August 21, 2008 06:11 PM UTC

McCain Seeks Exit From Water Treaty Disaster

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Pueblo Chieftain reports:

U.S. Sen. John McCain tried to back away from his comments that the Colorado River Water Compact should be renegotiated, but leading Colorado Democrats said they don’t believe him…

“My recent remarks may have been mistakenly construed as a call to rescind the Colorado River Compact and commence negotiations for new water allocations,” McCain wrote to Allard. “Let me be clear that I do not advocate renegotiation of the compact.”

In an interview with The Pueblo Chieftain last week, the presumptive GOP nominee for president said the compact needs to adjust to new realities of high growth and a water supply that is becoming increasingly scarce…

“I think the word, ‘renegotiate,’ does not have double meaning,” Ritter said in a conference call with Salazar and the press on Wednesday. “It is about opening it up and negotiating it again, and the fact that he’s willing to do that again has to demonstrate in my mind, given the context of it, a bias for the lower basin states. His desire still to renegotiate it . . . was really pretty direct.”

McCain’s comments created a firestorm in the state with Democrats and Republicans alike denouncing the notion, saying McCain could lose votes over it in Colorado and New Mexico, which have been called possible swing states in this year’s presidential race between McCain and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama.

Ritter said that at best, McCain’s letter to Allard showed him “flip-flopping” on the issue.

“The verbiage with The Pueblo Chieftain was very clear,” he said. “This is a reversal of direction, but it’s a reversal that I think Colorado voters have to pay clear attention to because on the West Slope, I’m not sure there are more important issues than the issue of the scarcity of water.”

Our view: McCain is screwed on this one, and has negatively impacted his chances of winning Colorado in November. There’s an argument that he might have been better served sticking to his original statement, maybe expounding on it to make the case better for his natural position that sprawling downstream states are going to need more Colorado River water. That would have been respectable, if no less dismaying to Upper Basin states.

But the weak-minded backpedaling from his clearly articulated position doesn’t help him in the least–from suspicious Coloradans with no reason whatsoever to believe these new platitudes, to third parties around the country who care nothing for Western water battles but take note when presidential candidates fold up like an accordion.