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McCain Aims to Score Points Globally - WSJ

McCain Aims to Score Points Globally
By LAURA MECKLER
June 30, 2008; Page A4

John McCain heads south this week -- all the way to South America, where there are no votes to win but perhaps a few points to score.

It is an effort to pad his foreign-policy credentials, appear statesmanlike and drive home a message about trade and international relations. In Colombia on Tuesday and Wednesday, in the coastal city of Cartagena, he plans to highlight a pending free-trade agreement that he supports and rival Sen. Barack Obama opposes. Thursday in Mexico, the Republican candidate will talk about the war on drugs. The Arizona senator will meet with both nations' presidents.

It isn't clear how much the trip will benefit Sen. McCain's No. 1 mission: being elected president. This will be Sen. McCain's third foreign trip since effectively wrapping up the Republican nominating contest, making him among the best-traveled presidential candidates. This spring, Sen. McCain visited the Middle East, including Iraq, Israel and Jordan, and Europe, including London and Paris. Last year, in the midst of the primaries, he went to Switzerland, Germany, Pakistan and Iraq. And June 20, he was in the Canadian capital of Ottawa.

Taxpayers funded the trips to Europe and the Middle East, but the McCain campaign paid for the Canadian visit and will pay for this week's trip.

International travel may be more important for Sen. Obama, who has much less experience on the world stage. Over the weekend, his campaign said that this summer he will visit Israel, Jordan, France, Germany and the U.K. He is also expected to travel to Iraq, following weeks of taunting from Sen. McCain, who charges Sen. Obama hasn't been there recently enough to see progress.

Even with the coming trips, Sen. Obama's foreign travel is likely to be exceeded by Sen. McCain's.

"It's highly unusual for a presidential candidate to make so many trips abroad, but McCain is anchoring his entire candidacy on the fact that he's the adult, the foreign-affairs candidate," said Douglas Brinkley, a historian at Rice University. "The problem with all that is, with gas prices high and the economy teetering on a recession, how much do people really care that John McCain is going to Colombia or Mexico or the Middle East or Europe? Too much foreign travel is probably just wasting campaign time [that could be used] in Missouri and Minnesota."

Some Republican political strategists expressed surprise that Sen. McCain would take time out for this trip. "It just continues to burnish his foreign-policy experience and continues to focus on Obama being inexperienced," said strategist Tony Fabrizio. "At this juncture I'm not sure there are a lot of voters on the fence wondering about that."

A McCain adviser said the campaign considered that the candidate's time might have been better used elsewhere but decided that the senator should go anyway, partly because the days before the July 4 holiday are slow.

Some have speculated, as well, that the trip could play well with Hispanic voters, whom the Arizona senator is trying to win over.

On Saturday, Sen. McCain also met privately with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani to discuss the progress in that country as well as a continued U.S. military presence there.

Speaking before this week's visit, Sen. McCain said he would address Colombia's efforts to help fight the war on drugs, and the close relationship between the U.S. and President Alvaro Uribe.

"It [Colombia] is a vital ally in our struggle against the scourge of drugs, a great amount of cocaine that comes into the United States of America, as we know, comes from Colombia," he said last week. "I know the struggle that nation has undergone."

Sen. McCain, President George W. Bush and others say Congress should ratify the pending free-trade agreement with Colombia, if for no other reason than to support a vital ally in the region. Colombia sits just west of Venezuela, with its anti-American president, Hugo Chávez.

Democrats who oppose the pact have cited continuing violence in Colombia against organized labor.

In either case, highlighting trade at a time when many Americans are nervous about their jobs may not be a political winner back home. Polling consistently shows that most voters believe that trade and globalization are more bad than good for them.

"Over the past 10 years, as many blue-collar and white-collar jobs have moved overseas, the American public has certainly turned largely against free trade," said Jay Campbell, a Democratic pollster who helps conduct the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll.

Foreign trips also constrain Sen. McCain's ability to go after Sen. Obama directly, and this one comes at a time when the McCain campaign has been trying to drive home the message that Sen. Obama is more partisan than he seems. In Ottawa, Sen. McCain passed up several opportunities to swing at his rival, though he did include some oblique criticism in his speech.

"This is not a political campaign trip," he said there. Discussing the differences between the two of them would "lend a political bent to this visit."

But while Sen. McCain was in Canada, he was battered by Obama supporters such as Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm. If he wants to talk about free trade, she said, he should visit Michigan, not Canada.

By tejasmarcos on Jun 30, 2008, 05:16 in Friendly Talkzone.

tejasmarcos says on Jun 30, 2008, 05:18:

It is amazing to me that they have to physically describe "where" Colombia is located. According to this WSJ article, it is "just west of Venezuela". I guess that means Colombia is "just north of Ecuador" and "just south of Panama" as well. I'm glad we got that straight...

trying to walk a straight line on sour mash and cheap wine...

0 funny, 0 helpful.