McCain Joins Race With Bid to Serve

Pledging to “renew pride in public service” and reduce the “corrupting influence” of money in politics, Arizona Sen. John McCain formally announced his candidacy Monday for the Republican presidential nomination.

In a 25-minute speech marked by a pointed jab at the limited foreign policy experience of Republican front-runner George W. Bush, McCain called for tax cuts, a nationwide test of school vouchers and an increase in defense spending. But on a warm cloudy afternoon here, McCain above all invoked broad themes of service, sacrifice and the need to rebuild public trust in government, largely by reforming the campaign finance system.

America, McCain declared, faces a “new patriotic challenge . . . a fight to take our government back from the power-brokers and special interests and return it to the people.”

Subdued at first, the 63-year-old McCain spoke with increasing passion before a crowd of at least 500 supporters who spilled out across Greeley Park. At times he offered distant echoes of Kennedy’s lyrical 1961 inaugural address--which urged Americans to “ask what you can do for your country”--as he called on his audience to embrace “the sense of pride and purpose of serving a cause greater than themselves.

“I run for president . . . so that Americans can believe once again that public service is a summons to duty and not a lifetime of privilege,” said McCain.

Known as a maverick in Washington, McCain is serving his third term in the Senate. The son and grandson of Navy admirals, he flew 23 combat missions as a Navy pilot in Vietnam before being shot down over Hanoi in October 1967. McCain spent the next 5 1/2 years as a captive in a North Vietnamese prison camp--a harrowing experience he has recounted in a best-selling new memoir of his family, “Faith of my Fathers.”

McCain alluded to those experiences in the most barbed passage of his speech Monday. In what aides acknowledged was a reference to Texas Gov. Bush--who has undergone a highly publicized series of briefings and tutorials with foreign policy experts in preparation for the race--McCain insisted that the next president “must be prepared for [the] challenge” of serving as commander in chief.

“When it comes time to make the decision to send our young men and women into harm’s way, that decision should be made by a leader who knows that such decisions have profound consequences,” he said. “There comes a time when our nation’s leader can no longer rely on briefing books and talking points.”

McCain’s reference to experience was significant because, until now, he has refrained from even implicitly criticizing Bush on that front. Some analysts believe that Bush’s limited political resume--his only experience in public office has been his nearly six years as Texas governor--could be his greatest vulnerability in the race.

McCain served in the Navy for eight more years after being released from North Vietnam in March 1973, finishing as a Navy liaison to the Senate. In 1982, he was elected to the House of Representatives from Arizona, serving two terms before winning his Senate seat in 1986. He’s been reelected easily twice since, drawing support from traditionally Democratic voters, such as Latinos.

In Washington, McCain has amassed a generally conservative voting record, but with a maverick streak. Last year, he led the effort--ultimately killed by Republican senators--to raise tobacco taxes to combat youth smoking; and he was co-author of a bill with Democratic Sen. Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin to regulate soft-money contributions--which was also opposed by most Republicans.

McCain is counting on that independent image to help him break through in the steadily shrinking Republican presidential field, which lost another candidate Monday when former Vice President Dan Quayle dropped out of the race.

He has also adopted a characteristically contrarian political strategy by virtually ignoring Iowa--site of the first caucus next January--to focus on New Hampshire, South Carolina (which he will visit today), Arizona and California. On Wednesday, McCain will visit the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley--where he will be accompanied by former First Lady Nancy Reagan.

Though Bush holds a large lead in New Hampshire, as almost everywhere, several recent polls have shown McCain running second there, and local politicos took the large crowd he drew Monday as a sign of his potential strength in the state. Notable in the crowd were older men wearing Veterans of Foreign Wars’ caps or T-shirts that read, “Veterans for McCain”; the campaign has targeted veterans as a key constituency here and in South Carolina. To underscore his military service, McCain began his day Monday by addressing all 4,000 midshipmen at the Naval Academy in Annapolis.

In his New Hampshire speech, McCain laid out a campaign agenda that refracted traditional Republican priorities through a reformist clean-government message similar in some ways to that offered by Democratic contender Bill Bradley. On issue after issue, he tried to portray special interests’ influence in Washington--an issue usually stressed more by liberals--as an obstacle to policies prized by conservatives.

On defense, for instance, McCain accused President Clinton of “weakening our defenses” and promised to spend more on training, anti-missile systems, weapons modernization and counter-terrorism. But he put a distinctive twist on that common Republican argument by linking the problem to the influence wielded by defense contractors in Washington.

“Both parties in Congress have wasted scarce defense dollars on unneeded weapons systems and other pork projects while 12,000 enlisted personnel, proud young men and women, subsist on food stamps--that’s a disgrace,” he said.

Likewise, on education, McCain called for a nationwide test of school vouchers--which would help parents in the most poorly performing public schools send their children to private schools. That’s a common position among Republicans; but McCain is scheduled to give it a unique twist today when he unveils a proposal to fund the voucher test by cutting subsidies for sugar growers, ethanol producers and oil and gas drillers--all powerful constituencies in the GOP.

He offered a similarly iconoclastic take on taxes. McCain, who has criticized the GOP congressional tax bill as overly tilted toward “special interests,” repeated his call Monday for an alternative plan focused on “working families” that would end the marriage penalty, eliminate the inheritance tax and tax all family income up to $70,000 at the lowest rate of 15%.

McCain returned repeatedly to the theme of combating special interests’ influence, insisting that campaign finance reform “is the gateway through which all other policy reforms must pass.”

An audio interview between Sen. John McCain and Times editors and reporters is available on The Times’ Web site: https://www.latimes.com/mccain

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Profile: Sen. John McCain

* Born: Aug. 29, 1936, in a military hospital in the Panama Canal Zone, to Navy Adm. John and Roberta McCain

* Education: Naval Academy, 1958; Naval War College, 1973 to 1974

* Military service: U.S. Navy, 1958 to 1981; prisoner of war in Vietnam, 1967 to 1973

* Career highlights: U.S. representative from Arizona, 1983 to 1986; U.S. senator from Arizona, 1987 to present

* Family: Married since 1980 to Cindy Hensley; seven children, three from first marriage

* Quote: “When our government has been taken from us by the special interests, the big-dollar donors, pride is lost to shame. When our politics are corrupted by money and lies, trust is lost to cynicism.”