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NEWSWEEK: Cover: Mr. Cool vs. Mr. Hot - How They See the World

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080928/NYSU002 )

Two Trips: McCain and Col. Bud Day, a POW cellmate of his and a close friend, returned to visit a teeteringSaigon in late 1974. They wanted to find out what was going on with the South Vietnamese government now that American money had been cut off. They learned thatNorth Vietnam had a pipeline built to within 80 miles ofSaigon and the South Vietnamese were down to 10 rounds of ammo a day. Former senator Gary Hart says his old friend McCain, "like other veterans, believes that we could have 'won the Vietnam War' but the politicians panicked." That view turned McCain into an early advocate of what would come to be called the "Powell doctrine," named after fellow vet and later Secretary of State Colin Powell: do not commit U.S. troops unless the mission and exit strategy are clear and overwhelming force is applied. Then give the military, and your allies, full and unstinting support.

Barack Obama's first trip back toAsia was equally mind-opening. With a Pakistani college roommate, Mohammed Hasan Chandoo, he went vagabonding around South Asia in 1981. He found himself overwhelmed byKarachi, a vast and chaotic metropolis clogged with the poor, and then, as now, rife with sectarian tensions. "Part of the most memorable portion of the trip," Obama told Newsweek earlier this year, "was traveling to ... a more provincial area outside ofKarachi, seeing what was essentially a feudal life" -- peasants who were eking out a subsistence living in the middle of a modern democracy. Obama was relearning as a young man, in other words, what he had only dimly understood as a child inIndonesia: most people around the world are looking to fulfill basic needs like shelter, jobs and education for their kids. Later, these experiences contributed to Obama's concept of "dignity promotion" -- working to ease these conditions of misery rather than focusing only on elections and other trappings of democracy.

Maverick Mentors: For McCain, the hawkish Democratic senator Henry (Scoop) Jackson, one of the leading lights of the neoconservative movement, "remains the model of what an American statesman should be," as the GOP candidate said in a speech in June. McCain's admiration is revealing: Jackson was a maverick who bucked his own party on the biggest issue of the day -- how to confront theSoviet Union.

Obama's senatorial role model is also a man of principle from the opposing party: Richard Lugar. What Obama most admired was that Lugar, a pragmatist and internationalist with far-reaching vision, was focused on core national- security issues like nuclear nonproliferation. To achieve his long-term goals Lugar set aside politics to work across different administrations and party lines.

The Uses of Power: After first being leery of committing U.S. troops to a ground war in the desert after Saddam Hussein's tanks rolled intoKuwait in 1990, McCain ultimately voted for the war and its outcome altered his thinking on the exercise of American power. As Hirsh reports, McCain still resisted what he saw as muddled interventions inSomalia and, initially,Bosnia. But after the massacre of thousands of Muslim men in Srebrenica, he endorsed a bombing campaign there, and later harangued President Clinton for not being active enough in halting ethnic cleansing inKosovo.

For Obama, the gulf war was less transforming than an event that had occurred a year earlier -- Nelson Mandela's release from prison after 27 years. As a freshman student in the early 1980s at Occidental College inLos Angeles, Obama got his first taste of organized politics and foreign policy in the growing antiapartheid movement. The success of the antiapartheid movement shaped Obama's views on how to tackle problems that don't lend themselves to military solutions.

The Predecessors: John McCain's hero worship of Teddy Roosevelt dates back to McCain's days as a boy talking about historical figures at the breakfast table, says McCain's brother, Joe: "He's probably his most important historical role model, a sickly asthmatic kid who became a robust type."

While Obama hasn't made Kennedy his role model as forthrightly as McCain has TR -- he also likes to invoke Franklin Delano Roosevelt andLincoln -- he has sought to identify himself with JFK's foreign policy (at least after the disastrous Bay of Pigs). The candidate likes to compare his proposal to talk toIran without preconditions about its nuclear program to JFK's bold bid to negotiate a comprehensive nuclear-test ban with the Soviets at the height of the cold war.

Everything Changed: For McCain, September 11 signaled the start of another grand struggle, like the one that his grandfather undertook after the Japanese bombedPearl Harbor. McCain, though, continues to group the various strains of Islamic extremism together, calling them collectively the "transcendental challenge" that faces the country and the next president. "You could trace [the threat] back to the bombing of the Marine barracks inBeirut" by Hizbullah, McCain told Newsweek earlier this year.

For Obama, 9/11 brought into focus all that he had learned abroad -- in Indonesia,Pakistan and elsewhere -- about how raising people's living standards is key to U.S. national security. He saw the challenge of the post- 9/11 era as similar to the one taken up by JFK and, before him, Harry Truman: to introduce long-lasting strategic structures in concert with U.S. allies to tackle the world's worst problems. In a larger sense, 9/11 was a chance to reaffirm America's wisdom and promise as global leader.

(Read cover story at www.Newsweek.com)

http://www.newsweek.com/id/161323

SOURCE Newsweek