Sitting in the back of the Straight Talk Express somewhere between Rapid City and Sturgis, Sen. John McCain took a deep breath and talked straight about earmarks.

He doesn't like the common method of directing federal money to specific projects, sometimes with questionable value and clear favoritism to congressional members with clout. Even a $10 million earmark that helped win National Science Foundation approval of a plan to transform the abandoned Homestake gold mine into an underground science laboratory probably should have been handled differently, McCain said.

"I'm sure it's a worthwhile project," he said, admitting that he has not followed the Homestake issue closely. "My problem is that earmarks are the gateway drug in Washington, D.C. You start out with worthwhile projects and you end up with a bridge to nowhere."

As McCain spoke late Monday afternoon, he and his wife, Cindy, might well have thought they were on the road to nowhere. A South Dakota Highway Patrol car and a dark SUV filled with Secret Service agents had just led McCain's well-traveled Straight Talk Express bus and its entourage off Interstate 90 and onto a gravel road. It sat idling between lush hay fields as McCain admired the countryside.

"It's beautiful country," he said, before staffers ushered three local reporters off the bus and toward the SUVs and vans lined up idling behind it. The caravan, which included more staff, security agents and national reporters and local drivers, then motored off on a winding back-roads ride to the Buffalo Chip Campground near Sturgis, where McCain appeared in an evening event to honor military veterans.

McCain, who has built a reputation in past campaigns for casual, free-wheeling exchanges with the national news crews, has increasingly turned to local reporters for face-to-face sit-downs in this presidential run.

That fact has irritated the national crews and benefited local news outlets that rarely get such access. The Journal and two other area papers were allowed one person each and about 25 minutes of questions during the ride from the Hotel Alex Johnson in downtown Rapid City to the back-road stop.

During the ride, McCain sipped bottled water in the comfortable U-shaped seating area at the back of the bus. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., was on his right. On the left, Cindy McCain sat between her husband and South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds.

Mark Salter, a close McCain adviser who collaborated with the Arizona senator on several of his books, sat with reporters on a cushioned bench across from McCain, occasionally clarifying a statement.

Cindy McCain nodded affirmation as her husband spoke on subjects ranging from the future of Ellsworth Air Force Base - it's secure, he said, in a world of dangerous threats to U.S. security - to the Iraq War and the state of his presidential campaign with Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., the presumed Democratic nominee.

But McCain spoke with the least amount of political muffler when he discussed earmarks and repeated his "bridge to nowhere" mantra. The reference is based on a failed proposal by members of the Alaskan congressional delegation to fund a bridge between the city of Ketchikan and Gravina Island. But it has become a more universal metaphor for wasteful, pork-barrel congressional spending and potential influence peddling.

It isn't a reference that Thune and Rounds necessarily care to see used in reference to the Sanford Laboratory at Homestake, or that $10 million in federal dollars that was secured in a special spending authorization spearheaded by Sen. Tim Johnson. Nor was McCain implying anything improper about the Homestake earmark. He just hates the process and the way it can be manipulated.

The earmarking process, in which members of Congress direct funding in spending bills to specific projects or add funding to those bills for that purpose, encourages waste, favoritism and even "breeds corruption," McCain said.

McCain referred to former California Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham as an example of how the earmarking system - and pressure and even offered payoffs to congressional members who use it - can encourage unethical and illegal behavior.

A much-decorated Navy pilot during the Vietnam War, Cunningham resigned from Congress in 2005 and pleaded guilty to a variety of crimes, including accepting bribes. Much of it was tied to his ability to direct federal funds to private projects.

Johnson and his staffers argue that earmarks like Homestake are far removed from that. The well-publicized, widely praised - in South Dakota, anyway - earmark and others like it face committee action and floor votes and give congressional members a chance to serve vital needs in their home states or districts, they say.

"Sen. McCain's comments don't really reflect the reality of the process on this," Johnson's communications director, Julianne Fisher, said. "It went through committee and votes on the floor. If it did not go through this process, it would be some nameless, faceless bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., trying to pick projects around the country."

Contacted later about earmarks, Thune said they won't be an issue as the Sanford Laboratory at Homestake is developed into a deep underground science and engineering laboratory.

"We are in the first year of a three-year study phase that the NSF will use to determine DUSEL's value," Thune said. "If it is determined that DUSEL should be an NSF priority, then funding will come out of the NSF budget rather than through earmarks."

That's the proper process, according to McCain, a straight-talk position he has held for years.

"Why should the seniority of a member of Congress by the criteria for awarding tax dollars?" he said.

Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or kevin.woster@rapidcityjournal.com

McCain on other subjects:

* The future of Ellsworth Air Force Base:

"We've been through several rounds of base closings, as you know. We've closed a lot of bases. I don't think, given the new world situation and the new kind of struggle we're in with radical Islamic extremism, … that it's very likely you will see a base closing anytime soon."

* Winning South Dakota:

"I do not take this state for granted. I know that Sen. Obama is working hard here. And we've got to work hard here. And we've got a lot of work to do. I'm confident we can win, but I certainly don't take the state for granted."

* McCain's 1-percentage-point lead over Barack Obama in a national poll:

"That was a whopping, and overwhelming 1-point lead. I think it's going to be a tight race, and I think I'm the underdog, and I relish that role. And I think we're starting to get our message out."

* Sen. John Thune's strengths as a potential vice presidential candidate:

"Sen. Thune won one of the great races in recent history (over former Sen. Tom Daschle), one of the most hotly contested, and probably one of the most watched races in recent political history. … On a broad range of issues, he's highly respected and highly regarded. And as I mentioned before, he is not ugly."

* Whether Thune makes the VP short list:

"Really, we can't keep talking about that. Otherwise names get bandied about, and people get their lives invaded. We just can't keep talking about it."

* Barack Obama personally:

"I admire him. I respect him. He's one of the most eloquent individuals that's come across the national scene in many, many years. And I give him great credit for galvanizing a lot of Americans who are otherwise not involved in the political process. And I'll treat him with respect throughout this campaign. But we've got sharp differences.

* The Sturgis rally:

"It's one of the great events in America and the world. I've been in foreign countries and seen films of this Sturgis event."

* Returning from POW camps in North Vietnam without struggling with post traumatic stress disorder:

"I never had a problem with it, believe it or not. I was very fortunate. It took me about 15 minutes to readjust. Some people are very fortunate, and others are not, and I don't think we've ever figured out exactly what it is. One thing, I was older. A lot of these kids are 18, 19, 20 years old. And I was 29."