HUGHES & JOHNSON: McCain's Latin America gambit

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COMMENTARY:

Pity John McCain. Back when he was "Maverick John McCain," breaking ranks with his party on issues like campaign finance reform and challenging George W. Bush for the Republican nomination in 2000 he achieved the rank of media darling.

Now that he's the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and the only thing standing between the liberal Democrats and their control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, Mr. McCain couldn't get a favorable headline if he paid for it.

Consider Mr. McCain's trip last week to Colombia and Mexico. It's a gutsy move, leaving the domestic campaign trail for a foreign policy trip in the midst of an historic, hotly contested election in which polls show him trailing. So what's he up to?

First, he is underscoring the importance of U.S. relations with our Western Hemisphere neighbors and their importance to U.S. economic and geo-strategic interests. After all, the Western Hemisphere comprises the second-largest regional community of democracies on Earth - with Cuba still the "odd man out" and a handful of democracies teetering toward populist despotism. And trade with the region is inextricably connected to U.S. prosperity. At $492 billion in 2007, U.S. exports to the region dwarf our $247 billion in exports to the European Union. The $1.151 trillion in total U.S. trade with the Western Hemisphere is almost double our $602 billion in total trade with the EU.

Second, McCain's trip demonstrates solidarity and support for Colombia's society which, under President Uribe, has finally turned the corner on its decades-old civil war with the FARC narco-terrorists. Mr. Uribe's successes owe much to Plan Colombia, the 10-year-old program begun by the Clinton administration and sustained by President Bush with bipartisan congressional support. The economic sequel to Plan Colombia - the Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement - remains stalled in Congress after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, abrogated the rules for its "fast track" consideration.

Mr. McCain supports the agreement and the opportunity for growth and development it offers Colombia's people. Mr. Obama opposes it.

Mr. McCain's Colombia visit is timely, at a moment when Colombia has caught its neighbor, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, red-handed - twice - funneling support to Colombia's Marxist FARC narco-terrorists. The normally shameless Mr. Chavez had to do a quick about-face, abandoning his efforts to secure international recognition for the FARC and instead calling for them to lay down their arms and release their hostages.

Mr. McCain's visit signaled his support for Colombia against hostile foreign interference. By contrast, Mr. Obama's early calls for friendly dialogue with the virulently anti-American Mr. Chavez probably provide cold comfort to the embattled Colombians.

Third, Mr. McCain's visit to Mexico prefigures the kind of regular annual dialogue every American president since Ronald Reagan has maintained with his Mexican counterpart. This is all the more important since Mexico, under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), has risen to be, variously, our second or third most important trading partner.

American and Mexican prosperity have consequently become inextricably connected. Mr. McCain understands this - naturally, after the scores of trips he's made to the region in his 26 years in the House and Senate and his 15 years as chairman of the democracy-promoting International Republican Institute. In contrast, Mr. Obama's calls to renegotiate NAFTA threaten to destabilize one of America's key economic relationships and jeopardize lucrative markets for such key states as California, Texas and Florida.

So apparently there's a lot to Mr. McCain's visit to Latin America last week - not the least the signal it sends of Mr. McCain's commitment to the Hispanic voting community. Now comprising 15 percent of the American population, 9 percent of the eligible voters and about 6.3 percent of the actual voting public, Hispanic voters can have a powerful electoral impact - especially in a close race.

But judging from the press coverage of Mr. McCain's trip, you'd never guess any of this. For instance, an article in the July 1 New York Times about the McCain trip mentioned Mr. McCain precisely once, in the first paragraph. The next 15 paragraphs focus on lobbying work by the former firm of a McCain adviser on behalf of a U.S. oil company in Colombia and decades-old environmental and Indian complaints about its oil operations there - as if this had anything to do with Mr. McCain's trip or its message.

This is typical and emblematic of Mr. McCain's coverage in the 2008 race so far. Proving, perhaps, that the Washington press relations lesson for "Maverick John McCain" in 2008 is one that President Harry Truman came upon more than a half-century ago: "If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog."

Ambassador G. Philip Hughes, senior director at the White House Writers Group, is former executive secretary and director for Latin American Affairs of the National Security Council. J. Paul Johnson, J.D., an associate at the White House Writers Group, has been adviser to the Centro de Estudios Americanos and lecturer at the Universidad Lincoln in Buenos Aires.