McCain Grows Testy Over Kerry Questions
By Elisabeth Bumiller New York Times News Service
NEW ORLEANS — Sen. John McCain fielded a question at a public forum on Friday morning in Atlanta that he said he had never been asked before. Because Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., had approached McCain about being his running mate for the White House in 2004, would McCain now return the favor?
McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, who has long been distrusted by conservatives as a Democratic sympathizer, quickly said no — and just as quickly said he had never considered sharing the ticket with Kerry, a friend.
“He is, as he describes himself, a liberal Democrat,” McCain said of Kerry, adding that he meant no offense by the term. “I am a conservative Republican. So when I was approached, when we had that conversation back in 2004, that’s why I never even considered such a thing.”
Later, when McCain was asked by a reporter from The New York Times about the conversation and why he said in an interview with The Times in May 2004 that he had not even had a casual conversation with Kerry on the topic, McCain displayed some of the temper that he is known for but that he has largely kept under control in this campaign.
“Everybody knows I had a conversation,” he testily told the reporter in a news conference on his plane as it headed here from Atlanta. “Everybody knows that, that I had a conversation. There’s no living American in Washington, there’s no one, and you know it, too. You know it. You know it. So I don’t even know why you asked.”
When asked to address when the conversation with Kerry occurred, McCain once again sharply replied, “No, no, because the issue is closed, as far as I’m concerned. Everybody knows it. Everybody knows it in America.”
The issue has become a highly sensitive one to McCain, who is actively courting conservatives.
In May 2004, in an article in The Times about prominent Democrats who wanted McCain to be Kerry’s running mate, McCain was asked by paper whether he had ever discussed the offer of the vice- presidential spot, even casually, with Kerry. McCain paused for a moment and said, “No, we really haven’t.”
An article in June 2004 in The Times reported that Kerry made his first direct overtures to McCain about the vice-presidential spot about three weeks after Kerry had locked up the nomination that March, according to a person who had discussed the matter with the two senators.
Since 2004, senior aides to McCain have readily discussed McCain’s conversations with Kerry about the vice-presidential spot, but McCain has himself rarely talked about those conversations publicly. For that reason, his reply to the question at the public forum at the headquarters of the Chick-fil-A fast-food chain in Atlanta, stood out.
McCain did briefly talk about those discussions in May 2005 in a television interview with Chris Matthews on “Hardball” on MSNBC-TV.
“I got the idea that he wanted to discuss it, clearly,” McCain said then. “But I would not like to go much further.”
He added that “all this stuff is water under the bridge.”
Later, before speaking to a conservative group here, McCain repudiated the views of a prominent Texas televangelist, the Rev. James C. Hagee, who endorsed him last month. Hagee has called the Roman Catholic Church the “anti-Christ” and a “false cult system.”
Despite calls from the Catholic League to renounce the endorsement, McCain said last week that he was proud of Hagee’s spiritual leadership and his commitment to Israel and that “when he endorses me, it does not mean that I embrace everything that he stands for or believes in.”
On Friday, McCain told The Associated Press that he took issue with Hagee’s comments on the Catholic Church.
“I repudiate any comments that are made, including Pastor Hagee’s, if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics,” McCain said, adding that he had sent two of his children to Catholic school.
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