Expect More Health Care Talk from McCain
John McCain's purposeful march through primary season culminated with this week's victories in Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas and Vermont. With double-digit victories in each of those states, he racked up 230 pledged delegates, pushing his total to 1,207 and surpassing the 1,191 needed to earn the Republican presidential nomination, according to
CNN.com's Election Center 2008.
So McCain's off and running as the presumptive nominee with his sights now on November's general election. He spent four hours yesterday in Washington, picking up President Bush's endorsement and meeting with Republican National Committee officials.
But even McCain admitted today during a fundraising stop in Florida that it will be difficult for him to remain visible in the national news. Most media coverage will be fixed on the tight race for the Democratic nomination for at least the next six weeks leading up to the April 22 Pennsylvania primary.
So what's next for the Arizona senator?
In an article filed for Bloomberg News, Edwin Chen and Hans Nichols reported that McCain plans to "define himself to voters before Democrats do with a cross-country ‘biography tour' and overseas travel that underscores his foreign policy credentials."
Chen and Nichols said McCain "plans to soon embark on a week-long tour of places that marked turning points in his life, with stops at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, where he finished sixth from the bottom in the class of 1958, to Pensacola, where he led a flight squadron, to his family's ancestral home in Mississippi."
In addition, McCain will visit Europe and the Middle East later this month as part of a congressional delegation, according to the Bloomberg report.
The report also noted that, behind the scenes, "McCain and his strategists are working to bolster his economic, health care and environmental stances because they want him to project a stronger command of [those] topics."
McCain plans to give a series of speeches over the next several months to give more details on those subjects.
*photo courtesy: JohnMcCain.com