Sen. John McCain stood before hundreds of flag-waving veterans and their families Monday and vowed not to waver in his support of the Iraq War. “Even,” he said, “if I must stand athwart popular opinion.”
Sen. Barack Obama addressed a separate audience of veterans and received vigorous applause when he declared, “As many of you know, my intention is to bring this war in Iraq to a close and to start bringing home our troops in an orderly fashion.”
If Labor Day is the traditional opener to the fall presidential race, this Memorial Day offered at least a preview into the summertime duel between McCain and Obama, who for the first time were campaigning in the same swing state on the same day.
As McCain spoke about the costs and sacrifices of the Iraq War at the Veterans’ Memorial in Albuquerque, Obama praised the patriotism of America’s soldiers before taking voters’ questions — and hearing their frustrations about Iraq and a host of other concerns — at an outdoor forum here.
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The campaign stops provided a window into how both men, should they become the nominees of their respective parties, are shaping their candidacies, employing the power of their biographies and honing their arguments in their appeal to voters.
Will the Iraq War and the nation’s security once again be the chief concerns to voters in the general election? In a 20-minute speech, McCain made 14 references to Iraq. Later he invited Obama to join him on a tour of Iraq. (Obama did not immediately say whether he would accept.)
“As long as there is a reasonable prospect for succeeding in this war,” McCain said, “then we must not choose to lose it.”
Or will economic anxieties at home and a fierce disapproval over the direction of the country be of higher concern to voters? In 10 minutes of prepared remarks, Obama did not mention Iraq, raising it only when someone in the audience spoke critically of the war in a 30-minute question-and-answer session.
“It’s going to take some work,” Obama said, ticking through a lengthy list of domestic challenges awaiting the next president, including health care and improving the quality of life for veterans. “It might even take two terms.”
Here in New Mexico, a clear and breezy holiday provided something of a soft launch for the budding contest between McCain and Obama. The outlines have been coming into sharper focus in recent weeks but were framed even more distinctively on Monday as a generational divide, presenting diverging backgrounds and far different life experiences to voters.
Of course, the Democratic nominating fight is not yet complete.
Sen. Hillary Clinton spent the day in Puerto Rico, campaigning for the island’s June 1 primary. But Obama’s decision to invest time here — rather than Puerto Rico or Montana and South Dakota, where the final primaries take place June 3 — suggested that the decision not to declare victory was simply a formality.
It was no accident that McCain and Obama staged their Memorial Day campaigning in New Mexico, which for the last two presidential cycles has been more closely divided than any other state. (In 2004, President George W. Bush won the state by 5,988 votes, while in 2000 Al Gore defeated Bush by 366 votes.)
Gov. Bill Richardson, who two months ago endorsed Obama, said the Western states were fertile turf for Democrats. But McCain’s home state, Arizona, and his popularity among some Hispanic voters present Obama with a challenge.
“It’s significant that they are here,” Richardson said in an interview. “Western states will get priority attention.”