In the name of their fathersAs famous sons, McCain and Bush reveal much about their characterBy Margaret Carlson
October 4, 1999
Web posted at: 12:29 p.m. EDT (1629 GMT)
At dawn on the day he launched his official
presidential-announcement tour, Senator John McCain went home
again to the U.S. Naval Academy, where he promised 4,000 cheering
midshipmen that, win or lose, he would "keep faith with the
values I learned here. I hope I make you as proud of me as I am
proud of you." He sounded the same theme before a noontime crowd
in Nashua, N.H., as he conjured up the moment when a President
has to divine "the reasons for, and the risks of, committing our
children to our defense." He reminded those gathered that "no
matter how many others are involved in the decision, the
President is a lonely man in a dark room when the casualty
reports come in."
This is the marker McCain is laying down in his quest to be
President: his life. He doesn't spell out that he knows what it
is like to be that lonely man, having spent 5 1/2 years as a
prisoner of war in Vietnam, half of it in solitary confinement.
His book, Faith of My Fathers, tells the story of how he aspired
to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, both
four-star admirals, and is No. 2 on the best-seller list.
His biography is a bayonet aimed straight at the candidacy of
George W. Bush, who resembles more closely at times the indulged
baby boomer who currently occupies the Oval Office than the
restorative repository of moral authority he purports to be. In
an interview with Talk magazine, he bragged about not liking to
read heavy public-policy tomes and mimicked convicted killer
Karla Faye Tucker's begging for her life on Larry King Live
(which she never did). He then blew off his foreign policy
shortfalls (referring to Greeks as "Grecians," confusing Slovenia
with Slovakia) by suggesting he could hire people for that sort
of thing. He recently boasted to a class in Bedford, N.H., that
"some people are saying I prove that if you can get a C average,
you can end up being successful in life." Even conservative
columnist George Will has fretted publicly about Bush's "lack of
gravitas...born of things having gone a bit too easily so far."
The difference between McCain and Bush is evident in how they
have handled being the sons of accomplished men. Last Monday a
powerful Republican former speaker of the house in Texas
testified in an obscure lawsuit that he had pulled strings to get
the young Bush into the state's Air National Guard, though he had
not been directly pressured to do so by Bush's father. However he
did it, Bush was able to avoid Vietnam, like so many sons of the
well-connected, while McCain became a POW, having his teeth and
head and broken bones smashed in until, fevered and racked by
dysentery, he considered suicide. Imagine that this could all be
made to stop by your father, the commander of the Pacific fleet,
and that your captors were insisting you take early release. But
McCain refused special treatment and spent another another 4 1/2
years in prison.
It's no sin to take Daddy's help, but Bush, who received it at
every turn, concedes only grudgingly that his success had
anything to do with it, saying "Being George Bush's son has its
pluses and negatives." His father's name and connections were
crucial, from his stake in the oil fields of Texas to his run for
Congress to getting first crack at buying the Texas Rangers. If
McCain's book is titled Faith of My Fathers, Bush's should be
called Friends of My Father.
Bush provided fresh contrasts to McCain last week. While McCain
blasted fellow Republican Pat Buchanan for arguing that America
did not have to take on Hitler, Bush appeased him, explaining
that "I need all the votes" he could get. While McCain says he is
running "because I owe America more than she has ever owed me,"
Bush sometimes seems motivated by a need to redeem his father's
defeat. He keeps bringing it up in a way that suggests it has
been his life's deepest wound. Last Wednesday he said that
Buchanan's 1992 candidacy had had a role in derailing his father,
and suggested that Ross Perot carried a "vendetta" against his
family. In McCain's story his father comes across as a source of
humility and as inspiration for public service. Bush, on the
other hand, seems to have inherited his sense of entitlement from
his father, and after the President's defeat, an ongoing personal
cause.
A week ago Saturday, the Governor could be found with Dad at the
Ryder Cup golf tournament, having skipped the tedium of the
California Republican Party's convention. To spur the American
team on to its jingoistic, fist-pumping victory, Bush gave a pep
talk in which he compared the brave golfers fighting to win a
noisome corporate-infested sporting event to the brave men who
fought to save the Alamo--the use of the profound in service of
the mundane.
McCain is no saint (he will tick off the reasons he isn't, if you
don't beg him to stop), but he is the natural, solid alternative
should there be second thoughts about Bush's pre-emptive
coronation. Many people at the rally in Nashua clutched McCain's
book and approached him for his signature with something like
reverence. One man carefully removed his copy from a Ziploc bag
to get the Senator's autograph, then carefully tucked it back in
the bag. He didn't want any smudges or dog-eared pages. It's not
a coffee-table book, but that's where he planned to display it.
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Cover Date: October 11, 1999
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