JERSEY CITY, N.J. - Is Republican John McCain’s age an issue? Only if the American public want to make it one, the senior Arizona senator told reporters on Friday.
 
“I don’t take offense to it … If that’s what the American people want to discuss, that’s fine,” said McCain, who turns 72 in August and would be the oldest first-term president ever.
 
“I will continue to introduce them to my 96-year-old mother and display the same vigor and energy that I have been able to display throughout this campaign which allowed me to win the nomination of my party.”
 
To that end, the campaign is launching a television commercial on Mother’s Day on Sunday, showing McCain with his still vigorous mother, Roberta.
 
The commercial, dubbed “Johnny’s Mom,” shows mother and son chatting about his birth at a U.S. Navy base in Panama, where his father served as an officer.
 
“I’m told that on the table were 27 bottles of scotch, all presents to Johnny,” she said.
 
The issue of the Arizona senator’s age is a sensitive one for the campaign.
 
It sparked a dust-up this week after Democratic rival Barack Obama suggested McCain had “lost his bearings” after commenting that Islamist Palestinian group Hamas favors Obama for president.
    
A McCain adviser accused Obama, 46, of trying to raise the Republican candidate’s age as an issue, a charge denied by Obama’s campaign.
    
McCain revisited the issue on Friday. Hamas’ apparent favor for Obama was also of interest to American voters, he said.
 
“I think that’s of interest to the American people and that is something that needs to be discussed — why his policies should meet the approval of a spokesperson for Hamas. I believe it’s a legitimate point of discussion.”

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Photo credit: Reuters/Chris Keane (McCain speaks at a campaign event in Charlotte, N.C., May 5, 2008) 

ROCHESTER, Mich. - John McCain answered a question about his legendary temper on Wednesday with a good-natured growl.
 
“How dare you ask that question!” McCain said to laughter from the audience at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan.
 
McCain proceeded to use the question as a way to focus on his own concerns, ranging from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s past influence in the U.S. Congress to what he considers out-of-control government spending.
 
“I will confess to you my friend that I do get angry. I get angry when I saw a guy named Abramoff that ripped off Native Americans for millions and millions and millions of dollars,” McCain said.
 
“I get angry when I see $233 million of your tax dollars going to … a bridge to an island with 50 people on it,” referring to an Alaskan lawmaker’s bid to get money for a bridge McCain opposed.
 
“I get angry when I see corruption to the point when we have former members of Congress in federal prison.”
 
“And you know something? The American people are angry too … They’re mad and they’ve lost their temper,” the Arizona senator added.
 
McCain’s remark came in response to a question by a man who  said he worried about reports of McCain’s temper.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Mark Leffingwell (McCain speaks at an event in Denver, Colo., May 2, 2008)

WINSTON-SALEM -  Republican John McCain had a “where-am-I?” moment Tuesday during a busy day on the campaign trail.

“I appreciate the hospitality of the students and faculty of West Virginia,” McCain told the audience at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.
 
The audience laughed and McCain quickly corrected himself before launching in to a speech on judicial appointments.

With hectic campaign schedules that take them from town to town and state to state, the candidates sometimes stumble over where they are.

Campaigning in Wyoming in March, Barack Obama made a similar slip. Shaking hands and signing baseball caps at a diner, the Illinois senator said, “It’s really nice in Wisconsin,” and then added, “And Wyoming.”

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Photo credit: Reuters/Chris Keane (McCain speaks in North Carolina on Monday)

DENVER, Colorado - An Emmy-winning actor who once played a downed fighter pilot in an action movie is narrating a television advertisement for Republican presidential candidate and Arizona Sen. John McCain, who was shot down in real life as a Naval pilot during the Vietnam War.

The 60-second commercial for McCain’s presidential campaign, which will play in the battleground state of New Mexico before being aired more widely, is narrated by the gravelly voiced actor Powers Boothe , who has also appeared in popular television series like “24″ and “Deadwood.”

The commercial opens with spotty black-and-white footage of McCain interviewed in a hospital bed in Hanoi shortly after he was shot down piloting a Navy attack aircraft in 1967.

Smoking a cigarette, he gives his rank as lieutenant commander, describes ejecting from his aircraft and breaking a leg and both arms. He then goes on to give his service number — 624787.

The vintage footage of McCain as a young POW is cut together with images of the now 71-year-old Arizona senator on the campaign trail, urging American voters to “Stand up. We’re Americans. We’re Americans.”

Boothe, whose narration threads together the ad, played a downed F-15 pilot in “Red Dawn,” an over-the-top Cold War action movie released in 1984, about an American high school militia that turned back an invasion by Cuban and Soviet paratroops. In the last season of the hit TV program”24,” Boothe portrayed Vice President Noah Daniels, who briefly assumed the presidency after a terrorist attack.

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DENVER, Colo. - Mitt Romney , until a few weeks ago Sen. John McCain’s rival in a sometimes bitter contest for the Republican Party presidential nomination, says getting back on the campaign trail with the presumptive nominee is fun.

Romney traded blows with McCain for several weeks earlier this year before dropping out of the race and conceding defeat after losing crucial primary contests on Super Tuesday on Feb. 5.

With past battles behind them, Romney joined the Arizona senator in Salt Lake City, Utah, at a fund-raising event on Thursday, and then flew with him to Denver, Colorado.

“It’s a lot of fun again. It’s nice not to feel any pressure at all, I don’t have to worry about goofing up,” he told reporters on the flight over the Rocky Mountains.

“I can just stand behind the nominee and do my very best to support his campaign.”

Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, and Gov. Jon Huntsman of Utah stood beside McCain at the campaign stop in Salt Lake City in a show of party unity.

McCain said he hoped Romney would join him on the campaign trail in the weeks ahead as he sought to energize the party in the run up to the election in November.

He will face Democrats Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois or Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Rick Wilking (McCain (L) listens to Romney at a news conference in Denver on March 27, 2008)

FORT MYERS, Fla. - Veteran Sen. John McCain, 71, fielded a question at a rally on Saturday about whether his age was an issue as he battles to become the Republican Party’s pick for president in the state’s upcoming primary contest.  
 
His reply to voters attending the event? They should get to know his mother, the feisty and opinionated Roberta McCain, 95.
 
Mrs. McCain cropped up in the campaign earlier this week when she told a television interviewer that her son had no support “whatsoever” within the Republican Party.
 
Far from feeling stung at the age comment, McCain launched into an anecdote on Saturday celebrating her vigor.
 
“Last Christmas she wanted to drive around France, so she flew to Paris and tried to rent a car, but they said she was too old,” he told the military veterans and retirees.
 
“So she bought one and drove around France. That’s my girl! That’s my girl!” he said, to laughter.
    
He went on to assure voters that his ability to campaign was undimmed by age.
 
“I can out campaign anyone, it invigorates me.”  

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Joshua Lott (McCain celebrates a victory in South Carolina’s primary earlier this month as his mother watches from the side of the stage.)

BOCA RATON, Fla. - When Republican presidential candidate John McCain talks to reporters about winning next Tuesday’s primary in Florida, he raps with his knuckles on the wooden table top in the campaign bus for luck.
 
Knocking on wood is just one of many superstitions that the Arizona senator has taken with him on the road as he campaigns for the nomination to stand as his party’s candidate for president in the Nov. 4 elections.
 
It comes, he says, from defying all the odds to survive as U.S. Navy pilot in Vietnam, during which he was shot down over Hanoi, beaten by a mob, and then spent more than five years in jail during which he was tortured.
 
“Under any rational set of circumstances I would be dead long ago, so why not believe in a little bit  of luck? … Anything that can be viewed as superstitious, I embrace.” he told reporters travelling with him on his bus dubbed the Straight Talk Express.
 
As well as rapping on wood — actually plastic wood veneer on the bus — he carries a lucky penny in his pocket, and a green elastic band on his wrist, which he snaps, saying “luck of the Irish.”
 
His close friend and political ally South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham, travelling with McCain on Friday, smiled and said superstition is all a part of being a fighter pilot.
 
“I have not met a fighter pilot who isn’t that way. They live on the edge. They have to believe it gives them an advantage.”  

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Carlos Barria (McCain steps off his bus at a Florida airport with his wife.)

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - At a rally in this swank town on Thursday, Sen. John McCain cracked a joke about two Irishmen who go into a bar in Boston and discover a shared life back home in Dublin, where they went to the same school, and had many of the same friends. The punch line is that they find out they are twins.
 
Humor is a key part of McCain’s campaign for the Republican presidential party nomination in Florida, where he addresses supporters warmly at rallies as “my friends,” and often veers off into a joke.
 
On his campaign bus, dubbed the Straight Talk Express, he shared with reporters the deadly serious source of that humor, which, he said, helped him endure life as a U.S. Navy pilot in a prison camp in Vietnam.
 
“You just had to laugh,” said McCain of the five-and-a half years he spent in a Hanoi jail where he endured torture, after being shot down over North Vietnam in 1967.
 
“When you met someone who had been shot down and captured, you’d say ‘When did you get killed?’” he explained, to slightly uneasy laughter from the press corps, uncertain how to respond to humor that dark.
 
“When you are in prison and you’re totally under the control of someone else, that individual takes on gigantic proportions… What I found was that, if you can laugh, you can make fun of the guards, you can make fun of the camp commander … that was very important.”

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Carlos Barria (McCain chats with reporters on his campaign bus.)