McCain, O'Toole, and the battle

Sen. Kevin O'Toole (R-Essex).: Politicker file photo 

MINNEAPOLIS - It’s several hours until Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) takes the stage downtown at the Xcel Center and one of his supporters sits in a hotel where the New Jersey delegation is housed, and he reflects on the years he’s spent in support of this man who would be president.

Soon he will again observe McCain in person.

State Sen. Kevin O’Toole (R-Essex), a state campaign co-chair for McCain, goes back to 2000 in his support. But it was during the 2008 Republican presidential primary that he deepened his respect for the Arizona senator and recognized up close what he sees as McCain’s particular leadership qualities.

"He came into Hamilton - and look, I’ve been in politics going back to 1984, I’ve been around presidents and the rest of it, it’s heady stuff - but we were sitting in the back of a bus that day in Hamilton: Baroni, and Sean Kean and others who have long supported McCain," O’Toole says. "Lindsay Graham and Joe Lieberman were there, and so was John McCain."

The presidential candidate talked strategy, and seated with him, O’Toole, the Essex County political insider who came up in politics the hard way, says unabashedly that he felt he was in the presence of greatness.

"We went into the packed firehouse in Hamilton and the electricity was beyond description," O’Toole remembers. "McCain thanked Baroni and me, and we’re all somewhat jaded by politics, but it was a human moment. I was proud, because I believe Sen. McCain is a sincere person, and I believe in my heart that he will be our next president."

Son of an American GI and Korean national who’s gone through his own tough campaigns, including an especially bitter one last year when his Republican primary opponent injected racial slurs into the fight, O’Toole gets the war hero factor with McCain.

He likes the way McCain - at every juncture of his life - demonstrated guts.

"He’s faced the worst - prison, torture, cancer - and he has survived and prospered," says O’Toole. "This is a man who actually believes in the platitudes of country first."

As much as the presidential candidate’s own scars, O’Toole argues that McCain breaks from the ranks of his party enough to earn the title of maverick: in the areas of campaign finance reform; judicial appointments; and the Iraq War, when he took an early hardline stance in favor of a troop surge.

"McCain should be given another award for bravery for insisting on the troop surge," O’Toole says.

Still, it is the Republican Party that gave the country nearly eight years of President George W. Bush - whose approval rating is a nearly bottomed out 15 percent among New Jersey voters, according to a Strategic Vision poll. However substantially McCain may stand on his own, he remains the member of a party which fielded a president whom Democrats, but more significantly, many independents, deem an outright failure and embarrassment.

Asked if, as a simple matter of collective penance, Bush should sink McCain as a consequence of Bush-era backlash from voters, O’Toole says no way, McCain has defined himself too well, and opposed Bush too often.

"You can’t put Bush and McCain in the same column or category," says the state senator. "John McCain for years has uniquely been earning the right to serve our country as president, while George Bush has the career path you might associate with the more typical Republican candidate, which is why eight years ago he emerged as the primary winner over McCain. I’m not saying the party is correcting itself with McCain. McCain has demonstrated to the county that he is ready to assume the mantle of the presidency."

O’Toole won’t dismiss Bush.

"He managed to be our commander-in-chief at a difficult time," he says, offering what most Republicans here argue amid the onslaught of Bush backwash: no terror attack since 9/11.

Like most in his party, O’Toole hesitates to identify philosophical differences with the sitting president, choosing instead to highlight Bush’s poor performance in communicating a coherent message to Americans in tough times.

Two months from Election Day, O’Toole instead trains his sights on Obama, Obama’s running mate, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), and the media.

"Obama opposed the Iraq War from the beginning. Biden voted to give the president the authority to go to war," says O’Toole. "Biden and Obama offer a very puzzling contrast. At this most dangerous time, we need a strong leader. When Obama talks about sitting down with the leader of Iran, it seems to me to be frighteningly naive."

The senator calls the media’s coverage of McCain running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin "extraordinarily unfair," specifically citing a US Weekly magazine headline, "Babies, Scandals, and Lies," that ran over a picture of the governor.

"This is from a publisher who’s a personal friend of Obama’s, who two weeks earlier ran a Michelle Obama puff piece," O’Toole fumes. "Whatever the media does won’t work. She’s going to go around it. She’s been received as a rock star by the people."

The little-known Palin has not yet consented to a serious national interview.

To O’Toole right now, it doesn’t matter. He likes Palin, thinks she was a solid pick. But it’s McCain on the ticket: the tough, old, honorable war hero, in O’Toole’s eyes - who keeps O’Toole in this battle.