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 "The logic is, you don't want to do something that enhances the image and prestige of someone who is your adversary, OK?" McCain told reporters traveling with him on a four-day campaign trip to New Hampshire's northern regions.
The Arizona senator said there could be disastrous results if the outcome of meetings with any hostile leaders were not predetermined.
"Are you going to accomplish something? That's the key. If you're going to go in and you're confident you are going to accomplish something, fine, do it," he said. "Know what the outcome is going to be so you're not embarrassed by the person you're taking to walking out and embarrassing (you) and enhancing their own prestige."
The subject of meeting with leaders hostile to the United States dominated weeks of the Democrats' debate between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. Clinton said she would not meet with hostile leaders without condition; Obama said he would.
McCain wouldn't say Clinton was correct. His top aide, Mark Salter, helped him move past the subject with a joke about Clinton's changing positions.
McCain said former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's approach was one to follow.
"Henry Kissinger never scheduled a meeting that he didn't know exactly what the outcome was and what was going to said at the end of the meeting," the senator said. "If the Iranians say they're going to come out and say they're going to stop their nuclear power, I'd be the first to meet with him."
Too many of his peers are placing a premium on their ability to conduct person-to-person diplomacy, McCain said. He cited as an example President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
"When Roosevelt said, 'I like Uncle Joe and if we're nice to him, he'll be nice to us,' I don't think he understood Uncle Joe," McCain said.
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 "Too often, people think that because they have this good personal relationships, that it somehow is going to affect
-- that their relationship will affect their national security policy. I think it opens lines of communication," he said. "I think it's vastly overrated."
McCain also said officials "freelancing" on foreign policy only hurt the country.
"We elect one president. When senators and members of Congress start freelancing, it's always a mistake," he said.
McCain said he was confused about Clinton's pledge to send high-profile Democrats and Republicans abroad as goodwill ambassadors before she took the oath of office if she were elected in 2008.
"I would have a tendency to ask people to have a specific mission, rather than just saying,
'Why don't you go over and be real nice to the folks in Yemen,' you know? 'See what you can do,'" he said. "I certainly wouldn't want to do anything to embarrass the previous president of the United States."
McCain said he would tap U.S. leaders to serve their country in high-profile posts. But he blanched when a reporter suggested businessman Donald Trump's success would qualify him to be a McCain administration diplomat.
"I can't say his name sprang to mind to start with," McCain said.
McCain met with reporters at The Balsams resort in Dixville Notch, where voters have gathered at midnight on the eve of the New Hampshire primary to cast the first ballots. The town has 15 registered voters
-- two Democrats, five Republicans and eight undeclared voters who can pick either party's ballot.
In 2000, McCain lost the midnight contest but posted a 19 percentage point win in the state primary over George W. Bush.
[Associated
Press; By PHILIP ELLIOTT]
Copyright 2007 The Associated
Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
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