Politics

This Is Straight Talk?

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

February 21, 2000 / 11:55 AM EST / CBS

Voters tell pollsters they believe Arizona Sen. John McCain says what he means. They like that about him. But some won't appreciate what the GOP presidential hopeful said on his campaign bus last week in South Carolina, especially because he means it.

McCain used the racial slur "gook" to describe the guards who tortured him for five years when he was a Navy pilot held captive in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp. It wasn't the first time.

"I will continue to refer to them in probably language that might offend some people . . . because of their beating and torturing and killing of my friends," said McCain.

Though several major newspapers made mention of his comments, the candidate's continued use of the word has earned only minor attention.

But some predict the "Straight Talk Express" will hit a pothole when McCain turns up his campaign in states with large minority populations. About 40 percent of the nation's Asian-Americans live in California, which holds a primary in two weeks.

A McCain adviser in California, Ken Khachigian, says he can't speak for the candidate on this issue, but points out that the term was used routinely by Vietnam POW's.

"John McCain can be judged by his actions and those speak louder than anything he's ever said," says Khachigian.

"Obviously everyone sympathizes with his terrible ordeal. But it doesn't excuse terminology that many Asian-Americans find highly offensive today," says Stewart Kwoh, Executive Director of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California, a civil rights organization.

Kwoh, who has been called a "gook" himself, believes McCain's comments will be viewed as insensitive by all minority groups, not just Asians. He says McCain faces possible protests over the word in California.

Bruce Cain, Director of the Governmental Studies at University of California at Berkeley, says that beyond being insensitive, the Republican candidate has risked alienating a constituency he could win.

"Asians are the ultimate swing constituency in California," says Cain. His research shows that Asian-American voters tend to be moderates, and with the exception of Japanese-Americans, they are split pretty evenly among democrats and republicans.

The political scientist also thinks McCain's racist remarks will hurt him among well-educated, white voters.

"It's hard to be a 'good old boy' in South Carolina one day and politically correct in California the next," he says.

Bob Mulholland, a spokesman for the California Democratic Party, believes McCain was indeed trying to appeal to southern conservatives in his remarks. Democrats here had already planned to blast both him and Bush for their strongly conservative comments in recent weeks over abortion and the Confederate flag. McCain's use of a racial slur gives them one more target.

"The Republican party is building up a track record that will takthem off a cliff in California," says Mulholland, who also served in Vietnam. He also called the remarks "tragic" considering that McCain has a long record of working to restore U.S. relations with the Vietnamese.

That contradiction also worries Bob Cain at UC Berkeley. If elected president, remarks like those will call into question his motivation for foreign policy decisions.

"If you combine hard-line, get tough foreign policy (which McCain espouses) with insensitivity about race, it sends a signal that maybe the policy isn't based on humans rights… but on racially-based hatred," Cain says.

Stewart Kwoh, whose group tracks hate crimes, says McCain must recognize that as president he would set a harmful example by using such derogatory words. He hopes the candidate will apologize.

"A sign of a leader is you can say what you strongly believe," says Kwoh. "But can you also learn?"