In Florida, McCain challenges Obama's position on Cuba

Evokes Cold War themes in speech to Cuban exiles

MIAMI - John McCain yesterday celebrated Cuba's Independence Day with a rousing declaration of solidarity with Miami's Cuban exile community - part Cold War pep rally, part policy address for economic integration across Latin America - in which he challenged what he wryly called Barack Obama's "interesting perspective on Cuba."

"Senator Obama has shifted positions and says he only favors easing the embargo, not lifting it," McCain said to boos from a largely Cuban-American crowd at a hotel ballroom. "He also wants to sit down unconditionally for a presidential meeting with Raul Castro."

It was a familiar critique of Obama's foreign policy - in recent days, McCain has made similar assertions about his likely Democratic opponent's willingness to pursue diplomatic relations with Iran - but this time the presumptive Republican nominee directed his comments at a vital swing-state constituency that was particularly responsive to a comparison with a time when "Jimmy Carter went over and kissed [Soviet leader Leonid] Brezhnev" in 1979.

"These steps would send the worst possible signal to Cuba's dictators - there is no need to undertake fundamental reforms, they can simply wait for a unilateral change in US policy. I believe we should give hope to the Cuban people, not to the Castro regime," McCain went on, to chants of "Libertad!"

While in 2003, during his first US Senate campaign, Obama supported relaxing restrictions on US-Cuban relations without qualifications, he has recently insisted that Cuba show signs of moving toward democracy as a condition for such a change in policy.

Still, supporters of Obama, who is scheduled to address a different gathering of Cuban-Americans in Florida on Friday, appeared happy to accept McCain's contrast between the two candidates' stances toward Cuba. Democrats accused McCain of adjusting his position, as well, saying that during his 2000 presidential campaign he had called for normalizing relations with Cuba - if the country took steps toward democracy.

"The Senator McCain I used to know was open to negotiations with Cuba to lift the embargo, but now he's taking a hard-line position, embracing a policy that has failed the Cuban people and the American people alike for 50 years," Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut said in a statement.

"Instead of four more years of George Bush's policy, Barack Obama will help bring liberty to Cuba through direct diplomacy and change that allows for unlimited family visitation and remittances to the island."

Before he spoke yesterday, McCain, who has conceded only a modest familiarity with Spanish, tried gallantly to keep up with the words of Cuba's national anthem. McCain set himself apart from both Democratic and Republican administrations, who he said had treated Latin America as a "junior partner rather than as a neighbor." McCain promised new economic cooperation with "hemispheric partners," and criticized both Obama and Hillary Clinton for opposing a free-trade agreement with Colombia, which he presented as a Democratic counterweight to Castro and President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, whom McCain accused of "immature behavior."

"We will not abandon our partners to demagogues, drug lords, and despair, but expand the benefits of security, trade, and prosperity to all," McCain said.

But the language of villainy came increasingly from the Cold War lexicon, as many of those who rose to address McCain enlisted the senator - who spent nearly six years in Vietnam as a prisoner of war who says he was beaten by a Cuban agent - as a fellow "freedom fighter," as one woman put it. "The communists are well-known for their torture," explained Republican Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, who compared McCain's experience with that of political prisoners in Cuba.

Warning McCain about the dangers of Obama, a woman who rose from the crowd, identifying herself only as a psychologist, evoked Fidel Castro, who turned over power to his brother Raul after illness, as a cautionary example.

Both appealed to "youth, entranced by empty words . . . nice music and empty promises," she said.

"I see Cubans here who did not question a leader when we needed to question a leader with empty words."

Sasha Issenberg can be reached at sissenberg@globe.com.