Rivals split on U.S. power, but ideas defy labels

By David E. Sanger

updated 5:26 a.m. ET Oct. 23, 2008

WASHINGTON - John McCain has said his worldview was formed in the Hanoi Hilton, the jail where as a prisoner of war he learned to stand up to his country’s enemies and lost any youthful naïveté about what happens when America shows weakness.

Barack Obama has written that his views began to take shape in the back streets of Jakarta, where he lived as a young boy and saw the poverty, the human rights violations and the fear inspired by the American-backed Indonesian dictator Suharto.

It was there, Mr. Obama wrote in his second autobiography, that he first absorbed the “jumble of warring impulses” that make up American foreign policy, and received a street-level understanding of how foreigners react to “our tireless promotion of American-style capitalism” and to Washington’s “tolerance and occasional encouragement of tyranny, corruption and environmental degradation.”

As the campaigns tell the story, those radically different experiences in different corners of Southeast Asia have created two men with sharply different views about the proper use of American power.

Mr. McCain’s campaign portrays him as an experienced warrior who knows how to win wars and carries Theodore Roosevelt’s big stick, even if he occasionally strays from Roosevelt’s advice about speaking softly. Mr. Obama’s campaign portrays him as a cerebral advocate of patient diplomacy, the antidote to the unilateral excesses of the Bush years, who knows how to build partnerships without surrendering American interests.

But as the campaign has unfolded, both men have been forced into surprising detours. They may have formed their worldviews in Hanoi and Jakarta, but they forged specific positions amid the realities of an election in post-Iraq, post-crash America — where judgment sometimes collides with political expediency.

The result has included contradictions that do not fit the neat hawk-and-dove images promoted by each campaign. As spelled out in presidential debates, in written answers provided by their campaigns, and in an interview with Mr. McCain in January, some of their views appear as messy and unpredictable as the troubles one of them will inherit.

For example, it is Mr. McCain — the man who amended the words of a Beach Boys song last year to joke about bombing Iran’s nuclear sites — who says he could imagine a situation in which Iran’s behavior changes so much that he would be willing “to consider” allowing Iran to enrich its own uranium, producing a fuel that could be used for nuclear power — but only under highly restrictive conditions that ensure it could never be used for weapons.

Video   Obama defends foreign policy competency Oct. 22: He says he expected to be challenged if elected, but brushed off suggestions that a crisis might be created just to test him. Nightly News

Mr. Obama, the candidate who has expressed far more willingness to sit down and negotiate with the Iranians, said in an e-mail message passed on by an aide that in any final deal he would not allow Iran to produce uranium on Iranian soil, the same hard-line view enunciated by the Bush administration.

Consider the delicate issue of Pakistan, where it is Mr. Obama who has been far more willing than Mr. McCain to threaten sending in American troops on ground raids. Mr. McCain, by contrast, argues that Pakistan must control its territory. “I don’t think the American people today are ready to commit troops to Waziristan,” he said, months before Mr. Bush signed secret orders this summer authorizing ground raids in Pakistan, including the violent sanctuaries of North and South Waziristan.

More from NYTimes.com One Town’s Rare Ray of Hope: New Auto Plant An Effort to Save a City by Shrinking It Lawmaker Is Said to Have Agreed to Aid Lobbyists Pressure Grows to Investigate Interrogations Crisis or Not, Russia Will Build a Bridge in the East External links

Mr. McCain, now the Republican nominee, agreed to an interview during the primary campaign. Obama aides answered questions at length, but Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee, citing the pressures of time in the campaign, declined requests dating to June to be interviewed in detail on how he would handle potential confrontations beyond Iraq that could face the next president.

It is worth remembering that presidential campaigns are usually terrible predictors of presidential decision-making. John F. Kennedy said virtually nothing about building up troops in Vietnam in 1960, nor did Richard M. Nixon talk in 1968 about engineering an opening to China. George W. Bush, in an interview at his ranch 10 days before his first inaugural in 2001, lamented that sanctions against Saddam Hussein looked like “Swiss cheese” but did not appear, at that time, to be heading toward a military confrontation with him.

MORE FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

The New York Times Section Front

NYT: Canadian chefs add seal to the menu NYT: Ruling offers little guidance on fair hiring NYT: Political shifts on gay rights lag behind culture New rights for transgender workers Privacy may be a victim in cyber plan How the U.S. surplus became a deficit Stimulus keeping Sun Belt cool Obama plans big health care push Sotomayor’s focus on race may be hurdle Abortion backers uneasy on Sotomayor The New York Times Section Front