Sen. John McCain said yesterday that if elected president, he would achieve victory in Iraq and bring most troops home by the end of his first term. He also promised a secure Southern border, a simpler tax code, affordable health care and smarter schoolchildren.
In a campaign speech with something for nearly everyone — global warming liberals, flat-taxing libertarians, nuclear energy proponents, conservative judge advocates — the presumptive Republican presidential candidate forecast what his 2012 re-election campaign would tout.
The Arizona Republican vowed to end partisan rancor and congressional gridlock, employ Democrats in his administration, hold weekly press conferences and take questions from lawmakers, just as the British prime minister does.
But it was his vow to bring U.S. troops home by a specific date — the first time he has set a timetable for U.S. withdrawal — that drew the most attention.
“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,” Mr. McCain said at a convention center in Columbus, Ohio.
“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 new date seemed at odds with the candidate’s attacks on former presidential candidate Mitt Romney in a January debate, when the former Massachusetts governor offered a withdrawal timeline in answer to a question.
“He said he wanted a timetable,” Mr. McCain interrupted. “Governor, the right answer to that question was ’no.’ ’Timetables’ was the buzzword for the … withdrawal.”
Mr. McCain’s prediction puts him between President Bush, who has never set even the broadest timetable, and the two Democratic candidates.
Mr. McCain has long echoed Mr. Bush’s contention that setting a date for withdrawal would embolden terrorists and endanger U.S. forces. Last year, he said a Democratic plan to set a timeline was tantamount to “a date certain for surrender.”
His campaign staff said afterward that the senator’s vision differs dramatically from those held by his Democratic opponents, both of whom pledge to withdraw most troops within 16 months of taking office. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has said she would withdraw U.S. troops regardless of conditions on the ground in Iraq.
“There is no similarity,” McCain adviser Steve Schmidt said of the plans offered by the three presidential candidates.
On his campaign bus, the Straight Talk Express, Mr. McCain sought to clarify his position, telling reporters that he is “promising that we will succeed in Iraq,” but not guaranteeing that U.S. troops will come home if that effort fails.
Yesterday’s speech in the swing state of Ohio was extraordinarily optimistic, but the senator rejected one reporter’s summation that the speech was a “magic carpet ride.”
“I don’t think it has anything to do with fantasy, I think it has everything to do with setting goals and achieving,” he said
In the wide-ranging speech, he chastised the press for forcing candidates to speak in “the sound bites preferred by cable news producers” and then listed nearly a dozen achievements he hoped to make by the end of his first term.
He predicted that by 2013:
• Osama bin Laden has been killed or captured and the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan “has been greatly reduced but not eliminated. There is no longer any place in the world al Qaeda can consider a safe haven.”
• Russia and China have pressured Iran into abandoning its nuclear ambitions.
• A newly formed League of Democracies, created after the United Nations has once again failed in its mission, pressures the government in Sudan to accept a multinational peacekeeping force.
• A new tax code offers “two rates and a generous deduction” under a flat-tax system.
• Congressional “earmarks” are a thing of the past and a “top-to-bottom review” has trimmed government waste.
• “Public education in the United States is much improved.”
• “The environmental threat posed from climate change” has been alleviated, and the Unites States has reduced its dependence on foreign oil.
• “Scores of judges have been confirmed … who enforce and do not make laws.”
• “Our Southern border is now secure” and the American people now accept “the practical necessity to institute a temporary worker.”
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