In the Name of Their Fathers

Monday, Oct. 11, 1999 By MARGARET CARLSON

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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.