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McCain recalls misspent youth
02/04/2008 17:18 - (SA)
Maryland - Republican presidential candidate John McCain traced his journey from rebellious youth to White House hopeful on Wednesday, and warned cynicism must not be allowed to consume American life.
The Arizona senator reminisced about his "nocturnal sojourns" and "petty" insubordination while a midshipman at the US Naval Academy here, and told how his youthful vanity was moulded into a reverence for honour and citizenship.
"The most important lesson I learned here was that to sustain my self-respect for a lifetime, it would be necessary for me to have the honour of serving something greater than my self-interest," McCain, 71, said.
The speech was the latest event in a week-long effort by McCain to introduce himself to the American people, and to craft an image in the minds of US voters, before Democrats can define him in a more negative way.
Overlooking the famous field where the US navy's football team plays, he related how the honour code and discipline drummed into him at the academy had helped him survive five-and-a-half years in captivity as a Vietnam War prisoner.
"It was then I would recall, awakened by the example of men who shared my circumstances, the lesson that the Academy in its venerable and enduring way had laboured to impress upon me.
"It changed my life forever. I had found my cause: citizenship in the greatest nation on earth."
McCain also said Americans needed to ensure that an ingrained suspicion about government did not morph into a more damaging national cynicism.
"When healthy scepticism sours into corrosive cynicism, our expectations of our government become reduced to the delivery of services.
"And to some people the expectations of liberty are reduced to the right to choose among competing brands of designer coffee."
"What is lost is, in a word, citizenship. For too many Americans, the idea of good citizenship does not extend beyond walking into a voting booth every two or four years and pulling a lever.
"And too few Americans demand of themselves even that first obligation of self-government."
- AFP
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US Elections Special Report
