McCain attempts to breathe new life into campaign
By Steve Holland 1 hour, 42 minutes ago
PORTSMOUTH, New Hampshire (Reuters) - Faced with questions about his age and all-out support for the
Iraq war, Republican U.S. Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) pitched his experience in seeking to breathe fresh life into his presidential campaign on Wednesday in New Hampshire.
On a cool, gray day in the state that holds the country's first presidential primary election next January, the 70-year-old formally launched his bid to succeed George W. Bush as president in the November 2008 race with a speech in Portsmouth and later, in Manchester.
He would become the oldest person to be elected president.
Ronald Reagan won in 1980 at age 69.
McCain, a cancer survivor, wore a dark sweater and no tie and confronted the age question head on as he takes on a younger Republican field that includes former New York
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who has now overtaken him in the most national polls, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
"We face formidable challenges, I'm not afraid of them. I'm prepared for them. I'm not the youngest candidate. But I am the most experienced," he told a crowd of several hundred cheering supporters.
McCain is trying to recreate the magic of his 2000 campaign when he beat Bush in New Hampshire by 18 percentage points. His bus, the "Straight Talk Express," motored him across the state trying to rev up support and convince voters he is basically the same candidate now.
"I'm the same," he told reporters who asked if he was more conservative now than then. "I'm exactly the same as I was -- a slight bit older, but the same as I was."
After starting his campaign months ago as the presumed front-runner, McCain has trailed Giuliani and Romney in all-important campaign fund raising, a problem he blamed on himself -- "I didn't work as hard as I should."
This week McCain replaced his finance director and scheduled more fund-raising events to coincide with a campaign swing that takes him to South Carolina on Thursday then on to Iowa, Nevada and his home state of Arizona.
A leading reason for McCain's troubles has been his vigorous support for the unpopular Iraq war at a time when many Americans are weary of the conflict and eager to return U.S. troops home.
"We all know that the war in Iraq has not gone well. We've made mistakes and we have paid grievously for them," he said. "We have changed the strategy that failed us, and we have begun to make a little progress."
But McCain, who spent five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, was unsparing in his criticism of how the war was conducted initially, saying the country should never undertake a war without a comprehensive plan for success.
"We did not meet this responsibility initially. And we must never repeat that mistake again," McCain said.
"What about a good reason?" a man shouted from the crowd.
Without mentioning names, McCain seemed to take shots at Giuliani, who was New York mayor during the September 11 attacks, and Bush by raising questions about American preparedness for terrorist attack or national calamity, an apparent reference to Hurricane Katrina.
Americans will not accept, he said, "that firemen and policemen are unable to communicate with each other in an emergency because they don't have the same radio frequency" or the "government's failure to deliver bottled water to dehydrated babies or rescue the infirm from a hospital with no electricity" or take care of wounded veterans.
Outside the barricades surrounding the Portsmouth event, a small group of protesters held up signs with slogans including "U.S. Out of Iraq."