McCain gets in digs as he makes race official

In a bid to revive his troubled presidential campaign, Sen. John McCain took broadsides at the Bush administration Wednesday, for its handling of the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina and its treatment of wounded veterans.

The Arizona Republican also joined the ranks of lawmakers calling for Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, a longtime Bush aide, to resign.

McCain, whose support for the Iraq war has proved a major political liability, did not name President Bush as he assailed the administration in a speech formally announcing his White House candidacy.

But McCain, vanquished by Bush in the contest for the 2000 GOP presidential nomination, left no doubt he was targeting his onetime rival. Speaking to hundreds of supporters at a waterfront park overlooking a naval yard, McCain declared he would not lead “a country with a bloated, irresponsible and incompetent government.”

Focusing on Iraq, he bemoaned U.S. “mistakes” in its military involvement there, even as he cited “a little progress” in recent efforts to quell sectarian violence that has racked the country.

“America should never undertake a war unless we are prepared to do everything necessary to succeed, unless we have a realistic and comprehensive plan for success, and unless all relevant agencies of government are committed to that success,” he said. “We did not meet this responsibility initially, and we must never repeat that mistake again.”

McCain, a former Vietnam prisoner of war, has long criticized the administration’s initial efforts to establish security in Iraq after U.S.-led troops toppled President Saddam Hussein.

Still, he has steadfastly backed the continued U.S. military commitment in Iraq; the emphasis he placed on administration failures in his announcement Wednesday was a clear and significant attempt to distance himself from Bush.

He pressed that effort further in an interview on CNN’s “Larry King Live” when he called for Gonzales to step aside because of the controversy over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys.

“I think that out of loyalty to the president, [a resignation by Gonzales] would probably be the best thing that he could do,” McCain said.

A plethora of Democrats on Capitol Hill have pushed for Gonzales’ removal, but only a handful of Republicans have done so.

Once the presumed front-runner for next year’s GOP nomination, McCain has been trailing former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani in national polls for months.

After Bush’s fiercely waged campaign to defeat him in 2000, McCain somewhat begrudgingly backed the president’s reelection in 2004 -- a nod to the party’s conservative base.

More recently, McCain’s outspoken support of Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq has made it hard for the senator to recapture the excitement that his maverick candidacy sparked in 2000 -- especially among independents.

In a measure of his political distress, McCain took a backhanded swipe at Giuliani on Wednesday, following the maxim that a candidate running behind is usually first to attack.

The senator alluded to accusations by Giuliani critics that the former mayor should have done more to fix the notoriously poor New York emergency radio system that broke down in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center.

“When Americans confront a catastrophe, natural or man-made, they have a right to expect basic competence from their government,” McCain said, raising his voice in an otherwise sedate speech. “They won’t accept that firemen and policemen are unable to communicate with each other in an emergency because they don’t have the same radio frequency.”

McCain, who denied later that he was specifically referring to Giuliani, turned next to the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina and its shortcomings in caring for Iraq war veterans at Washington’s Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Americans, he said, “won’t accept government’s failure to deliver bottled water to dehydrated babies or rescue the infirm from a hospital with no electricity. They won’t accept substandard care and indifference for our wounded veterans.”

McCain has been campaigning openly for months, removing any hint of surprise from his formal announcement. But the Portsmouth speech and a rain-drenched rally later in Manchester, N.H., drew a burst of media attention to McCain’s effort to revitalize his campaign.

The stops in New Hampshire, where his victory over Bush in the state’s 2000 primary vaulted him to national prominence, opened McCain’s four-day “announcement tour” of early presidential voting states. He is to campaign today in South Carolina, Friday in Iowa and Saturday in Nevada.

“I’m not the youngest candidate, but I am the most experienced,” the 70-year-old told a sopping-wet crowd of a couple of hundred supporters in Manchester.

Offering minimal details, McCain sketched his vision for the presidency. He vowed to strengthen the military, cut wasteful spending, reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil and stabilize Social Security and Medicare.

One of the other GOP candidates, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, tried to rain -- as it were -- on McCain’s parade. He posted an article on the Internet that called the senator’s signature campaign-money reform law a failure.

“Political spending has been driven into secret corners, and more power and influence has been handed to hidden special interests,” Romney wrote on Townhall.com, a conservative website.

michael.finnegan@latimes.com