. Stump | J. McCain | J. McNulty |
99th | Senate: B. Goldwater | D. DeConcini | House: M. Udall | E. Rudd | B. Stump | J. McCain | J. Kolbe |
100th | Senate: D. DeConcini | J. McCain | House: M. Udall | B. Stump | J. Kolbe | J. Kyl | J. J. Rhodes III |
101st | Senate: D. DeConcini | J. McCain | House: M. Udall | B. Stump | J. Kolbe | J. Kyl | J. J. Rhodes III |
102nd | Senate: D. DeConcini | J. McCain | House: B. Stump | J. Kolbe | J. Kyl | J. J. Rhodes III | E. Pastor |
103rd | Senate: D. DeConcini | J. McCain | House: B. Stump | J. Kolbe | J. Kyl | E. Pastor | S. Coppersmith | K. English |
104th | Senate: J. McCain | J. Kyl | House: B. Stump | J. Kolbe | E. Pastor | J. D. Hayworth | M. Salmon | J. Shadegg |
105th | Senate: J. McCain | J. Kyl | House: B. Stump | J. Kolbe | E. Pastor | J. D. Hayworth | M. Salmon | J. Shadegg |
106th | Senate: J. McCain | J. Kyl | House: B. Stump | J. Kolbe | E. Pastor | J. D. Hayworth | M. Salmon | J. Shadegg |
107th | Senate: J. McCain | J. Kyl | House: B. Stump | J. Kolbe | E. Pastor | J. D. Hayworth | J. Shadegg | J. Flake |
108th | Senate: J. McCain | J. Kyl | House: J. Kolbe | E. Pastor | J. D. Hayworth | J. Shadegg | J. Flake | T. Franks | R. Grijalva | R. Renzi |
109th | Senate: J. McCain | J. Kyl | House: J. Kolbe | E. Pastor | J. D. Hayworth | J. Shadegg | J. Flake | T. Franks | R. Grijalva | R. Renzi |
110th | Senate: J. McCain | J. Kyl | House: E. Pastor | J. Shadegg | J. Flake | T. Franks | R. Grijalva | R. Renzi | G. Giffords | H. Mitchell |
111th | Senate: J. McCain | J. Kyl | House: E. Pastor | J. Shadegg | J. Flake | T. Franks | R. Grijalva | G. Giffords | H. Mitchell | A. Kirkpatrick |
112th | Senate: J. McCain | J. Kyl | House: E. Pastor | J. Flake | T. Franks | R. Grijalva | G. Giffords | P. Gosar | B. Quayle | D. Schweikert |
Al Hunt | |
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Al Hunt checking his BlackBerry at the Verizon Center, February 3, 2007 |
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Born | December 4, 1942 |
Alma mater | Wake Forest University |
Occupation | executive editor, news anchor |
Notable credit(s) | Bloomberg News's Washington editor, anchor of Political Capital on Bloomberg Television |
Spouse | Judy Woodruff |
Children | three |
Albert R. Hunt Jr. (born December 4, 1942) is the executive Washington editor for Bloomberg News, a subsidiary of Bloomberg L.P. Hunt hosts the Sunday morning talk show Political Capital on Bloomberg Television, which airs on Friday night.
Contents |
Hunt graduated from The Haverford School in Haverford, Pennsylvania, in 1960. He attended Wake Forest University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in political science and worked for the Old Gold & Black. He is married to Judy Woodruff of PBS. He has three children, including a son born with severe spina bifida. He was first married to Margaret O'Toole of Pittsburgh.
Before graduating from Wake Forest University, Hunt worked for the Philadelphia Bulletin and the Winston-Salem Journal. In 1965, he became a reporter for The Wall Street Journal in New York, before transferring to its Boston bureau in 1967, then to the Washington, D.C., bureau in 1969.
Prior to joining Bloomberg News in January 2005, Hunt worked for the Wall Street Journal. During his 35 years in the newspaper’s Washington bureau, he was a congressional and national political reporter, a bureau chief and, most recently, executive Washington editor. For 11 years, Hunt wrote the weekly column, "Politics & People." Hunt also directed the paper's political polls for 20 years and served as president of the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund and a board member of Ottaway Newspapers Inc., a Dow Jones subsidiary.
Hunt has also served as a periodic panelist on NBC's Meet the Press and PBS' Washington Week in Review, as well as a political analyst on CBS Morning News, and a weekly panelist on CNN's Capital Gang. He was also a panelist on Evans, Novak, Hunt, & Shields. He is co-author of a series of books published by the American Enterprise Institute, including The American Elections of 1980, The American Elections of 1982 and The American Elections of 1984. In 1987, he co-authored Elections American Style for the Brookings Institution. In 2002, he contributed an essay about campaign finance reform for Caroline Kennedy's Profiles in Courage for Our Time.
In 1999, Hunt received the William Allen White Foundation's national citation, one of the highest honors in journalism. In 1995, he and his wife, then CNN anchor Judy Woodruff, received the Allen H. Neuharth Award for Excellence in Journalism from the University of South Dakota. In 1976, Hunt received a Raymond Clapper Award for Washington reporting.
Hunt is a member of the Wake Forest board of trustees; the board of the Children's Charities in Washington; and the advisory board of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. He teaches a course on the press and politics at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications.
On June 18, 2008, Hunt was one of 10 people chosen to remember journalist Tim Russert, who had died days before, at his memorial service at Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Barack Obama | |
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44th President of the United States | |
Incumbent | |
Assumed office January 20, 2009 |
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Vice President | Joe Biden |
Preceded by | George W. Bush |
United States Senator from Illinois |
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In office January 3, 2005 – November 16, 2008 |
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Preceded by | Peter Fitzgerald |
Succeeded by | Roland Burris |
Member of the Illinois Senate from the 13th District |
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In office January 8, 1997 – November 4, 2004 |
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Preceded by | Alice Palmer |
Succeeded by | Kwame Raoul |
Personal details | |
Born | Barack Hussein Obama II August 4, 1961 [1] Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.[2] |
Political party | Democratic |
Spouse(s) | Michelle Robinson (1992–present) |
Children | Malia (born 1998) Sasha (born 2001) |
Residence | White House (Official) Chicago, Illinois (Private) |
Alma mater | Occidental College Columbia University (B.A.) Harvard Law School (J.D.) |
Profession | Community organizer Lawyer Constitutional law professor Author |
Religion | Christianity[3] |
Awards | Nobel Peace Prize |
Signature | |
Website | barackobama.com |
This article is part of a series on Barack Obama |
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Barack Hussein Obama II (i/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. In January 2005, Obama was sworn in as a U.S. Senator in the state of Illinois. He would hold this office until November 2008, when he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.
Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004.
Following an unsuccessful bid against the Democratic incumbent for a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for the United States Senate in 2004. Several events brought him to national attention during the campaign, including his victory in the March 2004 Illinois Democratic primary for the Senate election and his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He won election to the U.S. Senate in Illinois in November 2004. His presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 presidential election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months later, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In April 2011, he announced that he would be running for re-election in 2012.
As president, Obama signed economic stimulus legislation in the form of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010. Other domestic policy initiatives include the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010, and the Budget Control Act of 2011. In May 2012, he became the first sitting U.S. president to openly support legalizing same-sex marriage. In foreign policy, he ended the war in Iraq, increased troop levels in Afghanistan, signed the New START arms control treaty with Russia, ordered U.S. involvement in the 2011 Libya military intervention, and ordered the military operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden.
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Obama was born on August 4, 1961, at Kapiʻolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital (now Kapiʻolani Medical Center for Women and Children) in Honolulu, Hawaii,[2][4][5] and is the first President to have been born in Hawaii.[6] His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was born in Wichita, Kansas, and was of mostly English ancestry,[7] along with Scottish, Irish, German, and Swiss.[8][9][10][11][12] His father, Barack Obama, Sr., was a Luo from Nyang’oma Kogelo, Nyanza Province, Kenya. Obama's parents met in 1960 in a Russian class at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where his father was a foreign student on scholarship.[13][14] The couple married on February 2, 1961,[15] separated when Obama Sr. went to Harvard University on scholarship, and divorced in 1964.[13] Obama Sr. remarried and returned to Kenya, visiting Barack in Hawaii only once, in 1971. He died in an automobile accident in 1982.[16]
After her divorce, Dunham married Indonesian Lolo Soetoro, who was attending college in Hawaii. When Suharto, a military leader in Soetoro's home country, came to power in 1967, all Indonesian students studying abroad were recalled, and the family moved to the Menteng neighborhood of Jakarta.[4][17] From ages six to ten, Obama attended local schools in Jakarta, including Besuki Public School and St. Francis of Assisi School.[18]
In 1971, Obama returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Armour Dunham, and with the aid of a scholarship attended Punahou School, a private college preparatory school, from fifth grade until his graduation from high school in 1979.[19] Obama's mother returned to Hawaii in 1972, remaining there until 1977 when she went back to Indonesia to work as an anthropological field worker. She finally returned to Hawaii in 1994 and lived there for one year before dying of ovarian cancer.[15][20]
Of his early childhood, Obama recalled, "That my father looked nothing like the people around me—that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk—barely registered in my mind."[14] He described his struggles as a young adult to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage.[21] Reflecting later on his years in Honolulu, Obama wrote: "The opportunity that Hawaii offered—to experience a variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect—became an integral part of my world view, and a basis for the values that I hold most dear."[22] Obama has also written and talked about using alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine during his teenage years to "push questions of who I was out of my mind."[23] At the 2008 Civil Forum on the Presidency, Obama described his high-school drug use as a great moral failure.[24]
Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles in 1979 to attend Occidental College. In February 1981, he made his first public speech, calling for Occidental to divest from South Africa in response to its policy of apartheid.[25] In mid-1981, Obama traveled to Indonesia to visit his mother and sister Maya, and visited the families of college friends in Pakistan and India for three weeks.[25] Later in 1981, he transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialty in international relations[26] and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1983. He worked for a year at the Business International Corporation,[27] then at the New York Public Interest Research Group.[28][29]
Two years after graduating, Obama was hired in Chicago as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale on Chicago's South Side. He worked there as a community organizer from June 1985 to May 1988.[29][30] He helped set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens.[31] Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute.[32] In mid-1988, he traveled for the first time in Europe for three weeks and then for five weeks in Kenya, where he met many of his paternal relatives for the first time.[33] He returned to Kenya in August 2006 for a visit to his father's birthplace, a village near Kisumu in rural western Kenya.[34]
In late 1988, Obama entered Harvard Law School. He was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year,[35] and president of the journal in his second year.[31][36] During his summers, he returned to Chicago, where he worked as an associate at the law firms of Sidley Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990.[37] After graduating with a J.D. magna cum laude[38] from Harvard in 1991, he returned to Chicago.[35] Obama's election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review gained national media attention[31][36] and led to a publishing contract and advance for a book about race relations,[39] which evolved into a personal memoir. The manuscript was published in mid-1995 as Dreams from My Father.[39]
In 1991, Obama accepted a two-year position as Visiting Law and Government Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School to work on his first book.[39][40] He then taught at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years—as a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996, and as a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004—teaching constitutional law.[41]
From April to October 1992, Obama directed Illinois's Project Vote, a voter registration campaign with ten staffers and seven hundred volunteer registrars; it achieved its goal of registering 150,000 of 400,000 unregistered African Americans in the state, leading Crain's Chicago Business to name Obama to its 1993 list of "40 under Forty" powers to be.[42] In 1993, he joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a 13-attorney law firm specializing in civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development, where he was an associate for three years from 1993 to 1996, then of counsel from 1996 to 2004. His law license became inactive in 2002.[43]
From 1994 to 2002, Obama served on the boards of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, which in 1985 had been the first foundation to fund the Developing Communities Project; and of the Joyce Foundation.[29] He served on the board of directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge from 1995 to 2002, as founding president and chairman of the board of directors from 1995 to 1999.[29]
Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, succeeding State Senator Alice Palmer as Senator from Illinois's 13th District, which at that time spanned Chicago South Side neighborhoods from Hyde Park – Kenwood south to South Shore and west to Chicago Lawn.[44] Once elected, Obama gained bipartisan support for legislation that reformed ethics and health care laws.[45] He sponsored a law that increased tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted increased subsidies for childcare.[46] In 2001, as co-chairman of the bipartisan Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, Obama supported Republican Governor Ryan's payday loan regulations and predatory mortgage lending regulations aimed at averting home foreclosures.[47]
Obama was reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998, defeating Republican Yesse Yehudah in the general election, and was reelected again in 2002.[48] In 2000, he lost a Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of Representatives to four-term incumbent Bobby Rush by a margin of two to one.[49]
In January 2003, Obama became chairman of the Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services Committee when Democrats, after a decade in the minority, regained a majority.[50] He sponsored and led unanimous, bipartisan passage of legislation to monitor racial profiling by requiring police to record the race of drivers they detained, and legislation making Illinois the first state to mandate videotaping of homicide interrogations.[46][51] During his 2004 general election campaign for U.S. Senate, police representatives credited Obama for his active engagement with police organizations in enacting death penalty reforms.[52] Obama resigned from the Illinois Senate in November 2004 following his election to the U.S. Senate.[53]
In May 2002, Obama commissioned a poll to assess his prospects in a 2004 U.S. Senate race; he created a campaign committee, began raising funds, and lined up political media consultant David Axelrod by August 2002. Obama formally announced his candidacy in January 2003.[54]
Obama was an early opponent of the George W. Bush administration's 2003 invasion of Iraq.[55] On October 2, 2002, the day President Bush and Congress agreed on the joint resolution authorizing the Iraq War,[56] Obama addressed the first high-profile Chicago anti-Iraq War rally,[57] and spoke out against the war.[58] He addressed another anti-war rally in March 2003 and told the crowd that "it's not too late" to stop the war.[59]
Decisions by Republican incumbent Peter Fitzgerald and his Democratic predecessor Carol Moseley Braun to not participate in the election resulted in wide-open Democratic and Republican primary contests involving fifteen candidates.[60] In the March 2004 primary election, Obama won in an unexpected landslide—which overnight made him a rising star within the national Democratic Party, started speculation about a presidential future, and led to the reissue of his memoir, Dreams from My Father.[61] In July 2004, Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention,[62] seen by 9.1 million viewers. His speech was well received and elevated his status within the Democratic Party.[63]
Obama's expected opponent in the general election, Republican primary winner Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race in June 2004.[64] Six weeks later, Alan Keyes accepted the Republican nomination to replace Ryan.[65] In the November 2004 general election, Obama won with 70 percent of the vote.[66]
Obama was sworn in as a senator on January 3, 2005,[67] becoming the only Senate member of the Congressional Black Caucus.[68] CQ Weekly characterized him as a "loyal Democrat" based on analysis of all Senate votes in 2005–2007. Obama announced on November 13, 2008, that he would resign his Senate seat on November 16, 2008, before the start of the lame-duck session, to focus on his transition period for the presidency.[69]
Obama cosponsored the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act.[70] He introduced two initiatives that bore his name: Lugar–Obama, which expanded the Nunn–Lugar cooperative threat reduction concept to conventional weapons;[71] and the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, which authorized the establishment of USAspending.gov, a web search engine on federal spending.[72] On June 3, 2008, Senator Obama—along with Senators Tom Carper, Tom Coburn, and John McCain—introduced follow-up legislation: Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008.[73]
Obama sponsored legislation that would have required nuclear plant owners to notify state and local authorities of radioactive leaks, but the bill failed to pass in the full Senate after being heavily modified in committee.[74] Regarding tort reform, Obama voted for the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which grants immunity from civil liability to telecommunications companies complicit with NSA warrantless wiretapping operations.[75]
In December 2006, President Bush signed into law the Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act, marking the first federal legislation to be enacted with Obama as its primary sponsor.[77] In January 2007, Obama and Senator Feingold introduced a corporate jet provision to the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, which was signed into law in September 2007.[78] Obama also introduced Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act, a bill to criminalize deceptive practices in federal elections,[79] and the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007,[80] neither of which was signed into law.
Later in 2007, Obama sponsored an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act to add safeguards for personality-disorder military discharges.[81] This amendment passed the full Senate in the spring of 2008.[82] He sponsored the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act supporting divestment of state pension funds from Iran's oil and gas industry, which has not passed committee; and co-sponsored legislation to reduce risks of nuclear terrorism.[83] Obama also sponsored a Senate amendment to the State Children's Health Insurance Program, providing one year of job protection for family members caring for soldiers with combat-related injuries.[84]
Obama held assignments on the Senate Committees for Foreign Relations, Environment and Public Works, and Veterans' Affairs through December 2006.[85] In January 2007, he left the Environment and Public Works committee and took additional assignments with Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.[86] He also became Chairman of the Senate's subcommittee on European Affairs.[87] As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. He met with Mahmoud Abbas before Abbas became President of the Palestinian National Authority, and gave a speech at the University of Nairobi in which he condemned corruption within the Kenyan government.[88]
On February 10, 2007, Obama announced his candidacy for President of the United States in front of the Old State Capitol building in Springfield, Illinois.[89][90] The choice of the announcement site was viewed as symbolic because it was also where Abraham Lincoln delivered his historic "House Divided" speech in 1858.[89][91] Obama emphasized issues of rapidly ending the Iraq War, increasing energy independence, and providing universal health care,[92] in a campaign that projected themes of "hope" and "change".[93]
A large number of candidates entered the Democratic Party presidential primaries. The field narrowed to a duel between Obama and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton after early contests, with the race remaining close throughout the primary process but with Obama gaining a steady lead in pledged delegates due to better long-range planning, superior fundraising, dominant organizing in caucus states, and better exploitation of delegate allocation rules.[94] On June 7, 2008, Clinton ended her campaign and endorsed Obama.[95]
On August 23, Obama announced his selection of Delaware Senator Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate.[96] Biden was selected from a field speculated to include former Indiana Governor and Senator Evan Bayh and Virginia Governor Tim Kaine.[97] At the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, Hillary Clinton called for her supporters to endorse Obama, and she and Bill Clinton gave convention speeches in his support.[98] Obama delivered his acceptance speech, not at the center where the Democratic National Convention was held, but at Invesco Field at Mile High to a crowd of over 75,000; the speech was viewed by over 38 million people worldwide.[99][100]
During both the primary process and the general election, Obama's campaign set numerous fundraising records, particularly in the quantity of small donations.[101] On June 19, 2008, Obama became the first major-party presidential candidate to turn down public financing in the general election since the system was created in 1976.[102]
McCain was nominated as the Republican candidate and the two engaged in three presidential debates in September and October 2008.[103] On November 4, Obama won the presidency with 365 electoral votes to 173 received by McCain.[104] Obama won 52.9 percent of the popular vote to McCain's 45.7 percent.[105] He became the first African American to be elected president.[106] Obama delivered his victory speech before hundreds of thousands of supporters in Chicago's Grant Park.[107]
On April 4, 2011, Obama announced his re-election campaign for 2012 in a video titled "It Begins with Us" that he posted on his website and filed election papers with the Federal Election Commission.[108][109][110] As the incumbent president he ran almost unopposed in the Democratic Party presidential primaries,[111] and on April 3, 2012, Obama had secured the 2778 convention delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination.[112]
The inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President, and Joe Biden as Vice President, took place on January 20, 2009. In his first few days in office, Obama issued executive orders and presidential memoranda directing the U.S. military to develop plans to withdraw troops from Iraq.[113] He ordered the closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp,[114] but Congress prevented the closure by refusing to appropriate the required funds.[115][116][117] Obama reduced the secrecy given to presidential records,[118] and changed procedures to promote disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.[119] He also reversed George W. Bush's ban on federal funding to foreign establishments that allow abortions.[120]
The first bill signed into law by Obama was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, relaxing the statute of limitations for equal-pay lawsuits.[121] Five days later, he signed the reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to cover an additional 4 million uninsured children.[122] In March 2009, Obama reversed a Bush-era policy which had limited funding of embryonic stem cell research and pledged to develop "strict guidelines" on the research.[123]
Obama appointed two women to serve on the Supreme Court in the first two years of his Presidency. Sonia Sotomayor, nominated by Obama on May 26, 2009, to replace retiring Associate Justice David Souter, was confirmed on August 6, 2009,[124] becoming the first Hispanic to be a Supreme Court Justice.[125] Elena Kagan, nominated by Obama on May 10, 2010, to replace retiring Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, was confirmed on August 5, 2010, bringing the number of women sitting simultaneously on the Court to three, for the first time in American history.[126]
On September 30, 2009, the Obama administration proposed new regulations on power plants, factories and oil refineries in an attempt to limit greenhouse gas emissions and to curb global warming.[127][128]
On October 8, 2009, Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a measure that expands the 1969 United States federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.[129][130]
On March 30, 2010, Obama signed the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, a reconciliation bill which ends the process of the federal government giving subsidies to private banks to give out federally insured loans, increases the Pell Grant scholarship award, and makes changes to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.[131][132]
In a major space policy speech in April 2010, Obama announced a planned change in direction at NASA, the U.S. space agency. He ended plans for a return of human spaceflight to the moon and development of the Ares I rocket, Ares V rocket and Constellation program, in favor of funding Earth science projects, a new rocket type, and research and development for an eventual manned mission to Mars, and ongoing missions to the International Space Station.[133]
On December 22, 2010, Obama signed the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010, fulfilling a key promise made in the 2008 presidential campaign[134][135] to end the Don't ask, don't tell policy of 1993 that had prevented gay and lesbian people from serving openly in the United States Armed Forces.[136]
President Obama's 2011 State of the Union Address focused on themes of education and innovation, stressing the importance of innovation economics to make the United States more competitive globally. He spoke of a five-year freeze in domestic spending, eliminating tax breaks for oil companies and reversing tax cuts for wealthy Americans, banning congressional earmarks, and reducing healthcare costs. He promised that the United States would have one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015 and would be 80% reliant on "clean" electricity.[137][138]
As a candidate for the Illinois state senate Obama had said in 1996 that he favored legalizing same-sex marriage;[139] but by the time of his run for the U.S. senate in 2004, he said that while he supported civil unions and domestic partnerships for same-sex partners, for strategic reasons he opposed same-sex marriages.[140] On May 9, 2012, shortly after the official launch of his campaign for re-election as president, Obama said his views had evolved, and he publicly affirmed his personal support for the legalization of same-sex marriage, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to do so.[141][142]
On February 17, 2009, Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a $787 billion economic stimulus package aimed at helping the economy recover from the deepening worldwide recession.[143] The act includes increased federal spending for health care, infrastructure, education, various tax breaks and incentives, and direct assistance to individuals,[144] which is being distributed over the course of several years.
In March, Obama's Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, took further steps to manage the financial crisis, including introducing the Public-Private Investment Program for Legacy Assets, which contains provisions for buying up to $2 trillion in depreciated real estate assets.[145] Obama intervened in the troubled automotive industry[146] in March 2009, renewing loans for General Motors and Chrysler to continue operations while reorganizing. Over the following months the White House set terms for both firms' bankruptcies, including the sale of Chrysler to Italian automaker Fiat[147] and a reorganization of GM giving the U.S. government a temporary 60 percent equity stake in the company, with the Canadian government shouldering a 12 percent stake.[148] In June 2009, dissatisfied with the pace of economic stimulus, Obama called on his cabinet to accelerate the investment.[149] He signed into law the Car Allowance Rebate System, known colloquially as "Cash for Clunkers", that temporarily boosted the economy.[150][151][152]
Although spending and loan guarantees from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department authorized by the Bush and Obama administrations totaled about $11.5 trillion, only $3 trillion had been spent by the end of November 2009.[153] However, Obama and the Congressional Budget Office predicted that the 2010 budget deficit will be $1.5 trillion or 10.6 percent of the nation's gross domestic product (GDP) compared to the 2009 deficit of $1.4 trillion or 9.9 percent of GDP.[154][155] For 2011, the administration predicted the deficit will slightly shrink to $1.34 trillion, while the 10-year deficit will increase to $8.53 trillion or 90 percent of GDP.[156] The most recent increase in the U.S. debt ceiling to $16.4 trillion was signed into law on January 26, 2012.[157] On August 2, 2011, after a lengthy congressional debate over whether to raise the nation's debt limit, Obama signed the bipartisan Budget Control Act of 2011. The legislation enforces limits on discretionary spending until 2021, establishes a procedure to increase the debt limit, creates a Congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to propose further deficit reduction with a stated goal of achieving at least $1.5 trillion in budgetary savings over 10 years, and establishes automatic procedures for reducing spending by as much as $1.2 trillion if legislation originating with the new joint select committee does not achieve such savings.[158] By passing the legislation, Congress was able to prevent an unprecedented U.S. government default on its obligations.[159]
The unemployment rate rose in 2009, reaching a peak in October at 10.1 percent and averaging 10.0 percent in the fourth quarter. Following a decrease to 9.7 percent in the first quarter of 2010, the unemployment rate fell to 9.6 percent in the second quarter, where it remained for the rest of the year.[162] Between February and December 2010, employment rose by 0.8 percent, which was less than the average of 1.9 percent experienced during comparable periods in the past four employment recoveries.[163] GDP growth returned in the third quarter of 2009, expanding at a rate of 1.6 percent, followed by a 5.0 percent increase in the fourth quarter.[164] Growth continued in 2010, posting an increase of 3.7 percent in the first quarter, with lesser gains throughout the rest of the year.[164] In July 2010, the Federal Reserve expressed that although economic activity continued to increase, its pace had slowed, and Chairman Ben Bernanke stated that the economic outlook was "unusually uncertain."[165] Overall, the economy expanded at a rate of 2.9 percent in 2010.[166]
The Congressional Budget Office and a broad range of economists credit Obama's stimulus plan for economic growth.[167][168] The CBO released a report stating that the stimulus bill increased employment by 1–2.1 million,[168][169][170][171] while conceding that "It is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package."[167] Although an April 2010 survey of members of the National Association for Business Economics showed an increase in job creation (over a similar January survey) for the first time in two years, 73 percent of 68 respondents believed that the stimulus bill has had no impact on employment.[172]
Within a month of the 2010 midterm elections, Obama announced a compromise deal with the Congressional Republican leadership that included a temporary, two-year extension of the 2001 and 2003 income tax rates, a one-year payroll tax reduction, continuation of unemployment benefits, and a new rate and exemption amount for estate taxes.[173] The compromise overcame opposition from some in both parties, and the resulting $858 billion Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 passed with bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress before Obama signed it on December 17, 2010.[174]
Obama called for Congress to pass legislation reforming health care in the United States, a key campaign promise and a top legislative goal.[175] He proposed an expansion of health insurance coverage to cover the uninsured, to cap premium increases, and to allow people to retain their coverage when they leave or change jobs. His proposal was to spend $900 billion over 10 years and include a government insurance plan, also known as the public option, to compete with the corporate insurance sector as a main component to lowering costs and improving quality of health care. It would also make it illegal for insurers to drop sick people or deny them coverage for pre-existing conditions, and require every American carry health coverage. The plan also includes medical spending cuts and taxes on insurance companies that offer expensive plans.[176][177]
On July 14, 2009, House Democratic leaders introduced a 1,017-page plan for overhauling the U.S. health care system, which Obama wanted Congress to approve by the end of 2009.[175] After much public debate during the Congressional summer recess of 2009, Obama delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress on September 9 where he addressed concerns over the proposals.[178] In March 2009, Obama lifted a ban on stem cell research.[179]
On November 7, 2009, a health care bill featuring the public option was passed in the House.[180][181] On December 24, 2009, the Senate passed its own bill—without a public option—on a party-line vote of 60–39.[182] On March 21, 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed by the Senate in December was passed in the House by a vote of 219 to 212.[183] Obama signed the bill into law on March 23, 2010.[184]
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act includes health-related provisions to take effect over four years, including expanding Medicaid eligibility for people making up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) starting in 2014,[185] subsidizing insurance premiums for people making up to 400 percent of the FPL ($88,000 for family of four in 2010) so their maximum "out-of-pocket" payment for annual premiums will be from 2 to 9.5 percent of income,[186][187] providing incentives for businesses to provide health care benefits, prohibiting denial of coverage and denial of claims based on pre-existing conditions, establishing health insurance exchanges, prohibiting annual coverage caps, and support for medical research. According to White House and Congressional Budget Office figures, the maximum share of income that enrollees would have to pay would vary depending on their income relative to the federal poverty level.[186][188]
The costs of these provisions are offset by taxes, fees, and cost-saving measures, such as new Medicare taxes for those in high-income brackets, taxes on indoor tanning, cuts to the Medicare Advantage program in favor of traditional Medicare, and fees on medical devices and pharmaceutical companies;[189] there is also a tax penalty for those who do not obtain health insurance, unless they are exempt due to low income or other reasons.[190] In March, 2010, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the net effect of both laws will be a reduction in the federal deficit by $143 billion over the first decade.[191]
In March 2012, the Supreme Court heard arguments by a coalition of 26 states maintaining that it is unconstitutional to force individuals to buy health insurance.[192]
On April 20, 2010, an explosion destroyed an offshore drilling rig at the Macondo Prospect in the Gulf of Mexico, causing a major sustained oil leak. The well's operator, BP, initiated a containment and cleanup plan, and began drilling two relief wells intended to stop the flow. Obama visited the Gulf on May 2 among visits by members of his cabinet, and again on May 28 and June 4. On May 22, he announced a federal investigation and formed a bipartisan commission to recommend new safety standards, after a review by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and concurrent Congressional hearings. On May 27, he announced a 6-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling permits and leases, pending regulatory review.[193] As multiple efforts by BP failed, some in the media and public expressed confusion and criticism over various aspects of the incident, and stated a desire for more involvement by Obama and the federal government.[194]
In February and March, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made separate overseas trips to announce a "new era" in U.S. foreign relations with Russia and Europe, using the terms "break" and "reset" to signal major changes from the policies of the preceding administration.[195] Obama attempted to reach out to Arab leaders by granting his first interview to an Arab cable TV network, Al Arabiya.[196]
On March 19, Obama continued his outreach to the Muslim world, releasing a New Year's video message to the people and government of Iran.[197] This attempt at outreach was rebuffed by the Iranian leadership.[198] In April, Obama gave a speech in Ankara, Turkey, which was well received by many Arab governments.[199] On June 4, 2009, Obama delivered a speech at Cairo University in Egypt calling for "a new beginning" in relations between the Islamic world and the United States and promoting Middle East peace.[200]
On June 26, 2009, in response to the Iranian government's actions towards protesters following Iran's 2009 presidential election, Obama said: "The violence perpetrated against them is outrageous. We see it and we condemn it."[201] On July 7, while in Moscow, he responded to a Vice President Biden comment on a possible Israeli military strike on Iran by saying: "We have said directly to the Israelis that it is important to try and resolve this in an international setting in a way that does not create major conflict in the Middle East."[202]
On September 24, 2009, Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to preside over a meeting of the United Nations Security Council.[203]
In March 2010, Obama took a public stance against plans by the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to continue building Jewish housing projects in predominantly Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.[204][205] During the same month, an agreement was reached with the administration of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with a new pact reducing the number of long-range nuclear weapons in the arsenals of both countries by about one-third.[206] The New START treaty was signed by Obama and Medvedev in April 2010, and was ratified by the U.S. Senate in December 2010.[207]
On December 6, 2011, he instructed agencies to consider LGBT rights when issuing financial aid to foreign countries.[208]
On February 27, 2009, Obama declared that combat operations in Iraq would end within 18 months. His remarks were made to a group of Marines preparing for deployment to Afghanistan. Obama said, "Let me say this as plainly as I can: By August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end."[209] The Obama administration scheduled the withdrawal of combat troops to be completed by August 2010, decreasing troops levels from 142,000 while leaving a transitional force of 35,000 to 50,000 in Iraq until the end of 2011. On August 19, 2010, the last United States combat brigade exited Iraq. The plan is to transition the mission of the remaining troops from combat operations to counter-terrorism and the training, equipping, and advising of Iraqi security forces.[210][211] On August 31, 2010, Obama announced that the United States combat mission in Iraq was over.[212] On October 21, 2011 President Obama announced that all U.S. troops would leave Iraq in time to be, "home for the holidays".[213]
Early in his presidency, Obama moved to bolster U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan.[214] He announced an increase to U.S. troop levels of 17,000 in February 2009 to "stabilize a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan", an area he said had not received the "strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires".[215] He replaced the military commander in Afghanistan, General David D. McKiernan, with former Special Forces commander Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal in May 2009, indicating that McChrystal's Special Forces experience would facilitate the use of counterinsurgency tactics in the war.[216] On December 1, 2009, Obama announced the deployment of an additional 30,000 military personnel to Afghanistan.[217] He also proposed to begin troop withdrawals 18 months from that date.[218][219] McChrystal was replaced by David Petraeus in June 2010, after McChrystal's staff criticized White House personnel in a magazine article.[220]
During the initial years of the Obama administration, the U.S. increased military cooperation with Israel, including a record number of U.S. troops participating in military exercises in the country, increased military aid, the re-establishment of the U.S.-Israeli Joint Political Military Group and the Defense Policy Advisory Group, and an increase in visits among high-level military officials of both countries, including Ehud Barak and Admiral Mike Mullen.[221]
In 2011, the United States vetoed a Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements, with the United States being the only nation to do so.[222] Obama supports the two-state solution to the Arab–Israeli conflict based on the 1967 borders with land swaps.[223]
In March 2011, as forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi advanced on rebels across Libya, calls for a no-fly zone came from around the world, including Europe, the Arab League, and a resolution[224] passed unanimously by the U.S. Senate.[225] In response to the unanimous passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 on March 17, Gaddafi who had previously vowed to "show no mercy" to the citizens of Benghazi[226]—announced an immediate cessation of military activities,[227] yet reports came in that his forces continued shelling Misrata. The next day, on Obama's orders, the U.S. military took a lead role in air strikes to destroy the Libyan government's air defense capabilities in order to protect civilians and enforce a no-fly-zone,[228] including the use of Tomahawk missiles, B-2 Spirits, and fighter jets.[229][230][231] Six days later, on March 25, by unanimous vote of all of its 28 members, NATO took over leadership of the effort, dubbed Operation Unified Protector.[232] Some Representatives[233] questioned whether Obama had the constitutional authority to order military action in addition to questioning its cost, structure and aftermath.[234][235]
Starting with information received in July 2010, intelligence developed by the CIA over the next several months determined what they believed to be the location of Osama bin Laden in a large compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a suburban area 35 miles from Islamabad.[236] CIA head Leon Panetta reported this intelligence to President Obama in March 2011.[236] Meeting with his national security advisers over the course of the next six weeks, Obama rejected a plan to bomb the compound, and authorized a "surgical raid" to be conducted by United States Navy SEALs.[236] The operation took place on May 1, 2011, resulting in the death of bin Laden and the seizure of papers and computer drives and disks from the compound.[237][238] Bin Laden's body was identified through DNA testing,[239] and buried at sea several hours later.[240] Within minutes of the President's announcement from Washington, DC, late in the evening on May 1, there were spontaneous celebrations around the country as crowds gathered outside the White House, and at New York City's Ground Zero and Times Square.[237][241] Reaction to the announcement was positive across party lines, including from former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush,[242] and from many countries around the world.[243]
Obama called the November 2, 2010 election, where the Democratic Party lost 63 seats in, and control of, the House of Representatives,[244] "humbling" and a "shellacking".[245] He said that the results came because not enough Americans had felt the effects of the economic recovery.[246]
Obama's family history, upbringing, and Ivy League education differ markedly from those of African American politicians who launched their careers in the 1960s through participation in the civil rights movement.[248] Obama is also not a descendant of American slaves.[249] Expressing puzzlement over questions about whether he is "black enough", Obama told an August 2007 meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists that "we're still locked in this notion that if you appeal to white folks then there must be something wrong".[250] Obama acknowledged his youthful image in an October 2007 campaign speech, saying: "I wouldn't be here if, time and again, the torch had not been passed to a new generation."[251]
Obama is frequently referred to as an exceptional orator.[252] During his pre-inauguration transition period and continuing into his presidency, Obama has delivered a series of weekly Internet video addresses.[253]
According to the Gallup Organization, Obama began his presidency with a 68 percent approval rating[254] before gradually declining for the rest of the year, and eventually bottoming out at 41 percent in August 2010,[255] a trend similar to Ronald Reagan's and Bill Clinton's first years in office.[256] He experienced a small poll bounce shortly after the death of Osama bin Laden, which lasted until around June 2011, when his approval numbers dropped back to where they were prior to the operation.[257][258][259] Polls show strong support for Obama in other countries,[260] and before being elected President he has met with prominent foreign figures including then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair,[261] Italy's Democratic Party leader and then Mayor of Rome Walter Veltroni,[262] and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.[263]
In a February 2009 poll conducted by Harris Interactive for France 24 and the International Herald Tribune, Obama was rated as the most respected world leader, as well as the most powerful.[264] In a similar poll conducted by Harris in May 2009, Obama was rated as the most popular world leader, as well as the one figure most people would pin their hopes on for pulling the world out of the economic downturn.[265][266]
Obama won Best Spoken Word Album Grammy Awards for abridged audiobook versions of Dreams from My Father in February 2006 and for The Audacity of Hope in February 2008.[267] His concession speech after the New Hampshire primary was set to music by independent artists as the music video "Yes We Can", which was viewed 10 million times on YouTube in its first month[268] and received a Daytime Emmy Award.[269] In December 2008, Time magazine named Obama as its Person of the Year for his historic candidacy and election, which it described as "the steady march of seemingly impossible accomplishments".[270]
On October 9, 2009, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that Obama had won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples".[271] Obama accepted this award in Oslo, Norway on December 10, 2009, with "deep gratitude and great humility."[272] The award drew a mixture of praise and criticism from world leaders and media figures.[273][274] Obama is the fourth U.S. president to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and the third to become a Nobel laureate while in office.
In a 2006 interview, Obama highlighted the diversity of his extended family: "It's like a little mini-United Nations", he said. "I've got relatives who look like Bernie Mac, and I've got relatives who look like Margaret Thatcher."[275] Obama has a half-sister with whom he was raised, Maya Soetoro-Ng, the daughter of his mother and her Indonesian second husband and seven half-siblings from his Kenyan father's family – six of them living.[276] Obama's mother was survived by her Kansas-born mother, Madelyn Dunham,[277] until her death on November 2, 2008,[278] two days before his election to the Presidency. Obama also has roots in Ireland; he met with his Irish cousins in Moneygall in May 2011.[279] In Dreams from My Father, Obama ties his mother's family history to possible Native American ancestors and distant relatives of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War.[280]
Obama was known as "Barry" in his youth, but asked to be addressed with his given name during his college years.[281] Besides his native English, Obama speaks Indonesian at the conversational level, having learned the language during his four childhood years in Jakarta.[282] He plays basketball, a sport he participated in as a member of his high school's varsity team.[283]
Obama is a well known supporter of the Chicago White Sox, and threw out the first pitch at the 2005 ALCS when he was still a senator.[284] In 2009, he threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the all star game while wearing a White Sox jacket.[285] He is also primarily a Chicago Bears fan in the NFL, but in his childhood and adolescence was a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and recently rooted for them ahead of their victory in Super Bowl XLIII 12 days after Obama took office as President.[286] In 2011, Obama invited the 1985 Bears to the White House; in 1986, the team did not attend due to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.[287]
In June 1989, Obama met Michelle Robinson when he was employed as a summer associate at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin.[288] Assigned for three months as Obama's adviser at the firm, Robinson joined him at group social functions, but declined his initial requests to date.[289] They began dating later that summer, became engaged in 1991, and were married on October 3, 1992.[290] The couple's first daughter, Malia Ann, was born on July 4, 1998,[291] followed by a second daughter, Natasha ("Sasha"), on June 10, 2001.[292] The Obama daughters attended the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. When they moved to Washington, D.C., in January 2009, the girls started at the private Sidwell Friends School.[293] The Obamas have a Portuguese Water Dog named Bo, a gift from Senator Ted Kennedy.[294]
Applying the proceeds of a book deal, the family moved in 2005 from a Hyde Park, Chicago condominium to a $1.6 million house in neighboring Kenwood, Chicago.[295] The purchase of an adjacent lot—and sale of part of it to Obama by the wife of developer, campaign donor and friend Tony Rezko—attracted media attention because of Rezko's subsequent indictment and conviction on political corruption charges that were unrelated to Obama.[296]
In December 2007, Money magazine estimated the Obama family's net worth at $1.3 million.[297] Their 2009 tax return showed a household income of $5.5 million—up from about $4.2 million in 2007 and $1.6 million in 2005—mostly from sales of his books.[298][299] On his 2010 income of $1.7 million, he gave 14 percent to non-profit organizations, including $131,000 to Fisher House Foundation, a charity assisting wounded veterans' families, allowing them to reside near where the veteran is receiving medical treatments.[300][301]
As per the latest financial disclosure, Obama may be worth as much as $10 million.[302]
Obama tried to quit smoking several times, sometimes using nicotine replacement therapy, and, in early 2010, Michelle Obama said that he had successfully quit smoking.[303][304]
Obama is a Christian whose religious views developed in his adult life. He wrote in The Audacity of Hope that he "was not raised in a religious household". He described his mother, raised by non-religious parents (whom Obama has specified elsewhere as "non-practicing Methodists and Baptists"), to be detached from religion, yet "in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I have ever known". He described his father as "raised a Muslim", but a "confirmed atheist" by the time his parents met, and his stepfather as "a man who saw religion as not particularly useful". Obama explained how, through working with black churches as a community organizer while in his twenties, he came to understand "the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change".[305]
In an interview with the evangelical periodical Christianity Today, Obama stated: "I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life."[306]
On September 27, 2010, Obama released a statement commenting on his religious views saying "I'm a Christian by choice. My family didn't—frankly, they weren't folks who went to church every week. And my mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew, but she didn't raise me in the church. So I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead—being my brothers' and sisters' keeper, treating others as they would treat me."[307][308]
Obama was baptized at the Trinity United Church of Christ, a black liberation church, in 1988, and was an active member there for two decades.[309] Obama resigned from Trinity during the Presidential campaign after controversial statements made by Rev. Jeremiah Wright became public.[310] After a prolonged effort to find a church to attend regularly in Washington, Obama announced in June 2009 that his primary place of worship would be the Evergreen Chapel at Camp David.[311]
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Offices and distinctions | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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John Kerry | |
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United States Senator from Massachusetts |
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Incumbent | |
Assumed office January 2, 1985 Serving with Scott Brown |
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Preceded by | Paul Tsongas |
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations | |
Incumbent | |
Assumed office January 6, 2009 |
|
Preceded by | Joe Biden |
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship | |
In office January 4, 2007 – January 3, 2009 |
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Preceded by | Olympia Snowe |
Succeeded by | Mary Landrieu |
In office June 6, 2001 – January 3, 2003 |
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Preceded by | Kit Bond |
Succeeded by | Olympia Snowe |
In office January 3, 2001 – January 20, 2001 |
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Preceded by | Kit Bond |
Succeeded by | Kit Bond |
Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs | |
In office August 2, 1991 – January 2, 1993 |
|
66th Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts | |
In office March 6, 1983 – January 2, 1985 |
|
Governor | Michael Dukakis |
Preceded by | Thomas P. O'Neill III |
Succeeded by | Evelyn Murphy (1987) |
Personal details | |
Born | John Forbes Kerry December 11, 1943 Aurora, Colorado |
Nationality | U.S. Citizen |
Spouse(s) | Julia Thorne (1970–88, divorced) Teresa Heinz (1995–present) |
Children | Alexandra Kerry Vanessa Kerry H. John Heinz IV (stepson) Andre Heinz (stepson) Christopher Heinz (stepson) |
Residence | Boston, Massachusetts |
Alma mater | Yale University (B.A.) Boston College (J.D.) |
Occupation | Attorney |
Religion | Roman Catholic |
Signature | |
Website | kerry.senate.gov |
Military service | |
Allegiance | United States of America |
Service/branch | United States Navy |
Years of service | 1966–1978 |
Rank | Lieutenant |
Unit | USS Gridley Coastal Squadron 1 |
Commands | PCF-44, PCF-94 |
Battles/wars | Vietnam War |
Awards | Silver Star Bronze Star Purple Heart (3) |
John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior United States Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to then President George W. Bush.
The son of an Army Air Corps serviceman, Kerry was born in Aurora, Colorado. He attended boarding school in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and went on to graduate from Yale University class of 1966, where he majored in political science. He enlisted in the Naval Reserve in 1966 and, during 1968-1969, served a four-month tour of duty in South Vietnam as officer-in-charge (OIC) of a Swift Boat. For that service he was awarded several combat medals that include the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts. After returning to the United States, Kerry joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War in which he served as a nationally recognized spokesperson and as an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam war. During that period, he appeared before the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs where he deemed United States war policy in Vietnam to be the cause of "war crimes".
After graduating from Boston College Law School, Kerry worked as an Assistant District Attorney and co-founded a private firm. He served as Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts under Michael Dukakis from 1983 to 1985, where he worked on an early forerunner to the national Clean Air Act. He won a tight Democratic primary in 1984 for the U.S. Senate and was sworn in the following January. On the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he led a series of hearings from 1987 to 1989 which were a precursor to the Iran–Contra affair. He was an early backer of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but became a strong opponent of the subsequent war.
Kerry based his 2004 presidential campaign on opposition to the Iraq War. He and his running mate Senator John Edwards lost by 34 electoral votes. Since then, he has established the Keeping America's Promise PAC. He became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2009, and in 2011 he was appointed to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.
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Kerry is the child of Richard Kerry (1915–2000), a Foreign Service Officer and an attorney for the Bureau of United Nations Affairs, and Rosemary Forbes Kerry (1913–2002), a World War II nurse and member of the wealthy Forbes family. He has three siblings: two sisters, Diana (born in 1947) and Margerie (aka Peggy; born in 1941), and a brother, Cameron (born in 1950), Cameron Kerry was picked to be President Barack Obama's general counsel of the Commerce Department.[1] One of Kerry's maternal great-great-grandfathers was Robert Charles Winthrop, the 22nd Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.[2]
Kerry was raised as a Roman Catholic by his Catholic father and Episcopalian mother.[3] As a child, Kerry served as an altar boy. Although the extended family enjoyed a great fortune, Kerry's parents themselves were upper-middle class; a wealthy great aunt paid for Kerry to attend elite schools in Europe and New England. Kerry spent his summers at the Forbes family estate in Brittany, and there, he enjoyed a more opulent lifestyle than he had previously known in Massachusetts.
It was discovered in 2003 by genealogist Felix Gundacker,[4] working with The Boston Globe, that Kerry's paternal grandparents, who had been born "Fritz Kohn" and "Ida Löwe" in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, changed their names to "Frederick and Ida Kerry" in 1900 and converted from Judaism to Roman Catholicism in 1901[5][6] or 1902.[7] Fritz' elder brother Otto had earlier, in 1887[6] or 1896,[4] also embraced Catholicism. The "Kerry" name, widely misinterpreted as indicative of Irish heritage, was reputedly selected arbitrarily: "According to family legend, Fritz and another family member opened an atlas at random and dropped a pencil on a map. It fell on County Kerry in Ireland, and thus a name was chosen."[5][7] Leaving their hometown Mödling, a suburb of Vienna where they had lived since 1896, Fred and Ida, together with their son Eric, emigrated to the United States in 1905, living at first in Chicago and eventually moving to Brookline, Massachusetts, by 1915.[5]
The village where Fritz Kohn was born in 1873 was at that time known as Bennisch and was a part of Silesia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but is today known as Horní Benešov in the Czech Republic.[6] After learning of his ancestral connection with their village, the mayor and citizens sent congratulatory correspondence to John Kerry with regard to his political pursuits.[6]
For a time, Fred Kerry was a prosperous and successful shoe merchant, and Ida and two of the children — Richard (who would become the father of John Kerry) and Mildred — were able to afford to travel to Europe in the autumn of 1921, returning on October 21.[5] A few weeks later, on November 15, Fred Kerry filed a will leaving everything to Ida and then, on November 23, walked into a washroom of the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston and committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with a handgun.[5] The suicide was front-page news in all of the Boston newspapers, reporting at the time that the motive was severe asthma and related health problems, but modern reports cite family sources saying that the motive was financial trouble: "He had made three fortunes and when he had lost the third fortune, he couldn't face it anymore", according to granddaughter Nancy Stockslager.[5]
John Kerry has said that although he knew his paternal grandfather had come from Austria, he did not know until informed by The Boston Globe on the basis of their genealogical research that Fred Kerry had changed his name from "Fritz Kohn" and had been born Jewish,[7] nor that his great-uncle and great-aunt, Ida Kerry's brother Otto and sister Jenni, died in Nazi concentration camps.[4]
On his mother's side, the Forbes name can be traced back to Thomas Dudley of the Dudley-Winthrop family who landed in Salem, Massachusetts, on June 14, 1630, with his daughter, poet Anne Dudley Bradstreet, and others aboard the Arbella.
Kerry is 6 ft 4 in (1.93 m) tall,[8] enjoys surfing and windsurfing, as well as ice hockey, hunting and playing bass guitar. According to an interview he gave to Rolling Stone magazine in 2004, Kerry's favorite album is Abbey Road and he is a fan of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, as well as of Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Buffett. He never liked heavy metal.[9] During his 2004 presidential campaign, Kerry used Bruce Springsteen's "No Surrender" as one of his campaign songs. Later he would adopt U2's "Beautiful Day" as his official campaign song.
Kerry is described by Sports Illustrated, among others, as an "avid cyclist",[10][11] primarily riding on a road bike. Prior to his Presidential bid, Kerry was known to have participated in several long-distance rides (centuries). Even during his many campaigns, he was reported to have visited bicycle stores in both his home state and elsewhere. His staff requested recumbent stationary bikes for his hotel rooms.[12]
Kerry appeared in a cameo as himself on the April 30, 1992, episode of the hit television sitcom Cheers, in the episode, "Bar Wars VI: This Time It's For Real."
In 2003, Kerry was diagnosed with and successfully treated for prostate cancer.[13]
Kerry was married to Julia Thorne in 1970, and they had two daughters together: Alexandra and Vanessa. Alexandra was born on September 5, 1973, days before Kerry began law school. A graduate of Milton Academy and Brown University, she received her M.F.A. in June 2004 from the AFI Conservatory. She is a documentary filmmaker. Vanessa was born on December 31, 1976. She is a graduate of Phillips Academy and Yale University, and attended Harvard Medical School and a master's program in health policy at the London School of Economics. Both daughters were active in their father's 2004 Presidential campaign.
In 1982 Thorne, who was suffering from severe depression, asked Kerry for a separation.[14] They were divorced on July 25, 1988, and the marriage was formally annulled in 1997. "After 14 years as a political wife, I associated politics only with anger, fear and loneliness" she wrote in A Change of Heart, her book about depression. Thorne later married Richard Charlesworth, an architect, and moved to Bozeman, Montana, where she became active in local environmental groups such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Thorne supported Kerry's 2004 presidential run. She died of cancer on April 27, 2006.
Kerry and his second wife, Teresa Simões-Ferreira Heinz, the widow of Pennsylvania Senator H. John Heinz III, a Republican, and former United Nations interpreter, were introduced to each other by John Heinz at an Earth Day rally in 1990. They did not meet again until after John Heinz's death, at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. They married on May 26, 1995, in Nantucket. John Kerry's stepsons – Teresa's three sons from her previous marriage – are H. John Heinz IV, André Heinz and Christopher Heinz, who married Alexandra DeRuyter Lewis on February 10, 2007.
The Forbes 400 survey estimated in 2004 that Teresa Heinz Kerry had a net worth of $750 million. However, estimates have frequently varied, ranging from around $165 million to as high as $3.2 billion, according to a study in the Los Angeles Times. Regardless of which figure is correct, Kerry is the wealthiest U.S. Senator. Kerry is wealthy in his own name, and is the beneficiary of at least four trusts inherited from Forbes family members, including his mother, who died in 2002. Forbes magazine (a major business magazine named for an unrelated Forbes family) estimated that if elected, Kerry would have been the third-richest U.S. President in history when adjusted for inflation.[15] This assessment was based on the couple's combined assets, but Kerry and Heinz signed a prenuptial agreement that keeps their assets separate.[16] Kerry's financial disclosure form for 2002 put his personal assets in the range of $409,000 to $1.8 million, with additional assets held jointly by Kerry and his wife in the range of $300,000 to $600,000.[17]
A Roman Catholic, Kerry was said to carry a rosary, a prayer book, and a St. Christopher medal (the patron saint of travelers) when he campaigned. However, while Kerry is personally against abortion, he supports a woman's legal right to have one, which puts him at odds with the Catholic Church. Similar tension exists between the Church and several other Catholic national political figures, including Rudy Giuliani, George Pataki, Nancy Pelosi, Tom Ridge, Tom Vilsack (one of his possible vice-presidential choices in the 2004 election), Joe Biden, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Discussing his faith, Kerry said, "I thought of being a priest. I was very religious while at school in Switzerland. I was an altar boy and prayed all the time. I was very centered around the Mass and the church." He also said that the Letters of Paul moved him the most, stating that they taught him to "not feel sorry for myself."[18]
According to Christianity Today, Kerry remarks about his faith:
I'm a Catholic and I practice, but at the same time I have an open-mindedness to many other expressions of spirituality that come through different religions. ... I've spent some time reading and thinking about [religion] and trying to study it, and I've arrived at not so much a sense of the differences, but a sense of the similarities in so many ways; the value-system roots and linkages between the Torah, the Qur'an, and the Bible and the fundamental story that runs through all of this, that ... really connects all of us.[19]
Kerry was born in Aurora, Colorado, at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital on December 11, 1943; his father was a member of the Army Air Corps at the time.[20]
Kerry has said that his first memory is from when he was three years old, of holding his crying mother's hand while they walked through the broken glass and rubble of her childhood home in Saint-Briac, France. This visit came two and a half years after the United States had liberated Saint-Briac from the Nazis on August 14, 1944. The family estate, known as Les Essarts, had been occupied and used as a Nazi headquarters during the war. When the Germans abandoned it, they bombed Les Essarts and burned it down.
The sprawling estate was rebuilt in 1954. Kerry and his parents would often spend the summer holidays there. During these summers, he became good friends with his first cousin Brice Lalonde, a future Socialist and Green Party leader in France, who ran for president of France in 1981.
While his father was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway, Kerry was sent to Massachusetts to attend boarding school. In 1957, he attended the Fessenden School in West Newton, a village in Newton, Massachusetts. The Fessenden School is the oldest all-boys independent junior boarding school in the country. There he met and became friends with Richard Pershing, grandson of First World War U.S. Gen. John Joseph Pershing. Former Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy also attended the Fessenden School, although several years prior to Kerry.
The following year, he enrolled at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, and graduated from there in 1962. Kerry learned skills in public speaking and began developing an interest in politics. In his free time, he enjoyed ice hockey and lacrosse, which he played on teams captained by classmate Robert S. Mueller III, the current director of the FBI. Kerry also played bass guitar for the prep school's band The Electras, which produced an album in 1961. Only five hundred copies were made, one of which was auctioned on eBay in 2004 for $2,551.
In 1959, Kerry founded the John Winant Society at St. Paul's to debate the issues of the day; the Society still exists there.[21][22] In November 1960, Kerry gave his first political speech, in favor of John F. Kennedy's election to the White House.
In 1962, Kerry was a volunteer for Ted Kennedy's first Senatorial campaign. The summer after his graduation from St. Paul's, he dated Janet Jennings Auchincloss, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy's half-sister. Auchincloss invited Kerry to visit her family's estate, Hammersmith Farm, in Rhode Island, where Kerry met President John F. Kennedy for the first time.
According to Kerry, when he told the president he was about to enter Yale University, Kennedy grimaced, because he had gone to rival Harvard University. Kerry later recalled, "He smiled at me, laughed and said: 'Oh, don't worry about it. You know I'm a Yale man too now.'" According to Kerry "The President uttered that famous comment about how he had the best of two worlds now: a Harvard education and Yale degree", in reference to the honorary degree he had received from Yale a few months earlier. Later that day, a White House photographer snapped a photo of Kerry sailing with Kennedy and his family in Narragansett Bay.
In 1962, Kerry entered Yale University, majoring in political science. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1966. Kerry played on the soccer, hockey, lacrosse and fencing teams; in addition, he took flying lessons.[22]
In his sophomore year, Kerry became the Chairman of the Liberal Party of the Yale Political Union, and a year later he served as President of the Union. Amongst his influential teachers in this period was Professor H. Bradford Westerfield, who was himself a former President of the Political Union.[23] His involvement with the Political Union gave him an opportunity to be involved with important issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and Kennedy's New Frontier program. He was also a member of the secretive Skull and Bones Society. He also traveled to Switzerland[24] through AIESEC Yale.[25][26]
Under the guidance of the speaking coach and history professor Rollin Osterweis, Kerry won many debates against other college students from across the nation.[27] In March 1965, as the Vietnam War escalated, he won the Ten Eyck prize as the best orator in the junior class for a speech that was critical of U.S. foreign policy. In the speech he said, "It is the spectre of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism and thus, it is self-defeating."[28]
Kerry, viewed as a capable speaker, was chosen to give the class oration at graduation. His speech was a broad criticism of American foreign policy, including the Vietnam War, in which he would soon participate.
On February 18, 1966, Kerry enlisted in the Naval Reserve.[29] He began his active duty military service on August 19, 1966. After completing sixteen weeks of Officer Candidate School at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island, Kerry received his officer's commission on December 16, 1966. During the 2004 election, Kerry posted his military records at his website, and permitted reporters to inspect his medical records. In 2005, Kerry released his military and medical records to the representatives of three news organizations, but has not authorized full public access to those records.[30][31]
Kerry's first tour of duty was as an ensign on the guided missile frigate USS Gridley in 1968. The executive officer of the Gridley described the deployment: "We deployed from San Diego to the Vietnam theatre in early 1968 after only a six-month turnaround, and spent most of a four month deployment on rescue station in the Gulf of Tonkin, standing by to pick up downed aviators."
During his tour on the Gridley, Kerry requested duty in Vietnam, listing as his first preference a position as the commander of a Fast Patrol Craft (PCF), also known as a "Swift boat."[32] These 50-foot (15 m) boats have aluminum hulls and have little or no armor, but are heavily armed and rely on speed. "I didn't really want to get involved in the war", Kerry said in a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. "When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing."[33] However, his second choice of billet was on a river patrol boat, or "PBR", which at the time was serving a more dangerous duty on the rivers of Vietnam.[32]
On June 16, 1968, Kerry was promoted to the rank of lieutenant, junior grade. On June 20, 1968, he left the Gridley for Swift boat training at the Naval Amphibious Base in Coronado.
On November 17, 1968, Kerry reported for duty at Coastal Squadron 1 in Cam Ranh Bay in South Vietnam. In his role as an officer in charge of Swift boats, Kerry led five-man crews on a number of patrols into enemy-controlled areas. His first command was Swift boat PCF-44, from December 6, 1968 to January 21, 1969, when the crew was disbanded. They were based at Coastal Division 13 at Cat Lo from December 13, 1968, to January 6, 1969. Otherwise, they were stationed at Coastal Division 11 at An Thoi. On January 30, 1969, Kerry took charge of PCF-94 and its crew, which he led until he departed An Thoi on March 26, 1969, and subsequently the crew was disbanded.[34]
On January 22, 1969, Kerry and several other officers had a meeting in Saigon with Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, the commander of U.S. Naval forces in Vietnam, and U.S. Army General Creighton Abrams, the overall commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam. Kerry and the other officers reported that the "free-fire zone" policy was alienating the Vietnamese and that the Swift boats' actions were not accomplishing their ostensible goal of interdicting Viet Cong supply lines. According to his biographer, Douglas Brinkley, Kerry and the other visiting officers felt their concerns were dismissed with what amounted to a pep talk (Tour of Duty, pp. 254–261).
During the night of December 2, 1968 and early morning of December 3, 1968, Kerry was in charge of a small boat operating near a peninsula north of Cam Ranh Bay together with a Swift boat (PCF-60). According to Kerry and the two crewmen who accompanied him that night, Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis, they surprised a group of men unloading sampans at a river crossing, who began running and failed to obey an order to stop. As the men fled, Kerry and his crew opened fire on the sampans and destroyed them, then rapidly left. During this encounter, Kerry received a shrapnel wound in the left arm above the elbow. It was for this injury that Kerry received his first Purple Heart.[35]
Kerry received his second Purple Heart for a wound received in action on the Bo De River on February 20, 1969. The plan had been for the Swift boats to be accompanied by support helicopters. On the way up the Bo De, however, the helicopters were attacked. They returned to their base to refuel and were unable to return to the mission for several hours.
As the Swift boats reached the Cua Lon River, Kerry's boat was hit by a RPG round, and a piece of shrapnel hit Kerry's left leg, wounding him. Thereafter, they had no more trouble, and reached the Gulf of Thailand safely. Kerry still has shrapnel in his left thigh because the doctors tending to him decided to remove the damaged tissue and close the wound with sutures rather than make a wide opening to remove the shrapnel.[36] Kerry received his second Purple Heart for this injury, but like several others wounded earlier that day, he did not lose any time off from duty.[37][38]
Eight days later, on February 28, 1969, came the events for which Kerry was awarded his Silver Star. On this occasion, Kerry was in tactical command of his Swift boat and two others in an eight boat formation. Their mission on the Duong Keo river included bringing a demolition team and dozens of South Vietnamese Marines to destroy enemy sampans, structures and bunkers as described in the story The Death Of PCF 43.[39] Running into an ambush, Kerry "directed the boats to turn to the beach and charge the Viet Cong positions" and he "expertly directed" his boat's fire and coordinated the deployment of the South Vietnamese troops, according to the original medal citation (signed by Admiral Zumwalt). Going a short distance farther, Kerry's boat was the target of an RPG round; as the boat beached at the site, a VC with a rocket launcher jumped and ran from a spider hole. While the boat's gunner opened fire, wounding the VC on the leg, and while the other boats approached and offered cover fire, Kerry jumped from the boat and chased the VC and killed him, capturing a loaded rocket launcher.[40][41][41]
Kerry's commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander George Elliott, joked to Douglas Brinkley in 2003 that he didn't know whether to court-martial Kerry for beaching the boat without orders or give him a medal for saving the crew. Elliott recommended Kerry for the Silver Star, and Zumwalt flew into An Thoi to personally award medals to Kerry and the rest of the sailors involved in the mission. The Navy's account of Kerry's actions is presented in the original medal citation signed by Zumwalt. The engagement was documented in an after-action report, a press release written on March 1, 1969, and a historical summary dated March 17, 1969.[42]
On March 13, 1969, five Swift boats were returning to base together on the Bay Hap river from their missions that day, after a firefight earlier in the day (during which time Kerry received a slight shrapnel wound in the buttocks from blowing up a rice bunker), and debarking some but not all of the passengers at a small village. They approached a fishing weir (a series of poles across the river for hanging nets), so that one group of boats went around left, hugging the shore, and a group with Kerry's 94 boat went around right along the shoreline. A mine was detonated directly beneath the lead boat, PCF-3, as it crossed the weir to the left, lifting PCF-3 completely into the air.[43]
James Rassmann, a Green Beret advisor who was aboard PCF-94, was knocked overboard when, according to witnesses and the documentation of the event, a mine or rocket exploded close to the boat. According to the documentation for the event, Kerry's arm was injured when he was thrown against a bulkhead during the explosion. PCF 94 returned to the scene and Kerry rescued Rassmann from the water. Kerry received the Bronze Star for his actions during this incident; he also received his third Purple Heart.[44]
After the crew of PCF-3 had been rescued, and the most seriously wounded sailors evacuated by two of the PCFs, PCF 94 and another boat remained behind and helped salvage the stricken boat together with a damage-control party that had been immediately dispatched to the scene.
As the presidential campaign of 2004 developed, approximately 200 Vietnam veterans formed the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT), subsequently renamed Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, which held press conferences, ran ads and endorsed a book questioning Kerry's service record and his military awards. The group included several members of Kerry's unit, such as Larry Thurlow, who commanded a swift boat alongside of Kerry's,[45] and Stephen Gardner, who served on Kerry's boat.[46]
After Kerry's third qualifying wound, he was entitled per Navy regulations to re-assignment away from combat duties. Navy records show that Kerry's preferred choice for re-assignment was as an aide in Boston, New York or Washington, D.C.[47]
On March 26, 1969, after a final patrol the night before, Kerry was transferred to Cam Ranh Bay to await his orders. He was there for five or six days and left Vietnam in early April. On April 11, 1969, he reported to the Brooklyn-based Atlantic Military Sea Transportation Service, where he would remain on active duty for the following year as a personal aide to an officer, Rear Admiral Walter Schlech. On January 1, 1970 Kerry was temporarily promoted to full Lieutenant.[48] Kerry had agreed to an extension of his active duty obligation from December 1969 to August 1970 in order to perform Swift Boat duty,[49][50] but in January, 1970, he requested early discharge in order to run for Congress the following fall. He was discharged from active duty on March 1, 1970.
John Kerry was on active duty in the United States Navy from August 1966 until January 1970. He continued to serve in the Naval Reserve until February 1978. Kerry lost at least five friends in the war including Yale classmate Richard Pershing, who was killed in action on February 17, 1968.
After returning to the United States, Kerry joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Then numbering about 20,000,[51] VVAW was considered by some (including the administration of President Richard Nixon) to be an effective, if controversial, component of the antiwar movement.[52]
On April 22, 1971, Kerry became the first Vietnam veteran to testify before Congress about the war, when he appeared before a Senate committee hearing on proposals relating to ending the war. He was still a member of the United States Navy Reserve, holding the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade. Wearing green fatigues and service ribbons, he spoke for nearly two hours with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in what has been named the Fulbright Hearings, after the Chairman of the proceedings, Senator J.W. Fulbright. Kerry began with a prepared speech, in which he presented the conclusions of the Winter Soldier Investigation, and then went on to address larger policy issues.
The day after this testimony, Kerry participated in a demonstration with thousands of other veterans in which he and other veterans threw their medals and ribbons over a fence erected at the front steps of the United States Capitol building to dramatize their opposition to the war. Jack Smith, a Marine, read a statement explaining why the veterans were returning their military awards to the government. For more than two hours, almost 1000 angry veterans tossed their medals, ribbons, hats, jackets, and military papers over the fence. Each veteran gave his or her name, hometown, branch of service and a statement. Kerry threw some of his decorations as well as some given to him by other veterans to throw. As Kerry threw his decorations over the fence, his statement was: "I'm not doing this for any violent reasons, but for peace and justice, and to try and make this country wake up once and for all."[53] The documentary film Sir! No Sir! includes archival footage of Kerry at the demonstration: he is one of several young men seen throwing things over the fence.
Because Kerry was a decorated veteran who took a stand against the government's official position, he was frequently interviewed by broadcast and print media. He was able to use these occasions to bring the themes of his Senate testimony to a wider audience.
For example, Kerry appeared more than once on The Dick Cavett Show on ABC television. On one Cavett program (June 30, 1971), in debating John O'Neill, Kerry argued that some of the policies instituted by the U.S. military leaders in Vietnam, such as free-fire zones and burning noncombatants' houses, were contrary to the laws of war. In the Washington Star newspaper (June 6, 1971), he recounted how he and other Swift boat officers had become disillusioned by the contrast between what the leaders told them and what they saw: "That's when I realized I could never remain silent about the realities of the war in Vietnam."
On NBC's Meet The Press in 1971, Kerry was asked whether he had personally committed atrocities in Vietnam. He responded:
“ | There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50 calibre machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare, all of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this is ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals. | ” |
Kerry's prominence also made him a frequent leader and spokesman at antiwar events around the country in 1971. One of particular note was Operation POW, organized by the VVAW in Massachusetts. The protest got its name from the group's concern that Americans were prisoners of the Vietnam War, as well as to honor American POWs held captive by North Vietnam.
The event sought to tie antiwar activism to patriotic themes. Over the Memorial Day weekend, veterans and other participants marched from Concord to a rally on Boston Common. The plan was to invoke the spirit of the American Revolution and Paul Revere by spending successive nights at the sites of the Battle of Lexington and Concord and the Battle of Bunker Hill, culminating in a Memorial Day rally with a public reading of the Declaration of Independence.
The second night of the march, May 29, 1971, was the occasion for Kerry's only arrest, when the participants tried to camp on the village green in Lexington. At 2:30 a.m. on May 30, 1971, local and state police awoke and arrested 441 demonstrators, including Kerry, for trespassing. All were given the Miranda Warning and were hauled away on school buses to spend the night at the Lexington Public Works Garage. Kerry and the other protesters later paid a $5 fine, and were released. The mass arrests caused a community backlash and ended up giving positive coverage to the VVAW.[54][55][56]
Kerry eventually quit the organization over differences with its more radical leaders and members. Kerry has been criticized during his political campaigns about his antiwar activities with VVAW, inspiring the widely-used political pejorative "swiftboating."
In February 1972, after Kerry previously passed on an opportunity to run in another district, his wife, Julia bought a house in Worcester. Residence there would have required Kerry to run for Congress against an incumbent Democrat, Harold D. Donohue. Instead however, the couple rented an apartment in Lowell. The incumbent in that district, F. Bradford Morse, was a Republican who was thought to be retiring.
Counting Kerry, the Democratic primary race in 1972 had 10 candidates. One of these was State Representative Anthony R. DiFruscia of Lawrence. Both Kerry's and DiFuscia's campaign HQs were in the same building. On the eve of the September primary, Kerry's younger brother Cameron and campaign field director Thomas J. Vallely, both then 22 years old, were found by police in the basement of this building, where the telephone lines were located. They were arrested and charged with "breaking and entering with the intent to commit grand larceny", but the case was dismissed about a year later. At the time of the incident, DiFruscia alleged that they were trying to disrupt his get-out-the vote efforts. Vallely and Cameron Kerry maintained that they were only checking their own telephone lines because they had received an anonymous call warning that the Kerry lines would be cut.[57]
Although Kerry's campaign was hurt by the election-day report of the arrest, he still won the primary, narrowly beating state Representative Paul J. Sheehy. DiFruscia placed third. Kerry lost in Lawrence and Lowell, his chief opponents' bases, but placed first in 18 of the district's 22 towns.
In the general election, Kerry was initially favored to defeat the Republican candidate, former state Representative Paul W. Cronin, and an independent, Roger P. Durkin. A major obstacle, however, was the district's leading newspaper, the conservative leaning Sun. The paper editorialized against him. It also ran critical news stories about his out-of-state contributions and his "carpetbagging", because he had moved into the district only in April. Subsequently released "Watergate" Oval Office tape recordings of the Nixon White House showed that defeating Kerry's candidacy had attracted the personal attention of President Nixon.[58]
The final blow came when, four days before the election, Durkin withdrew in favor of Cronin. Cronin won the election, becoming the only Republican to be elected to Congress that November in a district carried by Democratic Presidential nominee George McGovern.
After Kerry's 1972 defeat, he and his wife bought a house in Lowell. He spent some time working as a fundraiser for the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE), an international humanitarian organization. In September 1973, he entered Boston College Law School. In July 1974, while attending law school, Kerry was named executive director of Mass Action, a Massachusetts advocacy association.
He received his Juris Doctor (J.D.) from Boston College in 1976. While in law school he had been a student prosecutor in the office of the District Attorney of Middlesex County, John J. Droney. After passing the bar exam and being admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1976, he went to work in that office as a full-time prosecutor.
In January 1977, Droney promoted him to First Assistant District Attorney. In that position, Kerry had dual roles. First, he tried cases, winning convictions in a high-profile rape case and a murder. Second, he played a role in administering the office of the district attorney by initiating the creation of special white-collar and organized crime units, creating programs to address the problems of rape and other crime victims and of witnesses, and managing trial calendars to reflect case priorities. It was in this role in 1978 that Kerry announced an investigation into possible criminal charges against then Senator Edward Brooke, regarding "misstatements" in his first divorce trial.[59]
In 1979, Kerry resigned from the District Attorney's office to set up a private law firm with another former prosecutor. And, although his private law practice was a success, Kerry was still interested in public office. He re-entered electoral politics by running for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts and won a narrow victory in the 1982 Democratic primary. The ticket, with Michael Dukakis as the gubernatorial candidate, won the general election without difficulty.
The position of Lieutenant Governor carried few inherent responsibilities. Dukakis, however, delegated additional matters to Kerry. In particular, Kerry's interest in environmental protection led him to become heavily involved in the issue of acid rain. His work contributed to a National Governors Association resolution in 1984 that was a precursor to the 1990 amendments to the federal Clean Air Act.
During his campaign, Kerry had argued that nuclear evacuation planning was "a sham intended to deceive Americans into believing they could survive a nuclear war".
The junior U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, Paul Tsongas, announced in 1984 that he would be stepping down for health reasons. Kerry decided to run for the seat. As in his 1982 race for Lieutenant Governor, he did not receive the endorsement of the party regulars at the state Democratic convention. Congressman James Shannon (a favorite of House Speaker Tip O'Neill) was the early favorite to win the nomination, and he "won broad establishment support and led in early polling."[60] Again as in 1982, however, Kerry prevailed in a close primary. In his campaign, he promised to mix liberalism with tight budget controls. As the Democratic candidate, he was elected to the Senate despite a nationwide landslide for the re-election of Republican president Ronald Reagan, for whom Massachusetts voted by a narrow margin. In his acceptance speech, Kerry asserted that his win meant that the people of Massachusetts "emphatically reject the politics of selfishness and the notion that women must be treated as second-class citizens." Kerry was sworn in as a U.S. Senator in January 1985.
On April 18, 1985, a few months after taking his Senate seat, Kerry and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa traveled to Nicaragua and met the country's president, Daniel Ortega. Though Ortega was democratically elected, the trip was criticized because Ortega and his leftist Sandinista government had strong ties to Cuba and the USSR. The Sandinista government was opposed by the right-wing CIA-backed rebels known as the Contras. While in Nicaragua, Kerry and Harkin talked to people on both sides of the conflict. Through the senators, Ortega offered a cease-fire agreement in exchange for the US dropping support of the Contras. The offer was denounced by the Reagan administration as a "propaganda initiative" designed to influence a House vote on a $14 million Contra aid package, but Kerry said "I am willing ... to take the risk in the effort to put to test the good faith of the Sandinistas." The House voted down the Contra aid, but Ortega flew to Moscow to accept a $200 million loan the next day, which in part prompted the House to pass a larger $27 million aid package six weeks later.[61]
In April 1986, Kerry and Senator Christopher Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut, proposed that hearings be conducted by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee regarding charges of Contra involvement in cocaine and marijuana trafficking. Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, the Republican chairman of the committee, agreed to conduct the hearings.
Meanwhile, Kerry's staff began their own investigations and, on October 14, issued a report that exposed illegal activities on the part of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who had set up a private network involving the National Security Council and the CIA to deliver military equipment to right-wing Nicaraguan rebels (Contras). In effect, North and certain members of the President's administration were accused by Kerry's report of illegally funding and supplying armed militants without the authorization of Congress. Kerry's staff investigation, based on a year-long inquiry and interviews with fifty unnamed sources, is said to raise "serious questions about whether the United States has abided by the law in its handling of the contras over the past three years."[62]
The Kerry Committee report found that "the Contra drug links included ... payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies."[63] The US State Department paid over $806,000 to known drug traffickers to carry humanitarian assistance to the Contras.[64] Kerry's findings provoked little reaction in the media and official Washington.[65]
The Kerry report was a precursor to the Iran-Contra affair. On May 4, 1989, North was convicted of charges relating to the Iran/Contra controversy, including three felonies. On September 16, 1991, however, North's convictions were overturned on appeal.[66]
On November 15, 1988, at a businessmen's breakfast in East Lynn, Massachusetts, Kerry made a joke about then-President-elect George H.W. Bush and his running mate, saying "if Bush is shot, the Secret Service has orders to shoot Dan Quayle." He apologized the following day.[67]
During their investigation of Noriega, Kerry's staff found reason to believe that the Pakistan-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) had facilitated Noriega's drug trafficking and money laundering. This led to a separate inquiry into BCCI, and as a result, banking regulators shut down BCCI in 1991. In December 1992, Kerry and Senator Hank Brown, a Republican from Colorado, released The BCCI Affair, a report on the BCCI scandal. The report showed that the bank was crooked and was working with terrorists, including Abu Nidal. It blasted the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, the Customs Service, the Federal Reserve Bank, as well as influential lobbyists and the CIA.[68]
Kerry was criticized by some Democrats for having pursued his own party members, including former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, although Republicans said he should have pressed against some Democrats even harder. The BCCI scandal was later turned over to the Manhattan District Attorney's office.[69]
In 1996, Kerry faced a difficult re-election fight against Governor William Weld, a popular Republican incumbent who had been re-elected in 1994 with 71% of the vote. The race was covered nationwide as one of the most closely watched Senate races that year. Kerry and Weld held several debates and negotiated a campaign spending cap of $6.9 million at Kerry's Beacon Hill mansion. Both candidates spent more than the cap, with each camp accusing the other of being first to break the agreement.[70] There is no evidence that this led to Kerry's win in a very close race but it is more than possible that this contributed to his victory.[71] During the campaign, Kerry spoke briefly at the 1996 Democratic National Convention. Senator Kerry won re-election with 53 percent to Weld's 45 percent.
In the 2000 presidential election, Kerry found himself close to being chosen as the vice presidential running mate.[72]
A release from the presidential campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Al Gore listed Kerry on the short list to be selected as the vice-presidential nominee, along with North Carolina Senator John Edwards, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt, New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. Gore eventually selected Lieberman as the nominee, but Kerry continued to campaign on behalf of the Gore-Lieberman campaign through Election Day.
Most analyses place Kerry's voting record on the left within the Senate Democratic caucus.[73] During the 2004 presidential election he was portrayed as a staunch liberal by conservative special interest groups and the Bush campaign, who often noted that in 2003 Kerry was rated the National Journal's top Senate liberal. However, that rating was based only upon voting on legislation within that past year. In fact, in terms of career voting records, the National Journal found that Kerry is the 11th most liberal member of the Senate. Most analyses find that Kerry is at least slightly more liberal than the typical Democratic Senator. Kerry has stated that he opposes privatizing Social Security, supports abortion rights for adult women and minors, supports same-sex marriage, opposes capital punishment except for terrorists, supports most gun control laws, and is generally a supporter of trade agreements. Kerry supported the North American Free Trade Agreement and Most Favored Nation status for China, but opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
In July 1997 Kerry joined his Senate colleagues in voting against ratification of the Kyoto Treaty on global warming without greenhouse gas emissions limits on nations deemed developing, including India and China.[74] Since then, Kerry has attacked President Bush, charging him with opposition to international efforts to combat global warming.[75]
On October 1, 2008, Kerry voted for S. Amdt. 5685 to H.R. 1424, also known as the "bailout bill."[76]
In 1991, during the debate before the Gulf War, Kerry initially opposed the immediate use of military force to expel Iraqi soldiers from Kuwait. The United Nations had imposed sanctions on Iraq, and Kerry argued that the sanctions then in place should be given more time to work.
On December 14, 2001, 3 months after the attacks of 9/11, Kerry said on Larry King Live that "I think we clearly have to keep the pressure on terrorism globally. This doesn't end with Afghanistan by any imagination. And I think the president has made that clear. I think we have made that clear. Terrorism is a global menace. It's a scourge. And it is absolutely vital that we continue against, for instance, Saddam Hussein."
More recently, Kerry said on October 9, 2002; "I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." Bush relied on that resolution in ordering the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Kerry also gave a January 23, 2003 speech to Georgetown University saying "Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator; leading an oppressive regime he presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real." Kerry did, however, warn that the administration should exhaust its diplomatic avenues before launching war: "Mr. President, do not rush to war, take the time to build the coalition, because it's not winning the war that's hard, it's winning the peace that's hard."[77]
After the invasion of Iraq, when no weapons of mass destruction were found, Kerry strongly criticized Bush, contending that he had misled the country: "When the President of the United States looks at you and tells you something, there should be some trust."[78]
Kerry had spoken before the war about the sorts of weapons many believed Saddam Hussein had. On the Senate floor on October 9, 2002, he said that "According to the CIA's report, all U.S. intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons. There is little question that Saddam Hussein wants to develop nuclear weapons."
During his Senate career, Kerry has sponsored or cosponsored dozens of bills. Some of his notable bills have addressed small business concerns, education, terrorism, veterans' and Vietnam War POW/MIA issues, marine resource protection and other topics. Of those bills with his sponsorship, as of December 2004, 11 have been signed into law.
Kerry chaired the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs from 1991 to 1993. The committee's report, which Kerry endorsed, stated there was "no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia."[79] In 1994 the Senate passed a resolution, sponsored by Kerry and fellow Vietnam veteran John McCain, that called for an end to the existing trade embargo against Vietnam; it was intended to pave the way for normalization.[80] In 1995, President Bill Clinton normalized diplomatic relations with the country of Vietnam.[81] His long-time senior Senate staff includes Chief of Staff David "Mac" McKean and Legislative Director George Abar.
Kerry was the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 1987 to 1989. He was reelected to the Senate in 1990, 1996 (after winning re-election against the then-Governor of Massachusetts Republican William Weld), 2002, and 2008. In January 2009, Kerry replaced Joe Biden as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.[82]
As of 2009, Kerry serves on four Senate committees and nine subcommittees:
As of 2011, Kerry ranked as the 10th most senior US Senator. Due to the longevity of Ted Kennedy's service, Kerry was the most senior junior Senator. On Tuesday, August 25, 2009, Kerry became the senior senator from Massachusetts following Ted Kennedy's death.
In the 2004 Democratic Presidential primaries, John Kerry defeated several Democratic rivals, including Sen. John Edwards (D-North Carolina.), former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and retired Army General Wesley Clark. His victory in the Iowa caucuses is widely believed to be the tipping point where Kerry revived his sagging campaign in New Hampshire and the February 3, 2004, primary states like Arizona, South Carolina and New Mexico. Kerry then went on to win landslide victories in Nevada and Wisconsin. Kerry thus won the Democratic nomination to run for President of the United States against incumbent George W. Bush. On July 6, 2004, he announced his selection of John Edwards as his running mate. Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, who was Kerry's 2004 campaign adviser, wrote an article in Time magazine claiming that after the election, Kerry had said that he wished he'd never picked Edwards, and that the two have since stopped speaking to each other.[83] In a subsequent appearance on ABC's This Week, Kerry refused to respond to Shrum's allegation, calling it a "ridiculous waste of time."[84]
On November 3, 2004, Kerry conceded the race. Kerry won 59.03 million votes, or 48.3 percent of the popular vote; Bush won 62.04 million votes, or 50.7 percent of the popular vote. Kerry carried states with a total of 252 electoral votes. One Kerry elector voted for Kerry's running mate, Edwards, so in the final tally Kerry had 251 electoral votes to Bush's 286. Although, as in the previous election, there were disputes about the voting, no state was as close as Florida had been in 2000 (see 2004 United States presidential election controversy and irregularities).
Immediately after the 2004 election, some Democrats mentioned Kerry as a possible contender for the 2008 Democratic nomination. His brother had said such a campaign was "conceivable", and Kerry himself reportedly said at a farewell party for his 2004 campaign staff, "There's always another four years."[85]
Kerry established a separate political action committee, Keeping America's Promise,[86] that raised money and channeled contributions to Democratic candidates in state and federal races.[87] Through Keeping America's Promise in 2005, Kerry raised over $5.5 million for other Democrats up and down the ballot. Through his campaign account and his political action committee, the Kerry campaign operation generated more than $10 million for various party committees and 179 candidates for the US House, Senate, state and local offices in 42 states focusing on the midterm elections during the 2006 election cycle.[88] "Cumulatively, John Kerry has done as much if not more than any other individual senator", Hassan Nemazee, the national finance chairman of the DSCC said.[89]
On January 10, 2008, Kerry endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama for President.[90] He was mentioned as a possible Vice Presidential candidate for Senator Obama, although fellow Senator Joe Biden was eventually chosen. After Biden's acceptance of the vice presidential nomination, speculation arose that John Kerry would be a candidate for Secretary of State in the Obama administration.[91] However, Senator Hillary Clinton was offered the position.[92] Kerry has been mentioned as a possible replacement for Clinton should she decide to retire in 2012.[60]
On October 30, 2006, Kerry was a headline speaker at a campaign rally being held for Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. Speaking to an audience composed mainly of college students, Kerry said, "You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."[93]
The day after the remarks were made public, leaders from both sides of the political spectrum, including Republicans President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain and then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, said that Kerry's comments were insulting to American military forces fighting in Iraq. Democratic Representative Harold Ford, Jr. called on Kerry to apologize[citation needed] and Pennsylvania Senate candidate Bob Casey, Jr. canceled an appearance with Kerry.
Kerry initially stated: "Let me make it crystal clear, as crystal clear as I know how. I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy."[94] Kerry also responded to criticism from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.[95]
Kerry said that he had intended the remark as a jab at President Bush, and described the remarks as a "botched joke",[96] having inadvertently left out the key word "us" (which would have been, "If you don't, you get us stuck in Iraq"), as well as leaving the phrase "just ask President Bush" off of the end of the sentence. In Kerry's prepared remarks, which he released during the ensuing media frenzy, the corresponding line was "... you end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush." He also claimed that from the context of the speech which, prior to the "stuck in Iraq" line, made several specific references to Bush and elements of his biography, that Kerry was referring to President Bush and not American troops in general.[97]
After two days of media coverage, citing a desire not to be a diversion, Kerry apologized to those who took offense at what he called the misinterpretation of his comment.[98]
Kerry said in Bali an administration run by the Democrats would mean the difference between night and day on policies to fight global warming and the Democrats would, unlike Bush, back mandatory emissions targets and pass a bill to create a cap-and-trade system for carbon dioxide emissions.[99]
Kerry has teamed up with Congressman Peter T. King to help sponsor a new GI Bill to help give incentives for military personnel.[100]
Kerry served as an honorary pallbearer for the late Senator Ted Kennedy.[101]
According to the Boston Herald, dated July 23, 2010, Kerry commissioned construction on a new $7 million dollar yacht (A Friendship 75) in New Zealand and moored it in Portsmouth, Rhode Island where the Friendship yacht company is based.[102] The article claimed this allowed him to avoid paying Massachusetts taxes on the property including approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $500.[103] [104] However, on July 27, 2010, Kerry stated he had yet to take legal possession of the boat, had not intended to avoid the taxes, and that when he took possession, he would pay the taxes whether he owed them or not.[105]
During the 2011 Libyan civil war, "Kerry was one of the earliest lawmakers calling for the U.S. to impose a no-fly zone in Libya."[106]
Kerry "has emerged in the past few years as an important envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan during times of crisis," a Washington Post report stated in May, 2011, as Kerry undertook another trip to the two countries. The killing of Osama bin Laden "has generated perhaps the most important crossroads yet," the report continued, as the senator spoke at a press conference and prepared to fly from Kabul to Pakistan.[107] Among matters discussed during the May visit to Pakistan, under the general rubric of "recalibrating" the bilateral relationship, Kerry sought and retrieved from the Pakistanis the tail-section of the U.S. helicopter which had had to be abandoned at Abbottabad during the bin Laden strike.[108]
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United States Senate | ||
---|---|---|
Preceded by Paul Tsongas |
United States Senator (Class 2) from Massachusetts January 2, 1985 – present Served alongside: Ted Kennedy, Paul G. Kirk, Scott Brown |
Incumbent |
Political offices | ||
Preceded by Thomas P. O'Neill III |
Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts Served under: Michael Dukakis January 6, 1983 – January 2, 1985 |
'Vacant
Title next held by
Evelyn MurphyElected in the 1986 Massachusetts Gubernatorial Election ' |
Preceded by Kit Bond R–Missouri |
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship January 3–20, 2001 |
Succeeded by Kit Bond R–Missouri |
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship June 6, 2001 – January 3, 2003 |
Succeeded by Olympia Snowe R–Maine |
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Preceded by Olympia Snowe R–Maine |
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship January 4, 2007 – January 5, 2009 |
Succeeded by Mary Landrieu D–Louisiana |
Preceded by Joe Biden D–Delaware |
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations January 6, 2009 – present |
Succeeded by Incumbent |
Party political offices | ||
Preceded by Paul Tsongas |
Democratic Party nominee for United States Senator from Massachusetts (Class 2) 1984, 1990, 1996, 2002, 2008 |
Succeeded by Most Recent Nominee |
Preceded by George Mitchell Maine |
Chairman of Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee 1987-1989 |
Succeeded by John Breaux Louisiana |
Preceded by Al Gore |
Democratic Party presidential candidate 2004 |
Succeeded by Barack Obama |
United States order of precedence | ||
Preceded by Jeff Bingaman D–New Mexico |
United States Senators by seniority 10th |
Succeeded by Tom Harkin D–Iowa |
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