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  McCain's Cowboy Persona
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Last EditedRP  Jul 30, 2008 03:57pm
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News DateWednesday, July 30, 2008 09:55:00 PM UTC0:0
DescriptionFor months, the media has been reporting that Sen. John McCain spends weekends at his "Arizona ranch," where he can be with his family, visit with close friends or occasionally entertain possible vice presidential contenders.

The steady reference to the presumptive GOP presidential nominee's "Arizona ranch" projects a powerful image of the American cowboy that has long played an important role in presidential politics. The description of McCain's sliver of Arizona's outback as a "ranch," however, is misleading at best. And, perhaps inadvertently, it allows McCain to obscure his carpetbagger role in Arizona politics with a veneer of American mythology.

The United States America has had four presidents in the last 107 years who relied on the persona of the rancher to one degree or another.

Ronald Reagan, who understood a thing or two about projecting images, was frequently photographed riding horses or cutting brush on his beloved 688-acre Rancho del Ceilo, projecting an aura of youthful vigor. Lyndon B. Johnson was a hands-on rancher who turned a dilapidated 250-acre holding into a magnificent 2,700-acre ranch, where he hosted world leaders while keeping close tabs on the condition of his cattle and range land throughout his political career.

George W. Bush traded Reagan's ax for a chain saw, but clearly enjoys clearing brush on his 1,600-acre ranch in Crawford, Tex., where cattle graze alongside deer. And, of course, there is the grandest cowboy of them all, McCain's hero, Theodore Roosevelt -- a New York Knickerbocker who made a living from atop his horse, herding cattle on two South Dakota ranches long before setting up shop in the White House.

But in McCain's case, his Yavapai County hideout wouldn't even qualify as a ranchette -- a term sometimes used derisively in the West to describe 40-acre parcels carved out of what were once-sprawling working cattle ranches. McCain's acreage is barely half that, coming in at a cozy 20.8 acres.
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