Arizona Senator John McCain has made it official. He
will seek the Republican Party's presidential nomination next year. VOA
National Correspondent Jim Malone has more on McCain's bid for the White
House from Washington.
It was no surprise that John McCain announced he is running for
president, but the forum was unexpected. McCain did it on the Late Show
program with David Letterman on CBS television.
"I am announcing that I will be a candidate for President of the United
States," he said.
McCain says he will make a formal announcement speech in April.
The Arizona senator has been considered the leading candidate for the
Republican presidential nomination ever since President Bush won
re-election in 2004. Mr. Bush cannot run for a third term, so the 2008
race has prompted large fields of candidates in both major political
parties.
Despite his frontrunner status, McCain has trailed in some recent
public opinion polls. The latest survey by The Washington Post and ABC
News showed former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani leading for the
Republican nomination with the support of 44 percent of those polled,
compared to 21 percent for McCain. The same survey one month earlier also
had Giuliani ahead, but by the smaller margin of 34 percent to 27 percent.
University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato has been paying
close attention to the polls.
"McCain needs some momentum," he said. "He started out this campaign
with a much better chance than he appears to have now. For the nomination,
he is now trailing Rudy Giuliani. For the general election, he is saddled
with President Bush's Iraq policy that he has embraced."
McCain has emerged as perhaps the foremost Republican supporter of
President Bush's troop surge in Iraq.
He recently defended the new military strategy on the Don Imus program
on MSNBC.
"And those who want to leave, just withdraw, I think they have an
obligation to tell people what they think is going to happen," he said. "I
know what is going to happen. It is going to be chaos and genocide and it
will spread throughout the region and we will be involved again in one way
or another."
Some analysts believe McCain is taking a political gamble with his
high-profile support of the president's Iraq policy, given the opposition
evident in public opinion polls.
Stuart Rothenberg publishes an independent political newsletter in
Washington.
"You listen to Senator McCain and he will emphasize that he disagreed
with the policy early on in term of the U.S. not having an enough troops,"
he explained. "He thought [former Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld was
inept and incompetent, the wrong person, and he will continue to be
critical of how the war was handled. But overall, his support for the
president is pretty strong on the war and increasingly he is identified
with it."
In addition to his stand on Iraq, McCain also has a challenge in
winning votes among conservative Christian voters, an important
constituency within the Republican Party.
McCain was critical of some religious conservative leaders during his
2000 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, when he lost out
to Texas Governor George Bush.
But in recent months, McCain has tried to mend fences with religious
conservatives and is emphasizing his generally conservative voting record
on social issues like abortion.
But analyst Charles Cook says some conservatives remain wary of McCain.
Cook is editor of the Cook Political Report and he recently appeared on
the C-SPAN public affairs TV network.
"A lot of these folks were never terribly comfortable with McCain, even
though he really voted with them the vast majority of the time," he said.
"But they always really doubted, 'Is he one of us?'"
In addition to
McCain and Giuliani, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is in the
running for the Republican nomination. Others who have either formally
announced or who are considering a bid include Kansas Senator Sam
Brownback, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, California Congressman
Duncan Hunter, Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo, former Wisconsin
Governor Tommy Thompson and former Virginia Governor Jim
Gilmore. | 
