Nice digs: Pa. event boosts McCain coffers

Sen. John McCain picked up $1.5 million for his campaign and the Republican Party during a cocktail reception Monday night in an air-conditioned tent on the grounds of a Bryn Mawr estate.

The GOP's nominee-in-waiting also may have discovered a new housing policy.

Every citizen should have a mansion like the "modest tract home" that was next to him, McCain joked. Owned by real-estate mogul Mitchell L. Morgan and his wife, Hilarie, the sprawling house features six garages and an elaborate pool with fountains.

"This is one of the differences between me and Sen. Obama," the Arizona senator said. "Sen. Obama wants every American to have a home. I want every American to have a home like that." The crowd of about 550 Republican donors laughed.

Mitchell Morgan, who began as a shoe salesman and now heads a national real-estate empire, offered guests shrimp shumai as well as cheeses and various soups in shot glasses, along with an open bar.

"Pennsylvania is a state we can win," said Morgan, who held a big fund-raiser in 2005 for then-Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa.), featuring President Bush.

Monday night, Sens. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.) and Joe Lieberman (I., Conn.) attended, as did Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett and McCain's state chair, national committeeman Bob Asher.

- Thomas Fitzgerald

WASHINGTON - Retired Gen. Wesley Clark declined suggestions yesterday that he apologize for saying John McCain's medal-winning military service did not qualify him for the White House.

Elaborating, Clark said a president must have judgment, not merely courage and character.

Democrat Barack Obama said Clark's comments had been "inartful." But McCain said Obama should go further.

"I think the time has come for Sen. Obama to not just repudiate Gen. Clark, but to cut him loose," McCain said en route to Colombia.

McCain ally Orson Swindle, a retired colonel and - like McCain - a prisoner of war in Vietnam, accused Obama of "winking and nodding" when he should be condemning Clark and his comments. Swindle spoke in a conference call with reporters organized by McCain's campaign.

Clark said Sunday that McCain's wartime experience as a Navy pilot and command of an air squadron in peacetime did not give him experience needed to become president.

"I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president," he said then.

Clark, asked during an ABC interview yesterday whether he felt he owed McCain an apology, replied, "I'm very sorry that this has distracted from the message of patriotism that Sen. Obama wants to put out."

Obama said he did not believe Clark's intent was the same as critics who in 2004 challenged John Kerry's account of his own wartime service in Vietnam. But he said McCain "deserves the utmost honor and respect for his service to our country."

- AP

INDIANAPOLIS - John McCain said yesterday that Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominees would produce more decisions like the child-rapist ruling that both candidates have criticized.

Addressing the National Sheriffs' Association, McCain acknowledged that Obama had also disagreed with the ruling last week that struck down capital punishment for people who rape children under 12. Obama said he believed that carefully crafted state laws permitting execution of child rapists did not violate the Constitution.

But McCain asked: "Why is it that the majority includes the same justices he usually holds out as the models for future nominations?"

Asked by CNN in May whether any current justices would be models for his nominees, Obama said he considered Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter to be sensible justices. All voted in the majority in the child-rape case, as did Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and John Paul Stevens.

McCain himself voted to confirm Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter and Kennedy. He was not a senator in 1975 when Stevens was confirmed.

- AP