McCain biotour day 3: service and duty

Another day, another stop on the not-quite magical, not-so mysterious tour of John McCain's life.

Today, the presumptive Republican nominee returns to his stomping grounds at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., where he plans to talk about lessons learned and to promote a more robust view of the duties of citizenship.

"The most important lesson I learned here was that to sustain my self-respect for a lifetime it would be necessary for me to have the honor of serving something greater than my self-interest," he is to say, according to prepared remarks provided by his campaign.

"When I left the Academy, I was not even aware I had learned that lesson. In a later crisis, I would suffer a genuine attack on my dignity, an attack, unlike the affronts I had exaggerated as a boy, that left me desperate and uncertain," he will say, alluding to his five-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war during Vietnam. "It was then I would recall, awakened by the example of men who shared my circumstances, the lesson that the Academy in its venerable and enduring way had labored to impress upon me. It changed my life forever. I had found my cause: citizenship in the greatest nation on earth."

And citizenship in 2008 is in dire straits, McCain said, the victim of "corrosive cynicism" about government.

"For too many Americans, the idea of good citizenship does not extend beyond walking into a voting booth every two or four years and pulling a lever," he plans to say. "And too few Americans demand of themselves even that first obligation of self-government."

McCain urges Americans to consider joining the military, running for public office, becoming public servants, and doing more public service.

"There are many public causes where your service can make our country a stronger, better one than we inherited," he is to say. "Wherever there is a hungry child, a great cause exists. Where there is an illiterate adult, a great cause exists. Wherever there are people who are denied the basic rights of Man, a great cause exists. Wherever there is suffering, a great cause exists."