PRESCOTT, Ariz. — Sen. John McCain yesterday said partisan fights should have their limits in this year’s presidential campaign, making a case for a civil debate that puts the fight against the threat from Muslim extremism ahead of domestic party battles.
“Let us remember, we are not enemies. We are compatriots defending ourselves from a real enemy. We have nothing to fear from each other,” Mr. McCain said on the steps of the Yavapai County Courthouse, where then-Sen. Barry Goldwater began his 1964 White House campaign, which won the conservative icon the Republican presidential nomination but a defeat in November.
Ending his weeklong series of speeches on his life of service and his political values, Mr. McCain said the political process today should learn from Mr. Goldwater and Rep. Morris Udall, Arizona Democrat, two of his political heroes who he said put aside partisanship to work with each other.
Mr. McCain this week has claimed to be the most bipartisan candidate in the race, based on his years of working with Democrats, also providing, though never explicitly asserting, a contrast to the increasingly nasty fight between Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.
Among the list of bipartisan efforts are proposing a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, overhauling campaign-finance laws and trying to cap U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions — all stances that have alienated him at times from his own party.
But Mr. McCain said there was virtue in bipartisanship, adding that those engaged in the political debate “deserve more than tolerance from one another, we deserve each other’s respect.”
Along those lines, Mr. McCain yesterday said Mr. Obama should condemn the remark from liberal talk-radio host Ed Schultz who, warming up a crowd for Mr. Obama and other Democratic officials in North Dakota on Friday, called Mr. McCain a “warmonger.”
“I would hope that in keeping with his commitment that Senator Obama would condemn such language, since it was part of his campaign,” Mr. McCain said here in Arizona.
The McCain campaign sent out an e-mail noting Mr. Obama had been on Mr. Schultz’s radio program this past week, and that the online poll on Mr. Schultz’s Web site is “Is Sen. John McCain a warmonger?”
In a statement, Mr. Obama’s campaign disagreed with Mr. Schultz.
“John McCain is not a warmonger and should not be described as such. He’s a supporter of a war that Senator Obama believes should have never been authorized and never been waged,” said spokeswoman Jen Psaki.
But Mr. Schultz defended his assertions yesterday, telling the Associated Press by phone that Mr. McCain “voted for this war. He’s a perpetrator of the war. He’s an advocate of the war … . That’s a warmonger,” he said.
Jamie Selzler, head of the North Dakota Democratic Party, said he is “not going to criticize Ed Schultz.”
“He gave a rousing speech that got the group excited, and we appreciated that he did that,” Mr. Selzler said.
The tiff reversed the roles from February, when Mr. McCain quickly disavowed a warm-up rally introduction given by conservative talk-radio host Bill Cunningham, who called the Illinois senator a “hack, Chicago-style” politician and repeatedly referred to him by his full name — Barack Hussein Obama.
In what now appears to be a prescient speech from the start of his six-day tour last week, Mr. McCain tried to confront charges such as Mr. Schultz’s.
“I detest war. It might not be the worst thing to befall human beings, but it is wretched beyond all description,” he said. “Only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes the merciless reality of war. However heady the appeal of a call to arms, however just the cause, we should still shed a tear for all that is lost when war claims its wages from us.”
Yesterday, speaking to a large and friendly crowd, Mr. McCain recalled his entry into politics by running for a congressional seat here, acknowledging he was far less knowledgeable than he should have been about his adopted state and that in his first four years “I had the reputation of an often confrontational partisan.”
He said he wants to wage his current campaign differently, so that Mr. Udall and Mr. Goldwater “would be proud of me as I have always been proud of them.”
At one point in his speech, Mr. McCain mentioned the “noisy debates” that fill American politics, and at that moment someone in the audience began shouting at him — apparently a supporter of Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, Mr. McCain’s only remaining opponent for the Republican nomination.
Mr. McCain grinned and pointed in the man’s direction as the crowd applauded.
c This article is based in part on wire service reports.
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