Thread: McCain says many Americans too cynical

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain believes many Americans are cynical about their country, and their idea of liberty is "the right to choose among competing brands of designer coffee."

What these people need, he will argue on Wednesday, is a good dose of public service.

That is one of the messages McCain will give on Wednesday on a visit to his university, the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, where he admittedly bucked authority and slacked off on his studies to the point that he graduated fifth from the bottom of his class.

McCain is on a nostalgic tour of places important to developing his character as he fights for media coverage dominated by the extended Democratic battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

McCain has clinched the Republican presidential nomination and is biding his time while Democrats decide who will face him in the November election.

He also is spending a lot of time explaining a previous statement that the United States could be in Iraq for 100 years.

Democrats accuse him of pursuing a 100-year war. He says he was talking about a peacekeeping military presence akin to the decades-old U.S. deployment in South Korea and Japan.

"And they provided stability in the region, but this, I'm not talking about having a war that lasts for a very long time," he said on Tuesday night on CBS' "Late Night with David Letterman," when Letterman asked him about it.

McCain has spent all week talking about his transformation from bad boy to war hero, and there will be more of the same at Annapolis.

"In truth, my four years at the Naval Academy were not notable for exemplary virtue or academic achievement but, rather, for the impressive catalogue of demerits I managed to accumulate," he will say, according to speech excerpts.

A GREATER CAUSE

McCain, a 71-year-old Arizona senator who would be the oldest person ever elected to a first presidential term, will argue that Americans need to take up a cause greater than themselves -- join the military, help feed the hungry, seek public office.

"Many Americans are indifferent to or cynical about the virtues that our country claims," the former Vietnam prisoner of war will say.

In part, he says, it is because some have suffered economic dislocations while others profit as never before, and in part, it is a "reaction to government's mistakes and incompetence and to the selfishness of some public figures."

He comes close to calling some Americans spoiled, saying they are cynical because "the ease which wealth and opportunity have given their lives led them to the mistaken conclusion that America, and the liberties its system of government is intended to protect, just aren't important to the quality of their lives."

Skepticism is healthy, he will say, "But when healthy skepticism 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."

(Editing by Eric Beech)

(To read more about the U.S. political campaign, visit Reuters "Tales from the Trail: 2008" online here)

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNe...rpc=22&sp=true

McCain:

You asshat idiot. With politicians like you and with the presidential choices we have that include you...we have no choice BUT to be cynical!!!

This comes from a person that makes a pretty darn good living off of the cynical people of this country!