WHY is he here? What is Senator John McCain — war hero, presidential hopeful, one of the biggest figures in American politics — doing sitting on a sofa in the Highcliff Hotel in Bournemouth? He can’t have come for the weather or the night life.
As he talked to The Times yesterday — slowly, deliberately, careful not to let the answers go a word further than he meant to — his obscure motive became clearer. The 70-year-old Republican senator offers David Cameron an association with experience and statesmanship, while Mr Cameron offers the senator an association with youth and exuberance. In other words, Mr McCain, planning a presidential run at the perfect age for becoming president of a local Tory association, sees in Mr Cameron exactly what Conservative activists saw when they picked him as leader.
“I feel a kindred spirit,” said Mr McCain of Mr Cameron, before flashing his famous megawatt smile and adding “. . . but I also feel a sense of ageing as well, because when I see how young these leaders are it makes me slightly nostalgic and a great deal resentful.”
He talks of leaders in the plural because he thinks that Mr Cameron belongs to a group with Fredrick Reinfeldt, the new Swedish Prime Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French pretender, and Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor. The ascendancy of these people, and of Mr McCain himself, means that “you may be seeing a new wave of conservatism which is more in tune with the 21st century than perhaps they were in the past”. He lists as examples climate change, a “recognition of a role for government even though that might be limited”, and a commitment to addressing issues like HIV/Aids.
Several times during our discussion he precedes his remarks with qualifiers — “I don’t want to speak out of sheer ignorance”, “advice is certainly the cheapest commodity in Washington” — but his basic sympathy for the Cameron strategy was clear.
Were elections won from the centre ground? “In the United States [George Bush's adviser Karl] Rove proved you could establish your base and expand it and win elections. That is a matter of political reality. I still think the general rule of expanding to the centre once you have established your base is an effective way of winning elections.
“It is also important to point out that the Conservative have been out of power for a very long time. They are looking at ways they can become more in tune with their constituents and gain electoral success.”
He also defended Mr Cameron’s decision to hold back policy details. “I understand we are talking about roughly three years from now when the election takes place, so to expect to come out with a specific agenda at this early stage, I can’t criticise that they have not.” He even had words of support for Mr Cameron’s recent foreign policy speech, which has been controversial in conservative American circles, although his backing was phrased carefully. “I read the entirety of the speech. He reiterated three or four times the importance of the special relationship, his commitment to it. I was not troubled by it when I read the whole speech.”
Dapper in a black pinstripe suit, blue shirt and careful hair, Mr McCain might look like a standard-issue senator, save for two things: his slightly stiff gait and an incongruous khaki wristband bearing the words “Support Our Troops”. Both were reminders that we were talking to a military man who survived a Viet Cong prison camp, and who lived to make sacrifice and contributing the themes of his political life.
Could someone without his life story make Mr McCain’s rhetoric work? Is there a theme there for Tories or is it something the Notting Hill Set can’t touch?
“When FDR [President Roosevelt] asked the American people to make sacrifices he had no particular credentials. He came from a wealthy patrician family. When the British and American people have been asked to make sacrifices for the good of their children, they have done so. I have relied on that throughout my political career and it is something common between our countries — a sense of obligation to future generations.”
Having generously compared Mr Cameron with Roosevelt, Mr McCain went on to compare him with Kennedy — “JFK had that charisma and attractiveness that made people like him even if they did not agree with him. I see some of those qualities in David Cameron” — and, perhaps less helpfully, to Ronald Reagan — “the thing that was most memorable about Reagan was his broad appeal, his style, his outreach. I see this in the Conservatives’ adherence to principle, yet a willingness to work with all sectors of the political spectrum in order to achieve results”.
Because Mr McCain was in another country he was clearly anxious to avoid a gaffe, so we saw only flickers of the unbuttoned style that has boosted his rise to political prominence. But it emerged as our conversation moved to an end.
He talked first of the situation in Afghanistan and his fears that it was becoming a corrupt narco-state, and of his anger that nothing was being done in Darfur. “Are we going to watch genocide again as in Rwanda? So far the UN seems to be incapable of addressing the issue. I am not now advocating a Nato operation, but I am advocating at least the imposition of a no-fly zone”.
As his eyes turned to his own possible presidential run he laid out an agenda for improving America’s relationship with Europe — address climate change, find a way to close Guantanamo Bay and be a multilateralist. But the best example of his straight-talk style came with our last question: was America ready for a woman president?
“Yes. A qualified woman can easily become President.” And just as we were expecting a dodge or a political insult, he added: “You are referring to Hillary Clinton. I think she is very likely to be the Democrat nominee and anyone who would underestimate her would do so at great peril.”
