McCain Wields Reagan Against Buchanan

By CATHLEEN DECKER

Sept. 30, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES POLITICAL WRITER

In the shelter of the library dedicated to the man Republicans still long to emulate, presidential contender John McCain on Wednesday used the evocative words of Ronald Reagan to try to shame his fellow candidates about the dust-up over America’s involvement in World War II.

While he did not mention either Patrick J. Buchanan or Texas Gov. George W. Bush by name, McCain blistered the former’s insinuations about America’s entrance into the battle against Hitler and the latter’s failure to sharply criticize those contentions.

Speaking in the auditorium of the Ronald W. Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, McCain quoted at length from Reagan’s own words, uttered at Omaha Beach on the 40th anniversary of D-day in what became one of Reagan’s best-known speeches, the ode to “the boys of Pointe du Hoc.”

“I read these words as a lesson to anyone who would question the courage of those brave men, or who question the necessity of the cause for which they fought,” McCain said after a Reagan passage about the selflessness of the Allied troops who fought against Hitler.

“Let Ronald Reagan’s words stand, too, as a challenge. For not only must Americans be prepared to defend the honor and glory of our country, but to speak out forcefully against those who would urge us to abandon our world leadership.”

While the reference to speaking out forcefully seemed aimed directly at Bush--whom McCain has indirectly criticized for days for not taking Buchanan to task--the Arizona senator and former Vietnam prisoner of war would not criticize the GOP front-runner by name at a press conference after his speech.

“I haven’t discussed Gov. Bush,” McCain said. “There are other candidates who have also taken various positions on it. I can only give my position.”

The controversy over the long-ago war burst into the presidential race last week when McCain criticized Buchanan for suggesting, in a newly published book, that at the time the United States entered World War II, Hitler was not threatening the West. The implication was that the United States should not have entered the war.

With Buchanan leaning toward a third-party run for the presidency, McCain gave him a push, arguing that a candidate with that view of American history does not belong in the Republican Party.

“History is clear as far as I’m concerned,” McCain said Wednesday.

While McCain declared Buchanan a “marginal figure,” Bush has urged the former television commentator to stay in the Republican Party. At a Wednesday campaign appearance in Bakersfield, Bush said simply that Buchanan’s view of history is “wrong.”

“I’d like to whip him in the primary,” he said, according to Associated Press. “I’d like to have his ideas out there in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and see whether or not Republicans embrace or don’t embrace what he stands for.”

The Reagan speech cited by McCain is familiar to many Republican activists, having been widely covered when he delivered it and also used in Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign.

Speaking before surviving Army Rangers who had climbed the Normandy cliffs on D-day, Reagan said: “For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen. Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue.

“Here in Normandy, the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history. . . . These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.”

McCain came to Simi Valley on the third day of his presidential announcement tour. On Wednesday night, he was feted at a fund-raiser at the West Los Angeles home of businessman Rupert Murdoch, and today he was to appear in Seattle and San Diego.

At the Reagan library, McCain met with former First Lady Nancy Reagan but not with the former president, who suffers from Alzheimer’s.