Posted about a month ago but for some reason remain a draft version. I thought this older McCain's commencement address was an interesting read.

Address at Ohio Wesleyan University (11 May, 1998):

To stand here in full academic regalia, and address an audience of distinguished academics and their learned students has not only strengthened my own self-esteem, but has reaffirmed my long held, cherished belief that in America anything is possible.

If my old company commander at the Naval Academy, Captain Hunt, whose affection for Academy midshipmen was sorely tested by my youthful indifference to Academy regulations, could witness this event, I fear he would decline to hold Wesleyan in the high regard that I hold you in.

But I accepted your invitation with deep gratitude and appropriate modesty. And I pledge to all of you, that I intend to repay your kindness to me by endeavoring to be worthy of the honor you have done me today.

I want to join in the chorus of congratulations to the Wesleyan Class of 98. This is a day to luxuriate in praise. You have earned it. You have succeeded in a demanding course of instruction from an excellent university. Today, life seems full of promise which is always the case when a passage in life is marked by a laudable accomplishment. Today, it must surely seem as if the world attends you.

But spare a moment to consider those who have truly attended you so well and for so long, and whose pride in you is equal to, perhaps even greater than your pride in yourselves -- your parents. When the world was looking elsewhere, your families' attention was one of life's certainties. And if tomorrow the world seems less enthralled as its awaits new achievements from you, your families will still be your most unstinting source of encouragement and counsel, and often -- as the world can be a little stingy at first -- financial support.

So, as I commend the Ohio Wesleyan Class of 1998, I offer equal praise to your parents for their sacrifices offered on your behalf, and for their confidence in you which more than any other influence in your lives have made you the successes you are today, and may become tomorrow.

I must confess to you, that as I thought about what I would say today, I found it hard to avoid the usual cliches that speakers often use on such occasions. Given the great quantity of commencement addresses that are offered every year by men and women with greater insights and greater eloquence than I possess, originality proved to be an elusive quality as I prepared my remarks.

One cliche that seemed to insist on my attention was the salutation "leaders of tomorrow" which is probably uttered hundreds of times every year by speakers addressing graduates from junior highs to universities; no doubt because the salutation represents such an obvious truth. You and your generational cohorts are, after all, the people who will be responsible for the future when the future occurs. So, please forgive me if I resort to the occasional hackneyed phrase. My intention is to talk about a few truths; some obvious, others less so.

All of you will eventually face a choice, earlier in life than you may now presume, about whether or not you will become leaders in society or whether you will allow others to assume that responsibility while you attempt to reap the blessings of a prosperous country without meaningfully contributing to their preservation. I very much hope you will choose the first course.

Honesty requires me to concede that such responsibility is not always an unalloyed blessing to the person who assumes it. Leadership is both burden and privilege. But as Socrates contended "the unexamined life is not worth living," so I contend that the passive life is not worth forgoing the satisfaction of knowing that you chose to employ all the blessings God bestowed on you to leaving the world a little better for your presence in it.

No one expects you to know at your age precisely how you will lead accomplished lives or use your talents in a cause greater than self-interest. You probably have some time before such choices and challenges confront you. Indeed, it has been my experience that such choices reveal themselves over time to every human being. They are not choices that arrive just once, and are resolved at one time; thus, permanently fixing the course of your life. Many of the most important choices one must make emerge slowly, sometimes obscurely through life. Often, they are choices that you must make again and again.

Once in a great while, a person is confronted with a choice or dilemma, the implications of which are so profound that its resolution may affect your life forever. But that happens only rarely, and to relatively few people. For most people, life is long enough, and varied enough to account for occasional mistakes and failures.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is often recalled for his observation that "there are no second acts in America." Its a pity that such a gifted writer is frequently remembered for this one observation which, in my opinion, couldn't have been more mistaken. There are a great many second, third and fourth acts for Americans in all walks of life.

In my current profession, I can think of a great many people whose careers persuasively refute Fitzgerald's argument. Professional and personal resilience have been exemplified by many Americans throughout our nation's rich history. Indeed, our history would not be so rich absent the presence of many thousands of people who had recovered from earlier failures.

The kind of world in which you will have your opportunity to make history is only beginning to become visible now. It is safe to say, however, that it will provide you with abundant challenges by which you will not only make your own reputations, but determine the progress of the human race.

Though you were born in this century, most of your life will be lived in the next millennium. You are twenty-first century Americans. I know not what that century will look like, and I envy you the many experiences of discovery you will enjoy in your lives. I hope to share a few of those experiences, but it is unlikely that I will know as much as you.

I am not blessed with the gift of prophesy, but I can glimpse a little of the future. We all can . . . by means that have always been at our disposal -- looking backward. History, though it is often disputed and misinterpreted, offers the assurance that very little that occurs in humanity's progress is without precedent. Very little indeed.

The times we live in are alternately derided for their failings and romanticized for their emerging opportunities. It sometimes seems that we now live amid greater violence, greater uncertainty; that the world suffers more conflicts and tragedies; that the poor are poorer and greater in number; that race, ethnicity and nationalism divide us more intractably than ever before.

But that is not so. Human beings are still capable of violence and cruelty. We all succumb to sin. But look back at any preceding century or even just a few decades, and you will see cruelty, violence and misery on a scale that is, with few exceptions, unknown today.

There was a time when a man in this country could lawfully own another. There were times when whole continents were submerged in bloody turmoil; when human beings were not expected to live thirty years; when abject poverty and deadly disease were the lot of almost everyone. Read the history of the fourteenth century, as the late historian Barbara Tuchman observed, when plague and war wiped the better part of whole civilizations from the face of the earth.

Mankind has advanced. Human progress is ceaseless. We can look at Bosnia or Zaire or Rwanda and conclude that building just societies is a fool's errand. We are always, despite our advances, only one sin away from slipping into the abyss of terror and ignorance.

But that is not so. Generations upon generations have driven the human race farther and farther from darkness. Past episodes of abominable human cruelty are kept vivid in the memories of succeeding generations. "Never again," is the admonition passed from the survivors of the Holocaust to their descendants and to us all. And although such an important reminder will not always prevent the occurrence of cruelty and violence even at levels approaching genocide, the civilized world is more inclined to organize opposition to such tragedies if not as early as we should, at least sooner than we once would have.

We can also see in the success of a great many nations that were recently liberated from overwhelming tyranny that people can escape oppression even without offering violent opposition to their oppressors. We have even seen that oppressor nations can relinquish their dominion over other nations peacefully once they have recognized the injustices that have been imposed upon their own people by their tyranny.

The dawning of the much-heralded "information age" has contributed to these advances, of course. Where once people were persecuted, tortured and slaughtered in hidden places, obscured from public or, at least, world view, behind a veil of official lies, there now exists the ever intruding news media, and the ever advancing technology available to the persecuted to disseminate the truth to the rest of the world. CNN took us to Bosnia before the first American solder set foot there.

But just as we should not despair of the troubles that affect our times, neither should we allow conceit for our many obvious advances to lull us into arrogant indifference or a new form of provincial ignorance. The wonders of the microchip are many to be sure. They will continue to increase human potential.

But will the discoveries they engender be any more astonishing or marvelous than when Columbus first glimpsed the coast of a new world where a new history had yet to begin? Will the science and technology that you and your contemporaries discover change life on earth any more profoundly than when Einstein defined the theory of relativity? I doubt it. There will come changes as significant to human existence as past discoveries were to our lives. But I doubt they could appear any more profound or marvelous to the people who behold them than the wonders of a late age were to the people who beheld them.

History will show you not only how to overcome the adversities that afflict your time, but how to take the best advantage of your blessings. As I said, I envy you for the challenges and the opportunities that await you. Nothing attracts the human spirit more than the appreciation that there remains knowledge and experiences to be acquired.

As I noted earlier, you have not passed the age at which your parents and your teachers expect you to determine the specific course of your life or even to define your ambition. What they hope they have done is help develop within each of you the wherewithal to make the race; to confront challenges intelligently and forthrightly; to make the right choices; and to overcome mistakes and failures in a manner which diminishes the likelihood of your repeating them. In other words, all who care about you and feel responsible for you hope they have done is helped you build the one thing you must possess now -- strength of character.

Bad people can occasionally do good things. Good people can occasionally do bad things. But such acts will be anomalies in a life that is defined by opposing acts. Without good character there is no possibility that an individual will reach the end of his or her life satisfied with the experience of living. No one of good character leaves behind a wasted life -- whether they die in obscurity or renown.

"Character," wrote the 19th Century evangelist, Dwight Moody, "is what you are in the dark." Your character is not tested on occasions of public scrutiny or acclaim. It is not tested in moments when the object of your actions is the regard of another. Your character is what you are to yourself, not what you pretend to be to yourself or others. Although human beings often attempt self-delusion, we cannot forever hide the truth about ourselves from ourselves. It will make itself known to us by means of our conscience despite our most strenuous effort to suppress it.

When I was your age, few people would have detected in my behavior any indication that I would make more of my adult life than I had of my youth. I was, to put it charitably, a discipline problem. The problem was I didn't like discipline, neither that which was imposed upon me nor that which I was expected to impose upon myself. I enjoyed my life too much. And even now, in middle-age, if I am not very diligent in guarding against it, a little nostalgia for those misspent days occasionally intrudes on the dry and serious contemplations that occupy my time these days.

But despite those bouts of sentimental reminiscences, I would not want to be again the boy I once was . . . unless I could keep the knowledge I have acquired with experience while enjoying the strength and enthusiasm of youth.

Although I was often a disappointment to my parents, and to my teachers, I count myself fortunate to have once been in their charge. They never abandoned all hope that I might become something better than the completely lost cause I often appeared to be.

My very determined parents sent me to an excellent and demanding high school, Episcopal. And after I graduated from Episcopal, I followed my father and grandfather into the Naval Academy. Annapolis is a place that most young men and women do not experience, and I am lucky to have been educated there. I did not feel so lucky at the time. But for the traditions into which I was born, and the weight of the obligations they imposed upon me, I would have followed a different course. Both Episcopal and the Academy were stern, exacting institutions, and I chafed at the discipline they tried so hard to impose -- often unsuccessfully -- on my unruly behavior.

But those places, and the people who dedicated their lives to them did something that was very important. They reinforced my parents' efforts to instill in me a sense of personal honor. And that made all the difference in the world. They defined for me a code of living and exerted every effort to compel me to adopt it for my own. I did not cherish the experience. I may even have resented it from time to time. But I would be nothing today had I avoided their influence.

I am the son and grandson of admirals. I was perhaps destined to join the Navy. I did not know in my youth how advantaged I was by my patrimony. But I know it now.

For it made me a witness to heroism, and a comrade to men of the highest character, many of whom acquired their character without the privileges that were given to me. I saw many men sacrifice much for a cause greater than themselves. Their example and the traditions I was raised in helped me, when my time came, make a difficult choice.

I have made many mistakes in my life. I will make others. But I have not been completely undone by my failures. That is because I was once or twice, some years ago now, confronted with very hard choices. And I chose well. That I did is a tribute to my parents and the traditions they delivered me into, and a tribute to the men with whom I served far more than it is a testament to my virtue.

Their influence taught me to dread dishonor. And later in life when I was in a tough spot, I realized that anything was easier to bear than dishonor. Even if my sin was unknown to those I loved, it would have glared at me. I would be dishonored in my eyes . . . in my eyes. I would have been dishonored in the dark.

As I look at you, as I envy your youth and the experiences that will be yours and not mine, I know that your character is still being formed. We are all incomplete. I think we all die with our character not exactly what it could have been. But perfection was never the possession of human beings.

In his poem, "The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water," Yeats wrote this verse:

"I hear the old, old men say

"All that's beautiful drifts away

"Like the waters."

Although I am, happily, not yet stuck with the appellation "old, old man," I grow closer to that rank than to my much enjoyed and terribly misspent youth. And I take Yeat's point. Like most people of my age, I feel a longing for what is lost and cannot be restored. But if the happy pursuits and casual beauty of youth prove ephemeral, something better can endure, and endure until our last moment on earth. And that is the honor we earn and the love we give if at a moment in our lives we sacrifice for something greater than self-interest.

We cannot choose the moments. They arrive unbidden by us. We can choose to let the moments pass, and avoid the difficulties they entail. But the loss we would incur by that choice is much dearer than the tribute we once paid to vanity and pleasure.

I am confident that you can and will find honor in your choices . . . when the hard choices arrive at your door. You need not go to war to find them. They will find you . . . in whatever walk of life you take. You can make them. You can find honor in them . . . honor in the dark. I know you can. I know you can.

Your parents love you and provided you with a very fine education. You have at hand many examples of good character from whom you will have learned the lessons by which you can live your own lives. You are blessed. Make the most of it.

Thank you.