Tributes paid to John McCain, US political giant, after death at 81
JOHN McCain, who has died aged 81, romped home to win the Republican nomination for the 2008 American presidential election despite beginning as the most unpopular candidate in his own party; his convincing defeat by the Democratic challenger Barack Obama ended his hopes for the White House, but launched him on a new phase of his life as a respected, albeit still troublesome, elder statesman.
Among the tributes last night, Tánaiste and Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said of Senator McCain’s death: “A sad passing; A Great American of strength, principle and courage. John McCain was a real friend of Ireland too and will be missed by so many, RIP.”
Not without controversy, McCain was disliked by the US right, whose angst crystallised when he boarded his campaign bus, the “Straight Talk Express”, and stood against the party’s front-runner George W Bush for the Republican nomination in 2000. He stunned the political establishment by beating Bush in the New Hampshire primary, plunging the Republicans into a brief but dirty civil war during which Bush’s political guru Karl Rove destroyed McCain by mobilising the southern religious right against him.
Rumours were spread that McCain was mentally unbalanced and he had fathered an illegitimate black child – a suggestion fuelled by campaign appearances by one of his children, an orphan adopted from Bangladesh. In response, McCain lashed out at social conservatives, deriding them for intolerance.
During Bush’s presidency, McCain was the leader of a band of Republican dissidents who exploited the weaknesses of an administration they saw as steadily losing control. His constant criticism of the handling of the Iraq war hit home and his calm questioning of Donald Rumsfeld (whom he later described as “one of the worst secretaries of defence in history”) over the Guantanamo prisoner abuse scandal forced a change of policy.
His attacks on the spiralling Bush budget deficits struck a chord across America, and his support for illegal aliens becoming citizens; for limiting corporate donations to political campaigns and for taking steps to address global warming all heightened conservative mistrust.
But none of this did McCain little harm with Americans disillusioned with Bush’s brand of folksy zealotry.
He was witty enough to be a regular guest on liberal America’s favourite ‘Jon Stewart’s Daily Show’, to host ‘Saturday Night Live’ and make cameo appearances on television and film series. He had a good line in self-deprecating jokes. After he lost the nomination in 2000, he said: “I slept like a baby... I slept for two hours, woke up and cried. Then slept for two hours, woke up and cried.” In the 2008 presidential primaries he joked about being “older than dirt” with “more scars than Frankenstein”.
Admirers described him as “the Republican who speaks like a Democrat”, yet in reality McCain was considerably more right-wing than most people assumed.
On Iraq, he was resolute there should be no timetable for withdrawal; on social security, he promised more – not less – radical reform; he backed moves to ban abortion, favoured teaching creationist intelligent design theory alongside evolution in schools and also lent enthusiastic support to Bush’s conservative nominees for the Supreme Court. He had a notoriously bad temper and could be monumentally insensitive. He had to apologise after saying of the Clintons’ daughter: “Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno” (Bill Clinton’s lesbian attorney-general, who was rumoured to have had an affair with Hillary).
Questioned in 2007 about possible military action against Iran, McCain responded by singing “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys song ‘Barbara Ann’.
But he had a knack of playing up his failings in order to anticipate and undercut the attacks. “Hang around a while and I’ll throw you a temper tantrum,” he would tell his audiences.
On the campaign trail he would greet his staff every morning with the refrain “Where’s the coffee? You’re all fired.” In fact McCain inspired a level of personal loyalty rare in Washington.
Many staffers were with him for a decade or more.
McCain’s appeal was rooted in the experience many regarded as the most important entry on his CV – his five years as a PoW in Vietnam.
It was never forgotten that while Bush managed to skip Vietnam after his father arranged for him to jump a waiting list of 100,000 and secure a cushy number with the Texas National Guard – “defending Texas against Oklahoma” as one wag put it – McCain had served as an aviator in the US Navy, had been repeatedly subjected to torture during his captivity by the North Vietnamese, and had earned a number of decorations including the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Amid the endless corruption scandals of the Bush era and frustration over the war in Iraq, McCain preserved an image of bravery and integrity that appealed to blue-state and red-state voters.
He was born at Coco Sola, Panama, on August 29, 1936 into a distinguished naval family. His grandfather, Admiral John ‘Slew’ McCain, would fight the Japanese at Guadalcanal, and his father, Admiral Jack McCain, would be put in charge of American forces in the Pacific during the Vietnam War, when he unsentimentally ordered the bombing of Hanoi while his son was in captivity there.
YOUNG John was an obstreperous, disruptive child – a “rebel without a cause” as he later admitted – whose parents would regularly dunk him in a cold bath to calm his rages. At prep school near Washington DC, he was nicknamed ‘Punk’ and remembered as “a feisty little rat throwing water bombs around the dormitory”. He became commanding officer of a training squadron and the US navy’s liaison to the Senate before retiring in 1981 with a chestful of medals, in order to work for his father-in-law’s beer distributorship in Phoenix, Arizona. The following year he announced a bid for a seat in the House of Representatives, responding to accusations of being a carpetbagger by playing the Vietnam card. McCain and his wife Cindy had two sons and two daughters, one of them adopted. He also had a daughter by his first marriage to Carol Shepp and adopted her two sons by an earlier marriage.