Exclusive Interview With John McCain

Photo by Ramin Talaie/Corbis

John McCain  says he knows why older Americans favor him by double-digit margins in this election: They “respect experience, proven judgment and a strong record of leadership,” he told the AARP Bulletin. Those attributes come as you age, of course. If elected, the Republican candidate would, at 72, become the oldest president to begin a first term.

“I stay in good shape—before I began my campaign, I hiked the Grand Canyon rim to rim—and I have a good bill of health,” McCain said. “The demands of the presidency are tough on anyone, regardless of age, but I know I can handle it.”

Much more than age differentiates the two presidential candidates. Both McCain and Barack Obama keep stressing their differences—and there are many—on substantive issues that include health care, Social Security, retirement plans and taxes.

Health care has emerged as a sleeper issue of the campaign and one that strikes at the heart of many Americans, not just those over 50. While spending on medical needs is up, 45 million Americans don’t have health insurance.

Medicare McCain was characteristically blunt when asked by the Bulletin about his vote against the Medicare Part D program that now covers at least some drug costs for about 24 million older Americans. “The prescription drug benefit was the wrong solution to the wrong problem,” he said.

Instead, according to McCain, the nation should focus first on helping the uninsured and older people who can’t afford medicines. Under the drug benefit, he said, middle-class Americans are subsidizing wealthier Americans, who could afford to pay for their prescriptions. “It did not make any sense to spend billions to create a huge new entitlement that covers people who don’t really need it,” McCain said.

By initiating Part D, the Bush administration and Congress have taken the nation in the wrong direction, he said. He plans to do things differently, though he stopped short of calling for a repeal of the program.

McCain and Obama, who has called for reforming the prescription drug program, both want to lower prices by importing drugs from other countries. McCain would also allow faster introduction of less expensive generic drugs and encourage greater competition in the biotechnology market. But McCain opposes giving the government a disproportionate influence on drug prices by, for example, buying medicine in bulk to keep prices low. Obama favors such a plan.

“Research is expensive, and it brings new cures and treatments, and government price controls could undermine the research efforts that offer hope for Americans facing deadly diseases,” McCain said.

Health care McCain has had a lot of experience with health care. He endured numerous operations for injuries sustained while he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He has also battled through several bouts of skin cancer, and numerous checkups since then have revealed no recurrence of the cancer. As a senator and a Navy retiree, he gets health insurance that provides good coverage and premium protection, and he says he wants to help Americans who aren’t as fortunate.

“Addressing health care costs to ensure access to affordable and quality care for all Americans will be a top priority on day one of my administration, day two, day three and every day after that,” he said.

While Obama favors expanding federal health care programs, McCain wants to replace the personal tax exclusion for employer-financed health care with individual tax credits and health savings accounts that encourage people to save for medical expenses. McCain’s tax credit plan calls for a $2,500 credit for an individual and $5,000 for a family.

Those amounts won’t cover the entire costs of health insurance, he said. But for people who have no coverage, the credits will help them buy into a plan. And for workers who have coverage through an employer, his plan would pay for that coverage and leave some money left over to stash in a tax-preferenced health savings account.

Social Security Social Security offers another sharp contrast between the candidates. McCain, who initially endorsed President Bush’s proposal to create private accounts within Social Security, now supports supplementing the current system with personal accounts. But that’s no substitute for addressing stresses on the system that threaten promised benefits, he said.

McCain’s approach is less specific than Obama’s proposal to narrow Social Security’s funding gap with a tax on incomes that exceed $250,000 a year; he rejects tax increases of any kind and calls for bipartisan negotiations. He won’t “hand off to an unluckier generation a system that’s broken, I promise you that,” he said. “And it is broken and you know it and I know it and we’re going to fix it and we’re going to make the case to the nation that the Republicans and Democrats have to sit down together and fix this system.”

McCain said his support for lower taxes on investment and business income is linked to Social Security solvency: Lower taxes would lead to economic growth and increased productivity, which would generate payroll taxes that are essential to keeping Social Security functioning.

Spending As for the federal debt and the annual budget deficit, McCain plans to weed out “wasteful spending” and pork barrel projects. “I will declare a one-year spending pause on all discretionary spending programs” except for the military and veterans, he told the Bulletin. “[I will] conduct a comprehensive review of all spending programs, and take back earmarked funds and add-ons from 2007 and 2008, and balance the budget by 2013.”

That would come in the last year of his term, when, at age 76, McCain might be looking forward to a second term, in which he would become the nation’s oldest sitting president. He has a good role model for living long and well. His 96-year-old mother, Roberta, is sharp and conversant and has the memory of someone half her age.

“She’s still my most constant and active critic, and I seek her advice often,” McCain said. “She’s a perfect example of how much we can benefit as a society from the wisdom of our elders.”

The Bulletin's interview with Barack Obama>>

Elaine S. Povich’s John McCain: A Biography is due out in December.