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John McCain doesn't mince words when it comes to Iraq, the State Department and spending.

BY BRIAN M. CARNEY
Saturday, December 15, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

John McCain sits across the table from the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, fielding questions on everything from taxes to torture to terror. He's asked what surprised him the most about the behavior House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid with regard to Iraq. His answer--"their lack of patriotism"--is of the characteristically impolitic kind that often defines his personality. Over the course of a 75-minute conversation, it's on display time and again.

For a candidate who was mostly written off by the media only six months ago, the senior senator from Arizona seems remarkably confident of his primary chances.

Mr. McCain is 71. But the tired, sluggish, former front-runner you may have read about was nowhere in evidence when the senator came to the Journal's offices yesterday. In his place was a combative and--yes--straight-talking candidate with no qualms about rising to a challenge or speaking his mind. In short, he looks once again like the spry 63-year-old who nearly knocked off front-runner George W. Bush eight years ago.

When asked whether he would tag Hillary Clinton as well with a "lack of patriotism," Mr. McCain does dial it down a notch. "Maybe 'lack of patriotism' is too harsh," he allows. "'Putting political ambitions ahead of the national interest' may be a more subtle way" of putting it. He then adds, with a chuckle, "And we all know how subtle I am."

Just how subtle comes across in expanding on Mrs. Clinton's stance on the war and on the surge. "She had that very clever line--I don't know who wrote it for her--that you'd have to suspend disbelief in order to believe that the surge is working. Well, you'd have to suspend disbelief that it's not now." And then, as if confronting her in a presidential debate, he addresses the absent senator from New York directly: "Do you still stand by that statement, Senator Clinton? Do you still believe you'd have to suspend disbelief to believe that this surge is working?"

Mr. McCain is almost as scathing about his own party's behavior in power as he is about Congress's current leaders. Of the Republican congressional majority that was voted out in 2006, he says: "We let spending get out of control. . . . And we would have won the 2006 elections if we had restrained spending. Our base didn't desert us because of the war in Iraq. Our base deserted us because of the Bridge to Nowhere. I'll take you to a town hall tomorrow and I'll say 'Bridge to Nowhere' and everyone in that room will know what I'm talking about. That bridge is more famous than the Brooklyn Bridge."

That version of the events of November 2006 is not universally shared, even within the GOP, but it does serve Mr. McCain's interests pretty well. He has been one of the most prominent and unapologetic supporters of the war in Iraq, even though he at times disagreed with the administration about tactics and strategy.

And he voted against the Bush tax cuts--even though he admits that they helped the economy in the midst of a recession. "We all know that [they helped]. Without a doubt. Without the slightest doubt. Absolutely."

Even so, he defends his opposition to them on the grounds, he told us, that Congress couldn't get spending under control. "I opposed the tax cuts because there was no spending restraint. . . . If we'd enacted spending restraints, we'd be talking about more tax cuts today. And to the everlasting shame and embarrassment of the Republican Party and this administration, we went on a spending spree and we didn't pay for it. . . . And every time I called over to the White House and said, look, you've got to veto these bills, the answer was, 'We'll lose the majority, we'll lose this election, we'll lose the speaker.' Well, you know what happened."

The words "I told you so" don't quite pass his lips, but his sense of vindication is plain enough.

As for the tax cuts themselves, he now pledges that he would fight to make them permanent. "I will not agree to any tax increase," he says. And then once more for emphasis: "I will not agree to any tax increase."

His combativeness is on display again when the subject of interrogation techniques is raised. It's a subject on which the Journal's editorial board has been critical of Mr. McCain in the past. Does he assert, he is asked, that techniques such as waterboarding never produce reliable information?

He turns it back on the questioner: "I do assert that America's moral image in the world is badly damaged when it comes out that we torture people. . . . I do assert that we're going to win this battle against al Qaeda on ideological grounds."

Then he adds: "So my assertion is that it's fascinating, it's fascinating, that those who have served in the military--particularly in positions of responsibility--almost all of them say, 'Don't do it.' Those who have never served, those who have never heard a shot fired in anger and never will, say, 'Let's torture the hell out of them. Let's take them to the rack. Let's do what the Spanish Inquisition invented.' "

That last is a caricature, and given the jab at "those who have never served," it might even come across as a mean-spirited one, but Mr. McCain manages to put it across without any evident derision in his demeanor or voice. On the contrary, it is said almost amiably.

Likewise, when he's asked what he thinks about the State Department, he delivers the jab with a smile: "Sometimes you have a little personal bias when you find out that they nearly rebelled when the secretary of state said all of them had to go serve in Iraq. I mean, please. Please." He continues: "I think we ought to have a State Department that understands that service to the country is what they're all about. And if that means going into countries where there may be some danger in serving, then by God that's the place they should want to go first." It helps to have volunteered for service in Vietnam if one wants to say that kind of thing.

He doesn't pull any punches with the CIA, either, asking whether it has become a "rogue agency" when queried about the intelligence community's handling of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. On the NIE, he adds: "I want to know why in the world we should have any relaxation with regards to Iran just because they have had a pause in the quickest part of the program to build a nuclear weapon. Meanwhile the enrichment goes on. And they're still exporting the explosive devices. They're still supporting Hamas and Hezbollah. They're still dedicated to the extinction of Israel. What's the change?"

As for direct talks between President Bush and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mr. McCain is once again scathing: "That is the most overrated thing in the world. We know who's going to profit from that. . . . Who gains in stature from face-to-face meetings? That is the ultimate question. . . . If they want to negotiate"--an open question, it would seem, in Mr. McCain's eyes--"we can find lots of ways to negotiate. But say we have to have face-to-face? Come on. Come on. That's just foolishness. And I would not do one thing that would enhance the prestige of the president of Iran."

In Iraq, meantime, Mr. McCain sees events at long last moving in the right direction. "I think this is a seminal moment in American history. I really do. Because we've got a long way to go. Al Qaeda is on the run but they're not defeated, OK?

"And we've got really a long way to go. But I'm telling you, if we could keep going like this for another nine months to a year or so, and get the Maliki government to start functioning effectively--and a lot of things are happening by the way that are not at the highest level--I think you're going to see things happen in the rest of the Middle East.

"The Syrians sent someone to Annapolis [for the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks]. That's good news. The Iranians may be cutting back on the explosive devices. Pakistan: Musharraf is acting as we wanted him to."

In his view, these are all connected, and all related in turn to the reversal of fortunes in Iraq since the surge began. "And I'm convinced that if we can continue this success, you're going to see a change in the Middle East. Plus, some progress on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. If we fail, we're not going to be in the neighborhood and it's every nation and every group for themselves."

Of course, Mr. McCain will have to resign himself to being right but ignored unless he can actually win. And while he may once have been seen as what he calls "the designated successor" to the Republican nomination, he's now a distinct underdog. So he places a lot of emphasis on what he calls the "volatility" of the current race.

"We all know that if I sat here two weeks ago and I said, 'By the way, Huckabee is ahead in Iowa and South Carolina,' you'd just have said, 'Yeah, right.' " He goes on: "I think you're going to see a lot of ups and downs. Sixty percent, 70%, 80% say they're undecided."

He also sees hope, ironically, in the despondency of the GOP faithful. "Our base is dispirited. I'm telling you, our base is dispirited. We're going to have to rev up our base. We're going to have to promise them we're going to stop this spending. We're going to have to promise them that we'll get trust and confidence back with them."

The senator says he doesn't worry too much about the electoral tactics, but he does know what lies ahead. "We've got to win New Hampshire," he says, or at least exceed expectations there. "And then I think we can do well in South Carolina. In South Carolina we've got the base this time. The Attorney General, the Speaker of the House, Lindsay Graham, most of the base."

Whether that's true or not, Mr. McCain still trails by 15 points on average in South Carolina. But assuming he can do well there, "then I think we're obviously very much in the game. What happens to Huckabee, what happens to Rudy, what happens to Romney--all this stuff is in such flux now that it's very difficult to predict and so we're not paying a lot of attention, obviously." Still, he's paying some attention, apparently.

Overall, the impression Mr. McCain gives is that he is enjoying this campaign tremendously. Asked whether he thinks he's running a better campaign since his financing fell off a cliff along with his poll ratings, he shoots back with a laugh, "Do you think I could have run a worse campaign before my finances went south?"

He blames his fall from front-runner status on his leadership on immigration reform, and says, "If I lose this election, it will be on the immigration issue. There's no question in my mind." But as with the other issues he discussed in our meeting, he doesn't give the impression that he regrets his stand for one minute.

Mr. Carney is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.