Arizona Plans for Mccain's Victorious Return

A day after hosting the Super Bowl, Phoenix was preparing to stage another national celebration, the return home of its senator and newly-anointed Republican presidential candidate John McCain. Or at least that is the plan.

McCain, whose presidential bid nearly ran aground last year, is anxious to cultivate the notion that he has become the inevitable Republican choice. To that end he spent the last precious hours of campaigning for Super Tuesday in New Jersey and Manhattan, scheduled to return to Arizona only at the end of the day.

He will win the state comfortably, having opened a wide lead of 41% to 18% over his nearest rival rival, Mitt Romney. But in the big and electorally important camp of undecided voters, which he must win over if he is to become president, support for the senator is more conditional.

Maury Johnson, an estate agent from Tucson describes himself as being on edge of politics. Like many unaffiliated voters, he is drawn towards McCain for the very reason that the senator is hated by the rightwing talk show hosts: his ability to compromise. "He is a straight -shooter," said Johnson. "He does not seem to be playing as much politics as the other people. He gets things done, even if he has to talk to the other side."

But Johnson is also deeply skeptical about the war in Iraq, of which McCain is a fervent supporter. America, says Johnson, should never had taken on the role of building other people's nations and he believes his nation is now saddled with an impossible task. " If you broke it, you own it."

Johnson thinks that September 11 was misused as pretext for pre-emptive strikes, and he is troubled by America's image abroad. On the economic front he believes George Bush "took a few liberties" by abandoning fiscal responsibility.

So he looks to the senator as a future healer of divisions: " Our system only works when things have gone far enough in one direction. It is management by crisis. You need a strong leader to change things."

Madonna Felix has a son on his third deployment in Iraq and a daughter in law on her first. She resents the fact that Iraq has dropped off the national agenda :"I don't think the war is primary in people's considerations, unless you have somebody deployed or you are directly involved in some way. The economy is a bigger subject right now, which is too bad."

As a registered Democrat, she is not a natural McCain supporter - and she admits to conflicting ideas about what should be done about Iraq. "My son supports this conflict in Iraq very much and I want him to be totally comfortable with the job he is doing. You have to have a strong commander in chief. Hillary says she would pull troops out immediately, but if you did that it would hurt many Iraqis. However I don't like McCain's view either, to stay there indefinely, so I have very very mixed emotions about this."

At moment she supports Obama, but if the choice was one between McCain and Clinton, she would choose McCain.

Matthew Hamilton, an architect with a small practice which has weathered successive recessions, is a life-long Republican. But he too is looking for a break with the past. " If I ran my business the way the US has been fiscally running the country, I would be bankrupt. There has been a lot of irresponsible spending as well as a lot of irresponsible borrowing.

"We need someone who can bring the country back together. The polarization that has happened in the country has been very unhealthy. People were so far apart in the last election. People need to get together and get behind a man they can support and I am hoping Barack may be the man to do this."