English /// 06/23/08
OMAHA, Neb. -- Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel said
Friday he would consider serving as Democratic presidential candidate Barack
Obama's running mate if asked, but he doesn't expect to be on any ticket. Hagel's
vocal criticism of the Bush administration since the 2003 invasion of Iraq has
touched off speculation that if Obama were to pick a Republican running mate,
it might be Hagel. Hagel said in an interview with The Associated Press that
after devoting much of his life to his country -- in the Senate and the U.S.
Army -- he would have to consider any offer.
"If
it would occur, I would have to think about it," Hagel said. "I think
anybody, anybody would have to consider it. Doesn't mean you'd do it, doesn't
mean you'd accept it, could be too many gaps there, but you'd have to consider
it, I mean, it's the only thing you could do. Why wouldn't you?"
In
a book published this year, Hagel said that despite holding one of the Senate's
strongest records of support for President Bush, his standing as a Republican
has been called into question because of his opposition to what he deems
"a reckless foreign policy ... that is divorced from a strategic
context."
Hagel
wrote in "America: Our
Next Chapter" that the invasion of Iraq was "the triumph of the
so-called neoconservative ideology, as well as Bush administration arrogance
and incompetence."
He
said Friday that he and Obama also have differences.
"But
what this country is going to have to do is come together next year, and the
next president is going to have to bring this country together to govern with
some consensus," Hagel said.
He
hasn't endorsed Sen. John McCain of Arizona,
the presumed Republican nominee, whom he calls a friend. Hagel said Friday he
hadn't thought about who to vote for in November.
In
a March appearance on ABC's "This Week, he said he and McCain have
"some pretty fundamental disagreements on the future of foreign
policy," including the Iraq
war.
McCain
has said his goal is to reduce U.S.
casualties, shift security missions to Iraqis and, ultimately, have a noncombat
U.S. troop presence in Iraq similar to that in South Korea. He
has said that such a presence could last 100 years or more.
Ted
Sorensen, a former speechwriter for President John F. Kennedy, said Thursday
that Obama should consider Hagel.
Sorensen,
a Nebraska
native, said Obama should pick a running mate who can help where he's weakest,
and Hagel's national security experience makes him a logical candidate. Obama
has a team managing the vetting process that includes former first daughter
Caroline Kennedy, and Sorensen said he has spoken to her about the selection.
Hagel
served as an Army sergeant in Vietnam
and was twice wounded in 1968, earning two Purple Hearts.
He
was the only member of his party on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to
support a nonbinding measure critical of Bush's decision to dispatch an
additional 30,000 troops to Iraq.
"There
is no strategy. This is a pingpong game with American lives," Hagel said
at the time.
The
rhetoric drew the public ire of Vice President Dick Cheney, who told Newsweek
in January 2007 that Ronald Reagan's mantra to not speak ill of another
Republican was sometimes hard to follow "where Chuck Hagel is
involved."
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