John McCain appearance in Merrimack
I was pleased to see the candidate I embraced in 2000, making unpopular yet thoughtful stands. On the environment, he clearly questioned the "skeptics" and committed to taking action upon taking office. I was disturbed by his qualification of needing to include China and India in any agreement; the current administration has used this as an excuse for no action for 7 years, and I believe America needs to lead by example on this one (and stands to profit ultimately by doing so). So a qualified 'thumbs up' on that one.
On the topic of Iraq, I agree that we can't afford to lose the region, and so question everyone who has lost their nerve and wants to pull all the troops out ASAP. Sure, Bush frigged this up completely, but we are where we are, and it's not in our best interest to have a civil war and/or let a Iran step into the void when we leave. This was always a war about oil, and you're naive if you think that still isn't important to our well-being.
On the topic of immigration, Sen. McCain took a tremendous amount of heat from participants but stuck to his guns that we can't just deport everyone (ignoring the argument that it would adversely impact the economy to do so), and need to first commit to protecting our border before we can realistically do anything else.