McCain selling Dems short?
Posted: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 8:05 PM by Domenico Montanaro
Filed Under:
2008, Clinton, McCain, Obama
From NBC/NJ’s Carrie Dann
NORTH BEND, Wash. -- In front of the picturesque, if rainy, emerald backdrop of the Cedar River's fir-blanketed peaks, McCain described himself as the greenest of the presidential candidates.
In fact, he says, on the issue of global warming, his competitors haven't earned their green stripes.
"They have never, to my knowledge, been involved in legislation, or hearings, nor engagement on this issue," McCain said today of opponents Obama and Clinton. "I have a long history. I traveled around the world and seen the impacts of climate change on the world."
But that statement doesn't take into account the fact that Clinton accompanied him on two of those trips. McCain traveled with Clinton, who sits on the Environment and Public Works Committee, on two congressional trips to examine climate change issues; one during the summer of 2004 and another -- in 2005 -- to Alaska and Canada.
The trips were hardly forgettable, either. Bill Clinton, for example, frequently references the collaboration between the two senators during campaign speeches on his wife's behalf. And the 2004 trip was the same excursion now famous for the vodka shot-drinking contest between the two colleagues.
Both of McCain's Democratic opponents have supported climate change legislation during their tenures in the Senate. Clinton voted in 2002 on a measure to cap CO2 emissions from power plants, and she backs the Lieberman-Warner bill McCain speaks of as a good model despite being tentative about its lack of focus on nuclear energy.
Obama's resume on environmental policy is not as thick as his colleagues', but it isn't completely void of participation either; in 2007, for example, he sponsored a bipartisan bill to create a national education effort around the climate change issue. The bill was referred to the HELP committee last year.
"While Barack Obama has brought Republicans and Democrats together around plans to raise our fuel standards and invest in renewable energy, John McCain's long history involves opposing countless measures to invest in renewable fuels and alternative energy technology," countered Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan.
It's the shared research tours that might be the sticking point for Team Clinton, which has been vocal in describing the global warming CODELs with McCain as evidence of the New York senator's commitment to bipartisan solutions.
"Senator McCain is welcome to rewrite history if he likes," said Clinton spokesman Phil Singer in an email, "but the reality is that Senator Clinton has been very active on the issue of climate change. She's even traveled with Senator McCain a few times on trips that dealt with the issue."
