A stern call to duty from the POW nominee

Stand up straight. Do your duty. Put your country first.

Let’s just say that John McCain’s acceptance speech was not the usual. He didn’t seem particularly interested in whipping up the partisan fervor of the Republican faithful – and they didn’t give him anything near the adulation Sarah Palin commanded the night before.

Palin, who turned herself into a political rock star in a scant 40 minutes Wednesday, had upstaged the man at the top of the ticket before he stood up. McCain doesn’t do the kind of rip-roaring stemwinder that Palin and Barack Obama are capable of, and he didn’t try. Instead he delivered a stern, take-your-medicine call to duty that perhaps only a man who has been tortured in the service of his country could pull off convincingly.

All presidential nominees take shots at their opponents. But true-believing partisans are not accustomed to hearing their own party scolded at their own convention by their own nominee. McCain did just that, saying, “We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us.” And: “We’re going to recover the people’s trust. The party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan is going to get back to basics.”

That’s a blunt statement that the Republican Party has lost its way and lost the trust of the American public. He wasn’t going to indict George W. Bush and other Republican leaders by name at the GOP national convention, but the implication was clear.

Later, he said, “We need to change the way governtment does almost everything.” And: “We have to catch up with history.” The Republican Party, of course, has dominated the federal government for most of the last eight years.

McCain knows he must put plenty of daylight between him and the GOP leadership of recent years. That’s clearly one reason he chose Palin as his running mate: Not only does she have a record of taking down entrenched Republicans, but also she hails from a state that’s just as far as you can get from Washington, D.C.

McCain hit his stride about 30 minutes into his speech when he vowed to keep America safe through a tough-minded foreign policy. He then got to the heart of his message by recounting the quasi-religious conversion he experienced in the crucible of the Hanoi Hilton. He went to war a callow, selfish young man, he said. But when he came back, “I wasn’t my own man anymore; I was my country’s.”

McCain has the same ethic in mind for other Americans: “Nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself.” Such words touch deep chords, but they sit uneasily with America’s strong libertarian streak. He and Palin have 60 days to make the homily stick.