McCain Goes Back to High School
On the second stop of his "Service to America" tour, Sen. John McCain went to his old school, Episcopal High School, in Alexandria, Virginia, where he talked about his English teacher, William B. Ravenel, a man McCain described as his hero.
He also made this rather refreshing admission:
"As a young man, I would respond aggressively and sometimes irresponsibly to anyone whom I perceived to have questioned my sense of honor and self-respect. Those responses often got me in a fair amount of trouble earlier in life. In all candor, as an adult I've been known to forget occasionally the discretion expected of a person of my years and station when I believe I've been accorded a lack of respect I did not deserve. Self-improvement should be a work in progress all our lives, and I confess to needing it as much as anyone. But I believe if my detractors had known me at Episcopal they might marvel at the self-restraint and mellowness I developed as an adult. Or perhaps they wouldn't quite see it that way."
McCain is not afraid to talk about his own foibles. But what about the wisdom of a campaign strategy built primarily on biographical details? The last candidate to do so was Sen. Bob Dole in 1996, and many experts feel that only served to remind voters how old he was. And as liberal blogger Matt Stoller recently pointed out, the candidate with the more impressive war record (both Democrat and Republican) lost in 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004. So it will be interesting to see how McCain's emphasis on his record will play with the American voter in the fall.
Meanwhile, the Democrats, knowing that McCain will be on David Letterman tonight, tried using humor to link him with President Bush again.
(Actually, it's a surprise they didn't use McCain's attempt at the Beach Boys and "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.")
Not to be outdone, the Republican National Committee takes a swipe at the Democrats over superdelegates.
1:25 PM ET | 04- 1-2008 | permalink
