MONTREAT, N.C. — John McCain met Sunday with evangelist Billy Graham and his son Franklin at the family’s mountaintop retreat.
The Republican presidential candidate, who is actively courting religious voters and trying to reassure skeptical conservatives, visited privately with the Grahams on the grounds of Little Piney Cove in the Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina.
“We had a very excellent conversation. I appreciated the opportunity to visit with them,” McCain said after the 45-minute meeting.
McCain’s visit to North Carolina was his first sit-down with Billy Graham, 89, and Franklin Graham, who is president and chief executive of the evangelistic association his father founded in 1950.
McCain said he did not know if the Grahams would vote for him.
“I didn’t ask for their votes,” he said, calling them “great leaders.”
After the meeting, Franklin Graham issued a statement praising the Arizona senator’s “personal faith and his moral clarity on important social issues facing America today.”
“The senator and I both have sons currently serving in the military, and also have a common interest in aviation,” Frank lin Graham said.
He said he was not endorsing anyone for president but was urging “men and women of faith everywhere” to vote and be involved in the political process.
Earlier this month, Barack Obama, McCain’s Democratic rival, met with the younger Graham, who was among some 30 evangelicals Obama met with in Chicago.
Meanwhile, in Washington, Gen. Wesley Clark challenged McCain’s claim to be better prepared to be president.
Clark said that while he honored McCain’s service as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War and on the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain has no executive experience and that the Navy squadron McCain commanded was not a wartime squadron.
“He hasn’t been there and ordered the bombs to fall,” Clark said on “Face the Nation” on CBS.
When moderator Bob Schieffer noted that Obama hadn’t had those experiences nor had he ridden in a fighter plane and been shot down, Clark replied: “Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.”
