About 20 years ago, I had the good fortune to stand by John McCain's side at a press conference where he called for the United States to renew relations with the nation of Vietnam -- a position that was, at the time, not very popular in Washington. It certainly seemed out of place coming from a former fighter pilot who had been held captive by the North Vietnamese for 5 1/2 years.

John understood, however, that we could stand to benefit from a relationship with Vietnam -- but that if America was going to move beyond the legacy of the conflict we fought in the jungles of Southeast Asia, he would have to nudge all of us forward. This was one of many leadership stands John took where some people at first thought he was wrong, but he turned out to be right.

John McCain is a good friend of mine. We were elected to the Congress on the same day in November 1982. So often I hear people mention in passing the wealth of experience John has in public service, as if it were merely a series of bullet points on a resume: 22 years in the Navy; 20 years in the U.S. Senate. Speaks truth to power. Stands up for conservative principles. Gets the job done.

I think such a reading of his experience misses a larger point that gets right to the core of what we need in our next President. John McCain's experience has enabled him to see over the horizon to understand problems before they become the kind of challenges that Washington so often buries in a barrage of code words and catch phrases that are meant to divide Democrats and Republicans. For John, there's no important dialogue that he has hopped into as a matter of political convenience. Let me offer a couple of examples.

Four years ago, just months into our invasion into Iraq, John McCain traveled to the Middle East, evaluated the situation there and immediately advocated an increase in troop strength to smother the insurgency in its early stages before it gathered steam. This is known today in Washington parlance as "the surge."

John wasn't calling for a surge in response to the latest Sunday show chatter. He thought it was the right thing to do for our troops in harm's way and their commanders on the ground. It took a while -- but we have finally caught up to him, and the strategy we now have in place has shown some early signs of progress.

We face an enemy bent on the destruction of our ideals and our way of life, and we need in our next President someone who has seen the face of evil and has the courage to stare it down.

Today, we so often hear reformers railing against "earmarks," those seemingly innocuous pet projects that make legislators look good back home, but so often breed the kind of corruption that causes them to seek an early retirement. They are also the source of much of the excess in Washington's recent spending sprees.

The first person I ever heard take up the cause against earmarks and pork barrel spending was John McCain. There were many times he would threaten to or go right on ahead and offer amendments calling for earmarks to be unceremoniously dumped from spending bills. You can imagine how lonely a fight that was, but as a fiscal conservative and elected steward of taxpayer dollars, he felt he had an obligation to take up that challenge. And again, we have only recently caught up to him.

I'm sorry to say that Washington still has its fair share of serial spenders -- and we need a President who has experience standing up to them.

For my part, I've always looked with great admiration upon the way John conducts his politics. He knows that being at the center of power is not an opportunity to play games. It is an opportunity to take hold of transcendent challenges, work to achieve the common good and address problems that cannot be left for future generations to solve. Even if it means a little straight talk now and then.

Tom Ridge is the former secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, a two-term governor of Pennsylvania and a six-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives.