McCain's life story will be told on next tour

Stops will focus on 'service' theme

Reintroducing himself to voters as the Republicans' presumptive presidential nominee, Senator John McCain will visit several states next week in what his campaign is billing as a biographical tour.

Each stop will represent a chapter in McCain's life and military career and be used to emphasize a "service to America" theme and to highlight issues and aspects of his character.

Logistically and thematically, his campaign continues to make the transition from securing the nomination to girding for a general election contest against the Democrats, who have not yet settled on a nominee.

Final details of the trip were still being worked out yesterday, but some tentative stops were already posted on McCain's campaign website and more were expected to be added.

The tour will extend over five or possibly six days.

The stops include a Monday morning speech in Meridian, Miss., not far from the naval air station where McCain once served as a naval flight instructor and McCain Field is named for his grandfather, a Navy admiral and native Mississippian.

Two Florida events are scheduled later next week - in Pensacola, where, as a hard-partying young officer, he underwent flight training at the naval air station, and Jacksonville, where, after his release as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, he became commander of a large air group that trained crews and pilots for aircraft carrier assignments.

At the end of the tour are tentative stops in his home state of Arizona, including Prescott, where Barry Goldwater, after winning the Republican nomination in 1964, launched his general election campaign. McCain succeeded Goldwater, who is credited with starting the conservative ascendancy of the GOP, in the Senate.

The campaign was also considering tour stops at the private high school McCain attended outside Washington, D.C., and the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., where he graduated fifth from the bottom of his class.

BRIAN C. MOONEY