by John McCain
I swore in my acceptance speech that I wasn’t “running for president because I’m blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need.” I was running because “my country saved me . . . and I can’t forget it. And I will fight for her for as long as I draw breath.” I meant it. I offered little more than implicit criticism of my opponent, and some praise. I assured him of my respect and admiration, and I meant that, too:
Despite our differences, much more unites us than divides us. We are fellow Americans, an association that means more to me than any other. We’re dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal and endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights. No country ever had a greater cause than that. And I wouldn’t be an American worthy of the name if I didn’t honor Senator Obama and his supporters for their achievement.
I wanted to make the affirmative case for my candidacy. I wanted to convince Americans that whatever they might think of my politics, my views, my conduct as a public official, whether they thought I was right or wrong, they could trust that in my heart I believed I was fighting for our country. That’s how I hope people will remember me. Others have fought more successfully than I have, and made fewer mistakes in the bargain. But I am grateful beyond expression to have had the opportunity to fight for her as best I can.
To the extent we had any surges in our campaign, we practically roared out of St. Paul. In the week after the convention a few polls had the race tied. Most gave me a small but not insignificant lead, and one, Gallup, had me ahead by ten points. There weren’t many times before that moment when I thought the race might be mine to lose. Actually, the thought had never occurred to me before that week. We had big highs in the race for the nomination, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, Super Tuesday. But I was usually behind in the polls in the general, and I was always aware that the country was extremely dissatisfied with the incumbent administration and with Republicans in general. That week, though, we let ourselves believe. We weren’t celebrating or congratulating each other. Our days were too crammed with activity and worry for that. The debates were approaching, and almost every spare hour between campaign events was dedicated to preparing for them. We were probably a little more cheerful, I suppose, though I doubt anyone outside the campaign would have noticed a change in our demeanor. But optimism in a campaign, especially a campaign as beset with challenges as ours was, spreads quickly and creates energy if not exuberance, an extra something that drives everyone from volunteers to the candidate to hustle more, to fight harder. We were feeling all of that in the immediate aftermath of the convention. It didn’t last long.
• • •
By September 11, as Senator Obama and I together laid a wreath at Ground Zero to commemorate the anniversary of that terrible day, our bump in the polls had receded. The race was tight again with some polls giving a slight advantage to my opponent. Four days later, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, the biggest casualty to date of the subprime mortgage crisis that had begun the year before and was now spreading like a forest fire. The week before Lehman fell, the federal government had taken control of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were overly invested in bad subprime loans. Merrill Lynch was sold, and insurance behemoth AIG had to be rescued by a government bailout or it would’ve fallen, too. The housing bubble burst spectacularly as the resulting liquidity crisis dried up financing for residential and commercial lending. Families who were relying on equity in their homes as a retirement fund, encouraged by the long boom in housing prices, were suddenly holding an underwater mortgage, owing more than their homes were worth.
At a campaign appearance the day after the Lehman Brothers news, I wanted to say something encouraging that wouldn’t contribute to the spreading panic. I offered the assurance that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.” Whether or not that statement was accurate at the time, it proved colossally impolitic. The fundamentals sure didn’t look strong to most voters, not with a flood of bankruptcies, a global credit crisis under way, a collapsing housing market, and the Dow Jones average shedding nearly 800 points in a single day.
We had struggled and clawed our way into a competitive position with less than two months to go to Election Day. We did it despite massive voter dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, and while being outspent four to one. We did it while our disciplined opposing campaign was rarely knocked off stride, owned most of the strategic advantages, and was branded with the “hope and change” message while we cast around for new ways to make the same claim, and made a few mistakes in the process.
We were in New York City for a fund-raiser the night of September 24, and spent the afternoon in debate prep. The crisis seemed to be spiraling beyond anything experienced since the bank runs of the Great Depression. Some of my economic advisors were worried that any day people would be unable to withdraw cash from ATMs. Beside my ill-timed “sound fundamentals” remark, all I had added to the national debate so far was a denunciation of greed and a call for a 9/11-type commission to investigate what had happened and who was responsible. That wasn’t cutting it.
The Bush administration was working on a financial rescue plan, and my staff were hearing reports that House Republicans were reluctant to support it. We knew that this mounting disaster would likely doom us unless we could figure out some way to demonstrate that we were helping get it under control. We hatched a plan to propose to Obama that we suspend our campaigns for a week, and postpone the first debate scheduled for two days hence, while he and I, the White House, and both parties’ congressional leadership worked out a rescue plan that could pass Congress. Senator Obama called that day to ask me to join him in endorsing the plan that Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson had put together. I countered with the suspension idea and a bipartisan meeting at the White House. He rejected the idea. I called Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to see if I could get him to help. We’d known each other for years and were on friendly and informal terms. When he responded by reading clearly prepared talking points and calling me Senator McCain, I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere with our idea. The Obama campaign denounced it, insisting he would be at the debate as scheduled. He couldn’t speak for me, he allowed, but he could campaign and discharge his Senate responsibilities at the same time.
We had the White House meeting. It was a waste of time. Harry and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi just stirred the pot, blaming the crisis on Republicans. Barack spoke briefly. I went in knowing the House Republican votes for the rescue package weren’t there. Even though I was the party’s presidential nominee, I had more than a few detractors in the House caucus. I had already met with their leader, my friend John Boehner, and I could see he didn’t have the votes yet. I wanted whatever agreement we might work out to appear to be as much the product of House Republican concerns as mine or the White House’s. When asked by President Bush to speak, I said I would defer to the House Republican leader. I should have hogged the floor a little. Minutes after the meeting ended, press accounts quoted anonymous sources claiming I hadn’t had anything to offer.
We were stuck now trying to help whip House Republicans to support the Paulson plan, while I resumed debate prep, knowing that my suspension idea was a bust, and I would have to back down on my decision to postpone the debate. When it came time for the vote, most House Republicans voted against the plan, and it went down. A second attempt succeeded a few days later. Our gambit failed and that cost us support we couldn’t afford to lose. I wish we hadn’t tried it, but I’ll be damned if I can think of anything else we might have done that could have gained us support or limited the damage the crisis was doing to our campaign, which we were pretty sure would prove mortal.
I showed up for the debate, in Oxford, Mississippi. It was originally supposed to focus on foreign policy, which should have favored my strengths. But given the extraordinary events of the last couple weeks, the first part of the debate concentrated on the financial c
risis. I thought my strongest performance, surprisingly, was in our exchanges on economic policy. I was generally pleased with how I’d done. But snap polls gave the edge to Senator Obama, which was enough for most pundits to give him the win.
I thought my best debate was the third and final one, although I’m not sure any of them mattered all that much in the end. In the wake of the financial crisis, Obama gained a lead he never surrendered. Unless he made some monumental mistake in the debates, which he did not, nothing I said was likely to get the lead back. Sarah acquitted herself well in her debate with Joe Biden. The conventional wisdom expected Joe to beat her easily, with the only worry that he might so overwhelm her that he appeared a bully. That didn’t happen. Joe had a good debate. I thought Sarah had a slightly better one. At worst, the contest was a draw.
Prior to the last debate, we had been alerted by press reports that supporters at some of our events had shouted vulgar or racist things about my opponent. It was hard for me to hear any individual remark from the crowd, just the general din of applause and cheers. But reporters heard some of them and wrote about it, and I knew I had to make a point of rebuking the next person I heard say something false or inappropriate about Obama. It happened during a town hall–type event in a suburb of Minneapolis, as I walked among the crowd taking questions. A white-haired, otherwise polite supporter expressed her concern that Obama couldn’t be trusted because he was an Arab. I took the microphone from her. “No, ma’am,” I corrected her. “He’s a decent family man and citizen whom I happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues. That’s what elections are for.”
Obviously, this was before our contemporary understanding of how the Internet is used to spread conspiracy theories and calumnies about candidates to people with an appetite for that sort of thing or an inability to discern what could be true from something spawned in the fever dreams of people who should probably seek psychiatric help. Today, of course, Internet nuts and haters find willing recipients for their “ideas” on certain cable news and talk radio shows. At the time, I didn’t have any idea where that crap was coming from, and assumed it was a bigoted reaction to Barack’s name. I’d had to correct the same kind of nonsense on a few previous occasions, so I really didn’t think much of the exchange in Minnesota.
It turned out to be a bigger story than I had expected. I’m sure I didn’t change many hearts and minds, but the publicity seemed to discourage it from happening again or at least happening in a way noticed by me or the press. My response was met with general approval except in a few media quarters. The New York Times claimed I hadn’t refuted the claim that Obama was an Arab. I guess because I hadn’t said, “No, ma’am, he’s not an Arab.” Others criticized me for not making clear that there was nothing wrong with being Arab. I suppose I thought that was obvious. But national campaigns are a funny business, open to different interpretations. Many find it hard to remain impartial and open-minded, and give people the benefit of the doubt. Some are quick to find offense where none was intended, and others to assume benevolence in an obviously malicious act. But I can say with a clear conscience, we did everything we could to avoid taking advantage of people’s prejudices.
There were twenty days left in the campaign after that last debate, and they were a blur. We crisscrossed the country, stopping wherever we thought we were still competitive, staging several rallies a day, making my closing argument four, five, six times a day, which meant shouting myself hoarse, firing up supporters to fight for me. They were the most crowded days of the campaign, with the longest hours in the air and on the ground. It takes a special fortitude to get through it, and an ability to live completely in the moment, not thinking ahead to when it will be over. All the more so if you know you’re losing, as we did. We might not have abandoned all hope, but we were realistic. The odds were heavily against us. We were outspent, out-advertised, and out-organized and we knew it. But you can’t phone in the end of your campaign. You have to appear to the world as if you believe you can win and are fighting like hell to do it. Down-ballot races depend on it. Staff depend on your example to find the wherewithal to do their jobs. The country expects it. I took every chance I had to make my case to the American people, campaigning in almost every competitive state in those last frenzied days, which included the morning of Election Day, when I made two last-minute campaign stops in Colorado and New Mexico, my shredded voice barely audible.
Oddly enough, I enjoyed the experience. I knew then I would likely never again hear a crowd roar their approval of me like that. It’s pretty intoxicating, and I wanted to remember what it felt like, so I hit hard every line I knew brought people to their feet. You would have thought we were winning at some of those events. They were almost joyous. We tried to keep things light on the plane, too, teasing each other, relying on gallows humor, swapping old stories with Lindsey, Joe, and other friends who had come along for the last ride.
The end came swiftly. By five o’clock Arizona time, we knew we had lost. As soon as the polls closed in California, every news organization called the race for Senator Obama. I immediately took the stage with Sarah and our spouses to concede the race to the man who had been my opponent and would now be my President. As I mentioned, I don’t like to lose. But I had a while to prepare for this loss, and I was ready to move on that night. Every defeated candidate says it, and some mean it, that the honor of running is much greater than the pain of losing. It is. I gave it my best shot. I did some things right and some things wrong. I had the rare privilege of being seriously considered for the job of commander in chief of the greatest armed forces in the world, and leader of the free world. I fought for it as hard as I knew how, and I lost. But who could resent any disappointment who had had such an opportunity? In a couple days, I would plan with friends and aides in the comfortable surroundings of our place up north my legislative agenda for the upcoming Congress, and the role I should play in national debates to come.
I felt, too, on that balmy Arizona night, that my opponent’s election said something important about the country that my election obviously wouldn’t have. I wanted my concession to underscore that point respectfully.
I’ve always believed that America offers opportunities to all who have the industry and will to seize it. Senator Obama believes that, too. But we both recognize that though we have come a long way from the old injustices that once stained our nation’s reputation and denied some Americans the full blessings of American citizenship, the memory of them still had the power to wound.
A century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt’s invitation of Booker T. Washington to visit—to dine at the White House—was taken as an outrage in many quarters. America today is a world away from the cruel and prideful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the election of an African American to the presidency of the United States. Let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on earth.
I thanked my supporters, friends, and family. I thanked Sarah and her family. I thanked Arizonans for letting me keep my day job. I thanked God for making me an American. Then I said goodbye, took Cindy home, and looked forward to regaining my freedom in the morning, and to all the wonderful days to come.
CHAPTER THREE
* * *
About Us
I WAS IN MY SENATE office on September 11, 2001, and watched in horror as the second plane struck the south tower of the World Trade Center. I had been alerted with thousands of others to flee the Capitol because another attack was imminent. I heard American Airlines Flight 77 slam into the Pentagon, and saw the destruction a few hours later. When a reporter asked me the next day if I had something to say to the terrorists responsible for the mass murders of the day before, I answered, “We are coming. God may have mercy on you, but we won’t.” I was angry and I wanted retribution. I understand why Americans responsible for protecting our country from new attacks in those terrible days after September 11 might have felt
justified in taking extreme measures to track down those who murdered innocent people in the name of God. Bad things happen in war. Good people do things they would object to or even recoil from in peacetime. The CIA had received considerable criticism, some of it justified, some of it not, for failing to prevent the 9/11 attacks. So had other intelligence and security agencies. So had the Bush White House, which had been in office for less than eight months. There was a desperate quality to decision making at Langley and in the White House after three thousand Americans were killed in one day of terror, a desperate desire not to be caught unaware again, a desperate intention to leave nothing to chance, a desperate conviction to do whatever had to be done, even if forbidden by values we would otherwise uphold, to protect Americans from future atrocities of that magnitude or worse, and to bring our enemies to heel.
I understand the reasons that governed the decision to resort to interrogation methods that were assigned the banal classification “enhanced interrogation techniques (EIT).” I know that those who used them and those who approved them wanted to protect Americans from harm. I appreciate their dilemma and the strain of their duty. But as I have argued many times, they were wrong to do so, politically, intellectually, and morally wrong. It was a decision that gravely damaged the interests, reputation, and influence of the United States.
Abdel Hakim Belhaj is a civil engineer by training and an Islamist militant by calling. He fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in 1988 beside mujahedeen led by Osama bin Laden, whom Belhaj acknowledged meeting. With other Libyan veterans of the Afghanistan war, he helped organize an insurgent force in armed rebellion against Muammar al-Qaddafi’s regime, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which tried and failed several times to assassinate Qaddafi. He became the group’s emir in 1996. When Qaddafi’s forces crushed the LIFG in 1998, the survivors fled the country, and many returned to Afghanistan. Belhaj did not have many potential refuges to choose from. The Libyan government had prioritized his capture, and pressured countries in the region not to admit him. He eventually made his way back to Afghanistan. Many LIFG exiles in Afghanistan formed alliances with the Taliban or joined al-Qaeda. Though there were reports to the contrary, and Belhaj admits to having met bin Laden again, he denies ever allying with either group, and claims to have rejected bin Laden’s fatwas against Americans and his invitations to join his World Islamic Front. “We focused on Libya,” Belhaj told a New York Times reporter. “Global fighting was not our goal.”