John McCain: "I Have Not Yet Begun To Fight."

Dear Friends,

I want to take this opportunity to report to you directly on where things stand and where we are going in this current campaign. We have a little more than four months to go until the first ballots are cast. The votes in this primary will determine who represents our party in a contest that will decide the leadership of this country for the next four years. These will be critical years for our country, and we need to come out of this election with a President who is willing to talk honestly about our nation’s challenges. I’ve never tried to be all things to all people, and I can’t claim to have the answer to every problem. But there are certain key challenges where the time to act is now, and I will not sit idly by and watch as the buck is passed to the next generation because we in Washington lacked the courage or the wisdom to do what needed to be done.

The War Against Islamic Extremism

The challenge that is foremost in my mind as an American, a Senator, a veteran, and a father of two soldiers and five other children, is the need for a comprehensive strategy in the struggle against terrorism spawned by Islamic extremism. For nearly three decades, through administrations led by both Republicans and Democrats, we watched the threat build and did little to contain it. We could no longer ignore the threat after it exploded onto our shores on September 11, 2001. Since that time our nation has joined the battle on multiple fronts, some with greater success than others.

We are at a crossroads in this struggle, and we will need a President who has the credibility to lead, the experience to lead wisely, and the strength of will to take the right path, even if it means walking a lonely road. I have spoken elsewhere at length and in detail about the strategy I propose. We need a larger military, real intelligence reform, increased contributions from our civilian agencies, and a public committed to victory in Iraq. Leading America toward achieving these goals will be a test of resolve, and I will pass that test.

Securing our future from the terrorist threat is a battle with external forces, but there is a related battle we must fight with ourselves. We cannot surrender to the terrorists, but we must also not surrender to our fear. We must resist at all costs the temptation to believe that we can protect America by sacrificing the values that make it worth protecting. The second challenge that motivates my campaign and will animate my Presidency is the development of a comprehensive legal and diplomatic strategy that allows us to battle a modern threat without betraying the ideals that have defined our nation since its birth more than two centuries ago. The world is watching, and we live in a time when the images we project cannot be erased.

I am not naive. I know only too well the tools some governments have resorted to when threatened: indefinite detention without trial, torture of prisoners, and a belief that anything is permissible in dark places where power is the only law. But these tools are not American tools, and the easy way is not the American way. We must remain true to our ideals not in spite of the threats we face, but because of them. In the decades to come our prosperity and security will depend in part on what people in distant corners of the globe see when they turn their eyes toward America. As President, I would do everything within my power to ensure that they continue to see what they have seen for over two hundred years: a nation that remains fully worthy of Abraham Lincoln’s belief that we who participate in the American experiment hold in our hands the destiny of the “last, best hope of earth.”

Government Reform and Fiscal Responsibility

Much of the focus in this Presidential campaign is on challenges we face abroad, but I know that the American people are also rightly concerned and fully engaged with difficult issues that we confront here at home. On the domestic front I believe there is a key challenge that the next President must address: We must balance the federal budget to create room for flexibility in responding to our changing needs by reforming government and ending wasteful government spending. Government, like every American family, cannot spend more than it takes in without eventually facing the consequences. We in Washington, in both parties, have spent ourselves into a hole, and it is not right to expect our future leaders to dig us out of it in ten or fifteen or twenty years. Wasteful earmark spending in Washington has created a culture of corruption that must be ended. The time to act is now.

A growth economy helps give us the revenues we need to address our challenges, but revenues are not enough. We must control the spending side as well. I’ve fought against wasteful spending for decades. Too often it has been a lonely fight, but I have the credibility, experience, and commitment to see the fight through till the end. Controlling spending in areas such as defense procurement, earmarks, discretionary programs and entitlement programs won’t be easy. It will be a test of resolve, and I’ll pass that test. I don’t believe the same can be said for many of my Democratic opponents who are running for President. Each of them has elaborate new programs to propose, but each seems to have forgotten that the first step is to get our fiscal house in order and end the corrupting influence of government earmarks.

Once we’ve shown we can control wasteful pork-barrel spending, the American people will trust us to make the tough compromises that we’ll need in areas such as Social Security and Medicare. Once we’ve made those compromises, our fiscal picture will improve, and we’ll find that we have the flexibility we need to devise new solutions for expanding access to healthcare, improving education, achieving energy independence, and protecting the environment.

Healthcare Reform

An area where we are sorely in need of bold solutions is healthcare. The quality of healthcare available in the United States is the best in the world, and we need to keep it that way. But we need to expand access to that healthcare for those who need it most. In the coming weeks I will propose a healthcare reform plan that will offer a blueprint for expanding access while maintaining quality. This is an area where a few good ideas can go a long way.

We need to lower costs by putting medical records online, implementing medical malpractice reform, permitting individuals to deduct health insurance premiums from their taxes, and allowing small businesses and community groups to pool resources to gain purchasing power for group insurance plans. We need to expand access by making it easier for individuals to maintain health insurance between jobs, and by allowing the purchase of insurance coverage across state lines. We need to make prescription drugs more affordable by allowing reimportation of medicines that are often developed and manufactured in America, only to be sold at lower prices outside of the United States. Finally, we must make sure that HMO’s don’t take advantage of individuals. If we do all of these things, we will see a dramatic improvement in the affordability and accessibility of healthcare in America, and we will have done it without following the strategy of many Democrats, who often seem to want to turn over control of the entire healthcare system to the federal government.

Judges

There is one more challenge I believe we must address. In my time in Congress I have tried as often as possible to do the work of the people in a bipartisan way, but I have always been proud to be a Republican. There are real differences between our two major parties, and one area where I have been proud to stand consistently and firmly with Republican voters relates to the proper role of the federal courts. What I have seen in my years in Congress is that when difficult moral issues are removed from the give and take of the democratic process, passions don’t subside, they boil over. The men who drafted our Constitution understood this, and created a system that encouraged compromise, and allowed different states to take different approaches. Beginning in the 1970s, our courts forgot that wisdom, and we’ve been paying for it ever since.

My position is clear: Issues such as the legal definition of marriage and the proper restrictions on abortion should not be removed from the democratic process; they should be left up to the people, and decided on a state-by-state basis. I would nominate judges who shared that belief. I have consistently fought for the rights of the born and the unborn. Overturning Roe vs. Wade would send this debate back its proper place, to the people in individual states.

The diversity of opinions reflected in public debate on difficult issues need not be a weakness for our country. Our diversity can be our strength, but only if we allow our system to work as intended. Compromise and federalism together could lessen the rancor in Congress and free our elected officials to work in a more cooperative fashion on issues that the federal government can more appropriately resolve, such as strengthening our economy, reforming our tax code, and improving healthcare. This seems like common sense to me, but common sense can be in short supply in Washington. We’ve made progress toward repairing the fabric of our Constitutional system with recent nominations to the Supreme Court.

Having come so far, I believe it would be a grave mistake for our party to lose focus by nominating a candidate whose commitment to restoring the proper role of the courts can credibly be questioned, or whose call for judicial restraint can be characterized by Democrats as reflecting political opportunism rather than longstanding principle.

My friends, I want to thank each of you who has already offered your support, and I want to ask for the support of each voter willing to consider my candidacy. I began my career in public service as a midshipman at the United States Naval Academy. I was by no means a star pupil, but even so I was taught things there I have taken with me till this day. I may have learned the most from the sailor who has been there the longest. The Academy has been a training ground for thousands of America’s finest young men and women, but the tomb beneath its chapel is the final resting place of only one man. He earned our rightful gratitude by fighting alongside countless others to defend America, but he gained his place in history with seven words. The stakes are as high for our country today as they were when he first spoke them. His answer to those who told him the odds were against him is my promise to those who stand with me in this campaign: “I have not yet begun to fight.”

Sincerely,


John McCain