Wednesday, Mar. 05, 2008

Analysis | McCain candidacy faces hurdles

WASHINGTON — John McCain’s last-man-standing strategy prevailed. Now, on to the general election and the hurdles that come with it.

“I do not underestimate the significance nor the size of the challenge,” the Republican nominee-in-waiting told the Associated Press on Tuesday.

A significant challenge is right.

McCain clinched the nomination Tuesday, surpassing the requisite 1,191 GOP delegates as voters in Ohio, Vermont, Rhode Island and Texas put him over the threshold. Next up will be convincing a public craving change to keep a Republican in the White House in the midst of a drawn-out Iraq war and a sluggish economy.

That’s a daunting task.

But several factors further complicate McCain’s run.

Approaching age 72, McCain would be the oldest president ever elected and is certain to face doubts and questions that come with that distinction. His offbeat humor and occasional temper can be grating to even those who know him best. And, his habit of breaking with the GOP to work with those across the aisle irks the conservatives he’ll need in the fall.

Conversely, the Democratic Party is highly energized and will have a history-making nominee — either the first female in Hillary Rodham Clinton or the first black in Barack Obama — calling for a new direction.

“With that scenario I’d have to withdraw my nomination,” McCain joked to reporters recently, laughing when one laid out the obstacles facing him and the party. “That scenario’s so bleak!”

So it seems.

Becoming serious, McCain insisted he’s undeterred.

“I, frankly, like where I am. I do not try to understate in any way the magnitude of the challenge we face. But I’m confident that we can present the choices in such a way that we can win.”

The Arizona senator claims he can make a compelling argument to what he says continues to be a right-of-center country, despite GOP losses in 2006 as well as a headwind that overwhelmingly favors Democrats.

People, he says, will have a choice between a conservative Republican and a liberal Democrat — a signal the coming months will be framed primarily by ideology as he casts his Democratic rivals as big-government, soft-on-security liberals.

He frequently points to hypothetical head-to-head polls that show him in close contention — if not leading — Obama or Clinton across the country and claims his long reputation as a Republican reformer during his 20-plus years in Washington can satisfy the public’s call for change.

Maybe so.

But on a fundamental level, McCain simply being a Republican makes it difficult to argue that he can put the country on a different path — as polls show the public clearly wants — than the Republican president he would succeed and with whom he agrees on big-ticket issues such as Iraq and taxes.

Already, Democrats are casting him as a continuation of Bush’s eight-year reign.

McCain’s expected elevation to GOP nominee — and upcoming difficult general election campaign — is a remarkable conclusion to his rocky campaign.

After losing his first presidential bid to Bush eight years ago, McCain began his second campaign as the presumed front-runner for the GOP nomination — and sought to position himself as the anointed 2008 nominee in an extraordinarily crowded field.

He melded veterans of Bush’s back-to-back successful elections with his own longtime loyalists to build a behemoth national campaign. He courted the party establishment he had spurned, and there was an all-aboard feel as the McCain train started out of the station in 2006.

But he ended up squandering any advantage he had then. Political, financial and organizational turmoil left the campaign in tatters.

Nevertheless, he pressed on. He argued the field was so flawed he had as good a chance as any.

In the end, he persevered and came back from the brink of political death against all odds.

He hopes he can defy them again in the fall.

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