is grandfather was a four-star admiral during World War II. His father, also an admiral, was chief of US naval forces in the Pacific during the Vietnam War. And in that war, he himself was held prisoner in Hanoi for more than five years and emerged a hero.
But ask Senator John McCain whether he'd suggest a career in the military for his own children, and he gives a sad look and says no.
''I'm sorry you asked the question, I really am,'' he said yesterday at a meeting with The Boston Globe's editors and reporters. ''I would encourage all of my children to serve, but I could not at this moment say that I'd recommend a career.''
McCain would not want his children to choose the path that has defined his family for three generations because the military is in such disarray, he said. Troops are misdeployed, resources are wasted, and infighting among officials has hindered effectiveness, he said.
''But the worst conditions are the men and women,'' McCain said. ''It's just not believable that we as a nation would have 12,000 proud young men and women in uniform on food stamps.''
If his reluctance to see his children follow his example was unexpected, it was hardly out of character. For McCain is a candidate who frequently surprises with his views, and the wry way he prefers to frame them.
He labels himself a conservative but comes across, on many issues, as a ringing moderate, a pattern he repeated in his remarks yesterday and that his GOP rivals have been keen on pointing out.
The issues he is most passionate about - preserving the Head Start education program and WIC (the Women, Infants, and Children food program for the poor); bringing an end to the soft-money contributions that have sustained both parties in recent years; diminishing the gaps between the haves and have-nots; restructuring the military rather than pouring more money into it - are all positions a Democrat might own.
Though McCain defends his conservative credentials, and speaks to his more conservative positions - like his opposition to abortion - when asked about them, he is clearly trying to present himself as more of a moderate or centrist than his leading rival, Texas Governor George W. Bush.
McCain criticized Bush yesterday for presenting a tax cut plan that gives too many concessions to the rich and not enough to the poor and working-class. Bush has proposed cuts of $483 billion over five years, whereas McCain would cut taxes by $237 billion in the same period.
''While we've got some money, let's try to take care of these obligations we've incurred and at the same time give low- and middle-income Americans a better deal than they've been getting,'' McCain said.
McCain said he would take 62 percent of the projected budget surplus to shore up Social Security, pour 10 percent of it into Medicare, use 5 percent to pay off the national debt, and put 23 percent of the surplus toward tax cuts, which also would be funded by ''closing corporate loopholes and eliminating wasteful spending.''
''We give a millionaire a $2,000 return, and Governor Bush gives them $50,000,'' McCain said yesterday. ''We give the rich some money back, but we're trying to help working and middle-class Americans.''
McCain announced his plan, which leaked out over the last few days, at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the Holiday Inn in Concord, N.H., yesterday.
Bush and his aides have criticized McCain's tax plan as being timid. In a news release yesterday, Bush was quoted as saying McCain's plans for the surplus would ''leave more money in Washington to be spent on more government.''
It's a charge that is often leveled at Democrats. But McCain insists it is more conservative to want to pay down debts.
The Arizona senator holds other positions that make him similarly vulnerable to criticism from more emphatic conservatives.
He said he believes special-education funding should be increased.
''Head Start works, WIC programs work,'' McCain said yesterday. ''I agree with my friend [Senator] John F. Kerry who's done a lot of work on the issue of early-childhood development.''
He said he was very uncomfortable with public discussions over policies toward gays in the military, an issue that has sparked some of the most contentious exchanges in presidential debates so far. He said he believes it is a matter best left to a sitting president and his advisers.
And McCain conceded that his message might not be quite as traditionally conservative as some Republican voters might like. ''I'm not so sure that what I'm saying is going to be enough to take enough conservative voters ... in some states, but we'll have to find out,'' he said yesterday.
But he also said he would match his conservative credentials against anyone's. He pointed out areas where he would differ with liberals - his desire for smaller government, that he has never voted for a tax increase, his wish to strengthen the military.
But only when a Globe columnist suggested his antiabortion stance as a possible point of contrast did he mention it.
''Oh, Roe v. Wade,'' McCain said. ''I'm for the repeal of Roe v. Wade.''
On the campaign trail, McCain rarely raises his antiabortion position unless he is questioned about it. And sometimes, his answers on the issue - his refusal to use an antiabortion litmus test for Supreme Court justices or a running mate - have not pleased activists against abortion. McCain said one group has made an advertisement attacking him.
The senator was philosophical about such critics yesterday and suggested his approach might prove a tactical advantage.
''I can only run on what I believe and on what's best for America,'' he said. ''I won't have to shift as they have in other campaigns, round to the right and then to the left. I won't have to do that.''
He has not softened his position on campaign-finance reform since it was revealed by the Globe last week that he intervened with the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of a major donor. McCain continued to maintain he had done nothing wrong and cited the opinions of several campaign-finance and consumer watchdogs who hold him blameless in the affair.
''I was putting their feet in the fire. People who deal with bureaucracies always feel a great frustration,'' McCain said of the FCC. ''I was frustrated. I wrote them a letter advising them to react, and they didn't reply.''
McCain was also harshly critical of the Clinton administration's policies in China.
''The problem is, China is acting like a Third World country when they're really becoming a superpower, and in some of our behavior towards them, we're sort of encouraging that,'' he said.
Clinton's response to the American bombing of the Chinese embassy in Kosovo was weak, McCain said, noting that Clinton tried to call Jiang Zemin, the Chinese premier, seven times.
''I'd have called him once. Called him once,'' McCain said. ''That's all that the world superpower's leader has to do, call him once and say, `Here's my number, call me back.'''
Tina Cassidy of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.
