James suggested mandatory community service, others offered football and others business. All found some surrogate cause to replace defense of one's country; something akin to team spirit would replace wartime patriotism.

But McCain, who was captured by the Vietnamese while George W. Bush was entering his junior year at Yale, wants unabashed patriotism and consequently some national cause for which citizens can sacrifice. As he told the students at Johns Hopkins, "we have a new patriotic challenge for a new century: declaring war on the cynicism that threatens our public institutions, our culture and, ultimately, our private happiness. It is a great and just cause. And service in it will be an honor." From this idea--this proposal for a moral equivalent of war--flows McCain's passion for campaign finance reform and, indeed, most of his campaign's energy.

Public Cynicism may not be the most rousing cause, but it's the best available. Were the nation at war, McCain would be a natural choice. Alas, he has the misfortune of being a great man running for president at a time when his country doesn't really need great men.

Nevertheless, some have answered McCain's call and seem eager to sacrifice for his cause. There have, of course, been other heroic presidents--FDR and Reagan most recently--elected to work towards a cause, whether fighting the Depression, the Nazis or the Communists. McCain, however, is a war hero; consequently, the cause his supporters fight for--combatting public cynicism and restoring honor to the White House--is coeval with electing him president.

For those students who believe in McCain, who believe that public cynicism is a pressing problem deserving self-sacrifice, it's hard not to take the election seriously. Perhaps this, then, is why the boos drowned out the cheers as Bush's victories scrolled across the IOP screen.

Hugh P. Liebert '01 is a social studies concentrator in Eliot House. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.