THE RAREST OF POLITICAL CREATURES...:

Self-effacing McCain gets frank with voters (Stephen Dinan, April 7, 2008, Washington Times)

[I]it could just as easily have been called the "imperfect public servant" tour — words he used to describe himself to students at his former high school on day two of the tour — as he found himself apologizing for not always living up to what those heroes expected:

• At Episcopal High School in Alexandria and again at the U.S. Naval Academy, Mr. McCain acknowledged "all-too-evident flaws," including a surfeit of pride that caused him to rebel against both schools' discipline systems, leaving him with more demerits than academic accomplishments.

• In Pensacola, Fla., where he was stationed after graduating from the academy, he said he was a "rather callow, conceited and [an] often stupid" fellow, with a self-centered idea about his military duty, in his early Navy days.

• On Friday, he acknowledged a bigger public failing, saying he was wrong to have voted in the 1980s against establishing a federal holiday for Martin Luther King: "We can all be a little late sometimes in doing the right thing," Mr. McCain said, drawing some boos from his audience, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

• On Saturday, he told his home-state supporters he was too green when he first ran for Congress, and in his two terms in the House, he developed "the reputation of an often confrontational partisan."

...one at peace with himself.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 7, 2008 8:13 AM