In National Review’s latest cover story, Ramesh Ponnuru makes “The Case for McCain.” Here’s the full transcript of the interview Ponnuru did with the Arizona Republican senator for the piece.
Senator John McCain: Glad to see you.
Ramesh Ponnuru: Thank you
Sen. McCain: I got some encouraging news this morning in the USA Today.
Ponnuru (reading headline): “McCain firm on Iraq war. . .” (McCain flips the paper over.) “Despite cost to candidacy”: even better. . .
Sen. McCain: (Laughs) Yep. They’ve got a poll that says 33 percent are much less likely, and 11 percent somewhat less likely to [vote for me]
Ponnuru: So do you think that’s already been costing you? That that’s behind some of the slides in the polls?
Sen. McCain: First of all, I don’t know. But second of all, I can’t worry about it. You just can’t, with something like this you just can’t let it concern you. The issue is too important. The sacrifice that so many young Americans have made already pales in significance to any cost that it may mean to me. You’ve seen these wounded kids, you know how much they’ve given.
Ponnuru: But is the country prepared to give more? The Post had a story on the front page that people want a deadline.
Sen. McCain: Well, I think that it’s the job of people like me to explain to them what’s at stake here. It isn’t just Iraq. I really believe that chaos will ensue, genocide will take place, and unlike after we lost the Vietnam War when they didn’t want to follow us home, these people want to follow us home. I think what’s at stake here is this entire struggle we’re in — you know I hate to use the word war, because then you give people legitimacy as soldiers — but the struggle that we’re in against radical Islamic extremism.
And so for me to somehow trim my sails on an issue like this would be just a disservice to the nation.
Ponnuru: Is there a way to continue to fight the war on Islamic extremism while also repairing some of our diplomatic relations? With Europe in particular?
Sen. McCain: I think we probably could improve our image a great deal, I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. But the United States leads. The United States is the world’s superpower. We lead. There are many benefits of being the world’s superpower, and there’s also occasionally great sacrifices [that] have to be made.
If the United States militarily were in the same situation as our European friends are, we’d probably be much more diplomatically inclined. I think it’s not worth dragging out. But the Europeans because of their lack of expenditure and lack of real military capabilities of course always want to pursue a diplomatic approach to whether it be the Iranians or anything else.
Look. We had Jim Jones, who you know is one of our great generals, talk about how difficult it was to pry two additional helicopters out of our entire NATO alliance just to get to Afghanistan.
Ponnuru: So: Speak softly, carry no stick.
Sen. McCain: There you go. I think that’s pretty, a very good description. And thank God for the Dutch, believe it or not, and the British, and the Canadians for their help in Afghanistan. But other countries are not very useful when they place such strenuous conditions on the actions that their troops can take.
Ponnuru: Turning to domestic issues: Why do you think President Bush failed to get Social Security reform? How do we start entitlement reform?
Sen. McCain: I favor strongly retirement savings accounts, personal savings accounts, whatever you want to call them. And I think every young taxpayer should have the ability to make an investment in their own retirement. But if I had to look back, and hindsight is always perfect, I might emphasize more the criticality of the system itself and add the requirement to have personal savings accounts. Do you see what I mean?
Ponnuru: Get it to balance first?
Sen. McCain: Yeah, I’d start at the chart: “You’ve got this much money coming in, you’ve got this much money going out, here’s where there’s more money coming in and here’s where there’s no money left. Now, where do you want to fix it?” You see what I mean?
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