John McCain, Lindsey Graham Take a Stand at The Citadel

During the question-and-answer session that followed opening remarks from McCain (R-Ariz.) and Graham, questioners didn't always wait for the microphone and sometimes interrupted the answers. "Ask a question," people shouted when someone launched into yet another long-winded statement. While generally supportive of the senators and their views, the crowd wasn't completely united on the issues discussed, from President Obama's views on health care reform to troop deployment to Afghanistan, an especially grave concern for the Citadel cadets.

Yes, looking around at the men (and the few women) in uniform at McAlister Field House, you could not forget we were at The Citadel, a school defined by as much by its Confederate tradition as its academic excellence. It's no surprise that even U.S. senators would encounter resistance.

While McCain and Graham talked about keeping the temperature down, they also hit every hot-button issue. "If anybody tells you there was bi-partisanship" on negotiations for the health care bill, McCain said, "they were not there." McCain said amendments that would prohibit abortion funding and require proof of citizenship were turned down, and that President Obama's one good point during his health care speech – on establishing risk pools – was his idea. "The public option is dead, as far as I'm concerned," said Graham, repeating what he had said on "Fox News Sunday." "Nobody in this room can compete with the government."

One brave soul stood up to complain about the "conflict of interest between profit and care of the individual" and say a single-payer system is not socialized medicine; he got another Graham rebuke ("Making money is OK, pal") and a few scattered boos.

The senators decried the mounting debt, with McCain setting his opposition to pork, earmarks and what he called "generational theft" back through the previous Republican administrations, thus reminding everyone of his maverick bona fides on that issue (and on torture and climate change, as well).

Neither rejected the need for health care reform, just the present plan's potential effectiveness in controlling costs while preserving quality of care.

And considering the setting, it was no surprise that Afghanistan came up: It's "not Obama's war -- this is America's war," said Graham. "It breaks my heart to say we need more troops, but we do." McCain called for immediate deployment of additional troops. "The president needs to make that decision now," he said. To someone who questioned America's involvement there, he answered, "Democracies are messy things. It's difficult, it's hard; we can and must succeed."

After this summer, no one's going to dial it back to make town halls models of civility. And after a while, McCain and Graham stopped trying. Both praised the town halls, tea parties and the weekend's Washington demonstration, which McCain called "a peaceful revolution" and "an uprising the likes of which I have never seen." McCain said that in appointing policy "czars," Obama is "obviously circumventing the Constitution." But in the room, there was not even agreement on what the Constitution is -- "a guiding document," as Graham said, or "the law of the land," as someone shouted out angrily in response. One cadet said a government health care plan (like Medicare?) would be "completely unconstitutional."

Despite the outbursts, you could see people trying so hard in this military setting to observe some rules of engagement. That was clear when Graham charged everyone to look in the mirror and ask themselves, "Am I willing to embrace change?" He talked about taking personal responsibility about everything from health and wellness (you can smoke but you should have to pay more for care) to energy use. "Don't celebrate failure," said Graham. Instead, he said, work with the government on what it should be doing. "Don't give us a pass on everything that's hard." It sounded a little like – dare I say it – an Obama rally.

But as the meeting broke up, little skirmishes broke out. Marvin Nochowitz from Charleston told me he wanted to ask the senators, "How are they going to take the Republican Party back?" Nochowitz, 63, said he wanted to hear them say they didn't believe in the "birther" movement and death panels and the GOP "being led by Rush Limbaugh."

"You're not a Republican," shouted Jim Moring, a self-employed Charleston businessman who overheard the interview. (Actually Nochowitz isn't, but his wife is.) Moring said neither McCain nor Graham is conservative enough for him. Graham lost him when he voted to confirm Judge Sonia Sotomayor ("not a good choice") for the Supreme Court. And though Moring believes the president is a citizen, he said the "birthers" have a right to speak. If Obama thought their claims have no legitimacy, "Why didn't he come out with his birth certificate?" he asked.

Just when I began thinking that no one would ever wait his or her turn again, someone did, a young cadet I spoke with as the crowd filed out. James Bradley is a 20-year-old junior from Columbus, Ga., attending The Citadel on an Army scholarship. He would have liked to ask the senators what will happen if the war in Afghanistan bleeds into Pakistan, prompting incursions across borders. He wants to know because in two years, it's a war he will be fighting.

But the political science major also had other concerns. As an African-American cadet – one of the 7.2 percent in a total enrollment of 2,098 – he fights other battles, he said, including fellow cadets who take an oath "to duty and honor" yet refuse to give President Obama the respect due him as commander in chief; classmates who wave the Confederate flag and say it's about "heritage and tradition," when part of that tradition was oppressing blacks.

Bradley ran for class president twice and lost by one vote each time, he said (adding, "I find that kind of weird."). He is judged liberal because he is black, he said, even though he tries not to let race affect his views. He said disagreement on issues such as health care are really about class, about who has it and who doesn't. The president, he said, "is trying to fix it."

And what's so bad about the word "change"? If you go by the original Constitution, he said, "minorities wouldn't be where they are today. You're supposed to amend it."

When Bradley joins a war with bullets, he wants to know that his fellow officers will be able to command a diverse army, while respecting each soldier's views, even when those views are not shared. It's hard, even for a sergeant in the South Carolina Corps of Cadet, to fight the ghosts of tradition in a place that's built on them.