Wall Street Journal recognizes policy agreements between candidates

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Policy Shifts Likely
As Candidates Share
Some Similar Views
By ALEX FRANGOS
February 14, 2008; Page A12

America's next president will likely push through major changes in policy, including expanding funding for embryonic-stem-cell research, keeping the estate tax from expiring, and clearing the way for importing lower-cost prescription drugs from Canada.

That's because Arizona Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, shares similar views on those issues with the two remaining Democratic candidates, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, and all three disagree with President Bush.

Many of these policy shifts should have support in Congress. On embryonic-stem-cell research, for example, large majorities in Congress voted for expanded federal support, but it was stopped by President Bush's veto. On drugs, Congress gave the Bush administration power to permit imports, but officials have refused to use it.

Sen. McCain shares more positions with the leading Democrats than does any other Republican who ran for president this year, as well as Mr. Bush and most Republican members of Congress. All three favor caps on industrial emissions of global-warming gases. They also denounce torture and favor the prompt closing of the military jail in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

That is part of Sen. McCain's problem as he attempts to seal the Republican Party's nomination. Even while he appears mathematically to have the nomination sewed up, he continues to lose voters to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister preferred by many social conservatives. On Tuesday Sen. McCain won contests in Virginia, the District of Columbia and Maryland, though Mr. Huckabee beat McCain in Virginia among conservatives and evangelicals, according to exit polls.

While Republicans tend to be more skeptical than Democrats about international agreements, Sen. McCain wants a global treaty on climate change and has expressed disappointment with the Bush administration on the issue. Campaigning in Florida last month, he said it was "not pleasant," to see other nations criticize the U.S. at a U.N.-sponsored climate conference in Bali, Indonesia. "I was not satisfied with the United States' degree of commitment at Bali," he said.

McCain cowrote legislation with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I., Conn.) in 2005 that would have created a "cap-and-trade" system to limit greenhouse-gas emissions. The idea, which he still supports, is substantially similar to proposals by Sens. Obama and Clinton. But the legislation never went far, and affected industries are expected to put up a fight over the details of any proposal, making passage of a cap-and-trade system difficult even if the White House and Congress agree in principle.

Sen. McCain joined liberal Sen. Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.) on the failed immigration-overhaul plan last year that would have created a pathway to citizenship for some illegal immigrants. Sens. Obama and Clinton both supported the measure.

Sen. McCain, like the Democrats, has called for closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in part as a gesture to the international community. All three say waterboarding is torture and shouldn't be used. President Bush refuses to classify the technique as torture, and his CIA says it reserves the right to use it.

When it came to health-care policy, President Bush and the Republican majority that ran Congress until last year generally deferred to the pharmaceutical industry on relevant legislation. Sen. McCain recently described himself as "the biggest enemy of the pharmaceutical industry in Washington." He and the Democrats support changes to the Medicare prescription-drug law to allow importation of U.S.-made drugs from Canada and to allow the government to negotiate drug prices.