Sen. John McCain, accompanied by wife Cindy, right, greets a crowd at the Wings over Meridian Air Show at McCain field on the Meridian Naval Base on Sunday.Photo by Mary Altaffer / AP
by Mark Silva
John McCain, a warrior from a family of warriors, returned to a Naval air field in Meridian, Miss., named for his grandfather for the start of a weeklong tour of reminiscences aimed at reminding voters of his credentials in national security.
Casting himself today as an “imperfect servant of my country” – a phrase he coined in the memoir penned for his last presidential campaign, Faith of My Fathers, in 1999 – McCain spoke of ancestors buried at Arlington National Cemetery and “the honor we earn and the love we give when we work and sacrifice with others for a cause greater than our self-interest.”
McCain wrote in that ’99 memoir that his father, a Navy admiral, like his grandfather, had told him: “In leadership, there is no such thing as a master’s degree.”
And that’s pretty much the campaign message that McCain is attempting to deliver this week.
This is the start of a “Service to America Tour” for the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee for president. McCain was not speaking of his potential Democratic rival today – either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton – but rather spinning the tale he hopes to tell of himself in a reintroduction to American voters at the start of a free season for the GOP. Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, was doing the talking today for his own party, still fighting over its own nominee/
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“John McCain deserves our respect for his service to our country,” Dean said, “but no reinvention tour can change the fact that a vote for him is a vote for four more years of President Bush’s failed policies. No matter how many times he tries to reintroduce himself, the voters already know that John McCain is out of touch with the challenges facing working families, admits he doesn’t understand the economy, and is willing to keep our troops in Iraq for 100 years.”’
McCain, who has spoken of his disdain for war, does support the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq — though his campaign-trail suggestions of long-term troop commitments are more along the lines of non-combatant supporting forces such as those deployed in South Korea and Germany.
His father had been commander-in-chief of U.S. Pacific forces when McCain, a Navy bomber pilot, was shot down over Vietnam. “He prayed on his knees every night for my safe return,” McCain said today in Meridian. “Yet, when duty required it, he gave the order for B-52s to bomb Hanoi, in close proximity to my prison.”
The Arizona senator attended an air show Sunday and spoke today at Mississippi State University, near McCain field at the Meridian Naval Base.
“A distant ancestor served on Gen. Washington’s staff, and it seems my ancestors fought in most wars in our nation’s history,” McCain said.
As a boy, he said, he had spent part of his summers on his uncle’s place in Mississippi, property that generations of McCains had left to join the military. He recalled his grandfather, a four-star admiral, as a rumpled man who worked with his shoes off, “tobacco leavings … always scattered about him.”
His grandfather commanded a carrier task force in the Pacific in World War II, and was given “a privileged place on the deck of the USS Missouri to witness the signing of the unconditional surrender that ended the war,” McCain said . His own father commanded a submarine in the Pacific during World War II.
Both father and grandfather were four-star admirals, the only such pair in Navy history.
“They were my first heroes, and their respect for me has been one of the most lasting ambitions of my life,” said McCain – who finished near the bottom of his own class at the U.S. Naval Academy, a fact that McCain mentions often with a self-deprecating sense of humor. His tour this week will take him to Annapolis.
“They gave their lives to their country, and taught me lessons about honor, courage, duty, perseverance and leadership that I didn’t fully grasp until later in life, but remembered when I needed them most,” McCain said. “I have been an imperfect servant of my country for many years. But I am their son, and they showed me how to love my country, and that has made all the difference for me.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.