RPCV Congressman Chris Shays says he would support McCain Presidential Bid
RPCV Congressman Chris Shays says he would support McCain Presidential Bid
Connecticut Rep. Chris Shays is throwing his support behind potential GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain. Shays said that he'll support the Arizona senator if McCain decides to seek the Republican presidential nomination. Shays, who represents southwestern Connecticut, was the only GOP representative in the state to keep his seat in the November election. McCain has formed an exploratory committee, but hasn't officially declared whether he'll run for the White House in 2008. Congressman Chris Shays served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Fiji in the 1960's.
Senator John McCain says: We passed up an opportunity after September 11th
"We passed up an opportunity after September 11th. I think we should have said, we're going to double the size of the Peace Corps, triple the size of Americorps, we're going to set up volunteer organizations all over America to ensure our security. ... The country was united. We should have called them to serve, not just tell them to take a trip or go shopping"
John McCain's Call to Service
Echoing John F. Kennedy's famous lines, McCain urged voters to ask not what government could do for them but what they could do for their country. In town after small town in his victorious New Hampshire primary campaign in 2000, McCain preached the virtue -- and more than that, the satisfaction -- of committing to a cause larger than oneself: to the nation, to its system of values, to common ideals of honesty and decency.
The small-government right and the big-government left are equally exhausted. The only appealing political platform is good government. This is what McCainism is about. The senator has waged lonely battles not to make government bigger or smaller, but simply to make it better. Hence his campaign against corrupt campaign dollars. Hence the pigs on his Web site that link to a case-by-case denunciation of corrupt pork-barrel spending. Hence his fury at the Bush administration's mistreatment of foreign detainees, which undermines government by destroying its moral authority.
It's tempting to say that McCainism is hopeless: that the appeal to patriotic selflessness is futile in a narcissistic culture. But Americans' impatience with conventional politics is too obvious to ignore. More identify themselves as independent than as supporters of either main party. Millions flock to maverick reformers from Ross Perot to Jesse Ventura to Arnold Schwarzenegger, tiring of them once they've been around a while and become part of the system. Only 29 percent of Americans say they trust government, down from 40 percent in 2000. McCainism -- whether practiced by the senator or by some other charismatic campaigner -- will eventually have its moment.
