McCain Uncorks a Good One

We were able to watch John McCain's acceptance speech a day after he gave it, courtesy of the l'Assemblee Nationale and the Senat, which have a TV channel something like C-SPAN, and which broadcast the speech in its entirety (overdubbed, of course, by a translation in French).  It was a bit difficult to listen to, because I found myself trying to do multiple things all at once -- listen in English, listen in French, evaluate the translation, and evaluate the speech itself.  My take on the speech was that although 80% of it was slow and predictable, it reached an amazing crescendo at the end, with McCain's recitation of his time as a POW and the impact that had on his life and his politics.  Agree or disagree with his policies, in my view that ending enabled McCain to turn a mediocre speech into a good one, one that will draw voters to him personally, in much the same way that many voters are personally drawn to Obama (albeit for different reasons).

I found myself afterwards thinking about the main thrust of the last part of the speech -- how McCain's captivity caused him to grasp the idea of a cause beyond himself, and thus lead him to dedicate his life to public service.  It was this part of the speech that I found most engaging:

If you find faults with our country, make it a better one. If you're disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and work to correct them. Enlist in our Armed Forces. Become a teacher. Enter the ministry. Run for public office. Feed a hungry child. Teach an illiterate adult to read. Comfort the afflicted. Defend the rights of the oppressed. Our country will be the better, and you will be the happier. Because nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself.

This, I dare say, is one thing that McCain and Obama would agree on.  But what I don't understand is this:  If serving others who are in need brings "great happiness" because nothing is better than "serving a cause greater than yourself," then why is the far right so very much opposed to government programs that do just that?  If you think about it from an economic point of view, if I want to aid the fight against illiteracy in adults, it is much more efficient for me to work an hour in my regular job, and then give that money to pay someone who actually knows how to teach an illiterate person to read, than it is for me to try to do it directly.  More actual "good" will come from that than will come from me trying to teach someone to read (although it will not be as emotionally satisfying for me).  So why isn't paying taxes to aid those in need a "cause greater than yourself" that should be embraced by the right?  (There are two answers, of course.  The first is the mistrust of government that has become perhaps the single defining core belief of the right -- a belief that taxes are inevitably pissed away on bureaucrats rather than used to do "good."  The second is that not all on the right share McCain's belief in public service -- many think that if an adult is illiterate it is his or her own damn fault, so why should we help?)

But I digress.  Although I see that the general consensus in the blogosphere and media is that the speech was a dud, I didn't see it that way.  I thought the end of the speech, with its story of despair and redemption, its call to public service, spoke to a lot of voters in the middle.  I think that we are in for a race, Sarah Palin notwithstanding.