Senator John McCain, a leading candidate for the Republican nomination to be the next president, made a pilgrimage to the Hoover Institution yesterday to address fellows and woo donors with a speech that outlined for the first time his plan to create a “League of Democracies.”

Speaking before more than 150 people in an underground auditorium adjacent to the Hoover Tower, the Arizona Republican took a hard line stance on Russia and China, criticized unilateralism, and called on the democratic nations of the world to “strike a new grand bargain for the future.”

“New dangers have arisen, great powers are emerging and seek to shift the international balance of power, and we are in the midst of two wars whose outcome will shape our future,” he said. “Today the talk is of the war on terror, a war in which we must succeed. But the war on terror cannot be the only organizing principle of American foreign policy.”

In more than 3,000 words of prepared text that he read from a teleprompter, McCain did not use the word “Iraq” once. But at a press conference after the address, the senator defended the ongoing U.S. troop surge. It was the fourth anniversary of President George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech, and the same day the president vetoed a Democratic bill that would have created a timetable for withdrawal.

“I would much rather lose a campaign than lose a war,” McCain said.

Courting the Institution

The visit came less than a month after former Secretary of State George Shultz, a distinguished fellow and moral leader of the Institution, endorsed McCain in his bid for president.

“John McCain is a passionate leader who believes in the inherent benefits of freedom and liberty,” Shultz said when he made his endorsement. “He understands the enormous threat terrorism poses to our way of life and is prepared to fight and win the war from the first day he steps foot in office.”

Shultz and the Hoover Institution were important to the successful candidacy of George W. Bush. In 1999, then Texas Governor Bush met current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was then Stanford’s Provost. Several fellows played prominent advisory roles in the president’s campaigns.

Much like the Republican Party, right-leaning Hoover fellows are torn between an eclectic mix of candidates. In February, Hoover Senior Fellow John Cogan signed on as co-chair of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s economic advisory team and Senior Fellow Michael Boskin joined former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s Presidential Exploratory Committee.

Distancing from Bush

In his noon speech, McCain distanced himself from the Bush administration, saying he would never start a war with too few troops and that he would reach out to Democrats in Congress. His proposal for a new multilateral institution of democratic states seemed to contrast with the current president’s penchant for unilateral action.

“When we fight a war, we must fight to win,” he said. “We cannot build an enduring peace based on freedom by ourselves. Nor do we want to.”

Hoover research Fellow Bill Whalen said McCain was trying to stake out a clear position in the Republican field.

“It was a policy speech, not a political speech, and you don’t get too many of those in campaign years,” he said. “He showed a serious sense of gravitas. He was talking about solutions and progress. That’s presidential.”

McCain is in California for a debate tomorrow at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley. The longtime media darling is hoping to reestablish his appeal among independent voters by promoting a strain of conservative pragmatism.

“In order to regain his mojo, if you will, McCain has to score points with political independents,” Whalen said. “He’s trying to show he’s the same John McCain as he was back in 2000.”

A League of Democracies

The centerpiece of yesterday’s talk was the commitment to making a new League of Democracies, which McCain said could pressure authoritarian states to change their ways and be more effective than the United Nations.

“This would not be like the universal-membership and failed League of Nations of Woodrow Wilson but much more like what Theodore Roosevelt envisioned: like-minded nations working together in the cause of peace,” McCain said. “The new League of Democracies would form the core of an international order of peace based on freedom. It could act where the UN fails to act.”

Political Science Prof. Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Hoover and one of the world’s foremost experts on democracy, called McCain’s speech eloquent, “in the tradition of Kennedy and Reagan and Wilsonian internationalism.”

“I particularly like the potential for it to authorize humanitarian intervention and common action to defend democracy and human rights when the UN Security Council cannot be mobilized to do so,” he said in an email to The Daily.

But analysts said the sketch provided by McCain left many questions unanswered, like who would decide what countries are democracies, what would happen when a country became repressive and how would the international community respond to an initiative spearheaded by the unpopular United States. Organizations like the European Union and the Organization of American States already have language which requires member states to be democracies.

“It’s not enough just to fight authoritarianism and wave the flag of democracy and human rights around the world,” Diamond said. “Once we get democratic breakthroughs, we have to figure out how to make democracy work to deliver just, accountable, effective government. McCain has virtually nothing to say about that. And sadly, neither, so far, do any of the other candidates.”

In his speech, McCain disputed the idea that he was being overly idealistic.

“It is the truest kind of realism,” he said. “Today, as in the past, our interests are inextricably linked to the global progress of our ideals. The vision of a new era of enduring peace based on freedom is not a Republican vision. It is not a Democratic vision. It is an American vision.”

The Campa

Not far from campus, Romney spoke with the Western Association of Venture Capitalists. He was also set to meet with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last night in Sacramento.

After his speech, McCain headed south to Orange County where he was planning to tour a Vietnamese market with Republican state assemblyman Van Tran before heading off to a fundraiser.

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