Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Wednesday the Senate should apologize for slavery and segregation, calling them “dark chapters in our history.”
McCain said he would support a planned resolution by fellow Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, who is also seeking the presidency, to apologize for racist laws, some of which ended more than a century ago.
“They were federal policies,” Brownback told the Boston Globe on Monday. “They were wrong. The only way for us to move forward . . . is at the end of the day acknowledging those, taking ownership for it, and asking for forgiveness.”
McCain agreed with Brownback’s approach.
“I would support it, because I think it’s appropriate,” he said in response to questions from The Examiner on the campaign trail. “I certainly would support any recognition of the dark chapters in our history.”
Spokesmen for other presidential candidates, including Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, the only top-tier black candidate, declined to comment on the planned Brownback apology. Also silent were Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican candidates Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson.
Nothing that “various states have adopted similar resolutions,” McCain emphasized that words alone cannot make amends for America’s past policies of racism. Hesaid the U.S. should “continue our efforts to make sure that all Americans have equal opportunity to take part in this great, great free-enterprise system of ours.”
The Arizona Republican pledged to “address the issues of poverty and lack of education in parts of America, including parts of South Carolina, parts of my state, that some of our Hispanic students are not getting the same quality of education we want them to.”
McCain made the remarks during a two-day swing through South Carolina, a state that effectively ended his presidential campaign in 2000 when Republicans voted instead for George W. Bush. McCain used the visit to attack Clinton for advocating taxpayer funding of a museum on the Woodstock rock concert. McCain also slammed Giuliani for fighting against the presidential line-item veto, which McCain called an essential tool for controlling federal spending.
