John McCain, the war hero who ran for U.S. president, has lost his battle with brain cancer
War hero-turned-senator was driven by a code of honour that both defined and haunted him
U.S. Sen. John McCain, the son and grandson of four-star admirals, was bred for combat. He endured more than five years of imprisonment and torture by the North Vietnamese as a young naval officer and went on to battle foes on the left and the right in Washington, driven throughout by a code of honour that both defined and haunted him.
Sen. McCain, 81, died Saturday at his ranch near Sedona, Ariz., his office announced in a statement. The senator was diagnosed last July with a brain tumour, and his family announced this week that he was discontinuing medical treatment.
During three decades of representing Arizona in the Senate, he ran twice unsuccessfully for president. He lost a bitter primary campaign to George W. Bush and the Republican establishment in 2000. He then came back to win the nomination in 2008, only to be defeated in the general election by Barack Obama, a charismatic Illinois Democrat who had served less than one term as a senator.
A man who seemed his truest self when outraged, Sen. McCain revelled in going up against orthodoxy. The word “maverick” practically became a part of his name.
Sen. McCain regularly struck at the canons of his party. He ran against the GOP grain by advocating campaign finance reform, liberalized immigration laws and a ban on the CIA’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” — widely condemned as torture — against terrorism suspects.
To win his most recent reelection battle in 2016, for a sixth term, he positioned himself as a more conventional Republican, unsettling many in his political fan base. But in the era of President Donald Trump, he again became an outlier.
The terms of engagement between the two had been defined shortly after Trump became a presidential candidate and Sen. McCain commented that the celebrity real estate magnate had “fired up the crazies.”
At a rally in July 2015, Trump — who avoided the Vietnam draft with five deferments — spoke scornfully of Sen. McCain’s military bona fides: “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
Once Trump was in office, Sen. McCain was among his most vocal Republican critics. He warned that the spreading investigation over Trump’s ties to Russia was “reaching the point where it’s of Watergate-size and scale.”
In both of his own presidential races, Sen. McCain had dubbed his campaign bus the “Straight Talk Express.” To the delight of reporters who travelled with him in 2000, he was accessible and unfiltered, a scrappy underdog who delighted in upsetting the Republican order.
“He was always ready for the next experience, the next fight. Not just ready, but impatient for it,” said his longtime aide Mark Salter, who co-authored more than a halfdozen books with the senator, including three memoirs.
McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign turned out to be a far more conventional operation than his first bid for the White House. He stuck to his talking points and came to represent the status quo that he once promised to topple.
One move, however, was a reckless political gambit. Sen. McCain picked as his vice-presidential running mate the little-known governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin.
Palin’s performance in interviews and on the stump sowed doubts about whether she was prepared to be next in line for the presidency and, by Election Day, polls indicated she was a drag on his candidacy.
McCain, who rose to become chairman of the Armed Services Committee, was among the Republicans’ most hawkish leaders on military matters and foreign affairs.
The mindset came from his conviction that the Vietnam War, in which he had suffered grievously, was a noble and winnable endeavour. The real failure, he believed, was that of a spineless political class.
During the Iraq War, often compared to Vietnam, Sen. McCain was an early and ardent proponent of a 2007 “surge” of troops. President Bush ultimately adopted that strategy, and it was widely credited with stabilizing Iraq, albeit temporarily.
John Sidney McCain III was born Aug. 29, 1936, in the Panama Canal Zone and into a family whose military lineage included an ancestor who served as an aide to Gen. George Washington during the Revolutionary War.
He graduated in 1954 from a Virginia boarding school. Following his father’s and grandfather’s path, McCain then enrolled at the U.S. Naval Academy.
McCain married Carol Shepp of Philadelphia in July 1965, and he soon adopted her two sons from a previous marriage, Douglas and Andrew. The couple later had a daughter, Sidney.
McCain requested orders to do a Vietnam combat tour. On Oct. 26, 1967, McCain was on his 23rd mission and his first attack on the enemy capital, Hanoi.
As he released his bombs, a missile blew off his right wing. He was hurled from the plane and came to when he hit the lake, where a mob of Vietnamese had gathered.
With both arms and his right knee broken, he was dragged from the lake, beaten with a rifle butt and stabbed in the foot with a bayonet. Then Sen. McCain was taken to the French-built prison that American PoWs had dubbed the “Hanoi Hilton.”
So began 51/2 years of torture and imprisonment.
McCain is survived by his second wife, Cindy, and seven children.
He was always ready for the next experience, the next fight. Not just ready, but impatient for it.” McCain aide Mark Salter