November 01, 2008	Saturday	Ziqa'ad 2, 1429

DEFIANCE (Ohio), Oct 31: Republican John McCain has been called a maverick, a hero and a survivor. But the title the longtime Arizona senator wants most is US president.

The prize has long eluded him. At 72, McCain would be the oldest president to begin a first term in the White House and he has struggled hard to get this close.

In the heated final days of the campaign before Tuesday’s election, opinion polls show McCain trailing Democrat Barack Obama nationally and in once-secure Republican states.

Being down has not stopped McCain before.

He endured more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, made his name in Congress with skirmishes over policy that often put him at odds with his party and fought a bruising battle for the Republican nomination in 2000 that he lost to George W. Bush, then the governor of Texas.

MAVERICK: McCain’s Senate career solidified his reputation as a maverick. He clashed with Republican colleagues over immigration, climate change and campaign finance reform.

He supported Bush’s plan to go to war in Iraq but later lambasted the administration for its handling of the conflict and for a permissive attitude to torturing prisoners, a sensitive subject for a former POW.

This presidential campaign has had massive ups and downs.

A year ago it nearly crumbled, forcing McCain to shed staff and fight suggestions that his White House hopes were over.

The opposite occurred. More comfortable as an underdog than the frontrunner, McCain cut costs, regrouped and took another gamble with his strong support for Bush’s “surge” strategy of sending more US troops into Iraq.

Saying he said would rather lose a campaign than lose a war, McCain won his bet as security in Iraq improved and he locked up his party’s nomination.

“When the war in Iraq was going badly and the public lost confidence, John stood up and called for more troops. And now we’re winning,” said Fred Thompson, a former senator and presidential contender, at the Republican convention. But the job losses, home foreclosures and recession threats of the economic crisis have trumped the war for voters and McCain’s efforts at economic fluency have largely fallen flat.

His comment that US economic fundamentals were strong dogged him for weeks and a gamble to suspend his campaign to help broker a Wall Street bailout in Washington backfired.

So, in the final days before Americans vote on Tuesday, McCain has embraced the underdog role again and proclaimed confidence despite being behind in the polls.

—Reuters