The Vietnam veteran who twice ran for the White House
Shot down over Hanoi in October 1967 and taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese, John Mccain survived five brutal years in the notorious “Hanoi Hilton” to become one of America’s most respected Republican politicians and statesmen. Latterly, the Arizona senator, who has died aged 81, had also emerged as one of Donald Trump’s fiercest Republican critics. In July 2015, he accused the reality TV star of “firing up the crazies”. Trump hit back by dismissing the Vietnam veteran’s war record: “He is a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.” Their feud continued when Trump took office: one of Mccain’s last political acts – after he’d been diagnosed with brain cancer – was to deliver a thumbs down in the Senate to stop Trump’s much-vaunted plan to repeal Obamacare.
Yet Mccain himself had unwittingly paved the way for the Trump White House, by picking Sarah Palin (instead of his friend Joe Lieberman) as his running mate for the 2008 election, said The Guardian. He’d been persuaded that he needed the Alaska governor and self-described “hockey mom” on the ticket in order to court the Christian Right: the unforeseen consequence was to unleash the forces of populism that would, eight years later, propel Trump to power. As The New York Times columnist David Brooks put it: “He took a disease that was running through the Republican Party – anti-intellectualism, disrespect for facts – and he put it right at the centre of the party.”
Born into a naval family (his grandfather and father ended their careers as four-star admirals), John Mccain attended 20 schools as his father moved from base to base. Following a family tradition, he then enrolled in the United States Naval Academy in Maryland. He did not excel: a rebellious student, known for his partying and womanising, he graduated near the bottom of his class in 1958, and crashed a plane into the sea during his flight training.
In July 1967 he arrived in Vietnam, where he flew 22 combat missions before his plane was hit by a surface-to-air missile. As he ejected, he broke his knee and both arms. In jail, he was beaten and tortured. When his captors found out that his father was an admiral, they sensed a propaganda coup and offered to send him home. He refused, saying he’d only go when all the POWS were released, and the torture resumed until he broke and “confessed” to being a “criminal” – a perceived disgrace that left him suicidal. By the time he got home, in March 1973, after many months in solitary, he was white-haired and unable to raise his arms above his head. He learnt then that his wife, Carol, had herself been disabled by a car crash, and was in a wheelchair. He left her for his second wife, Cindy, in 1980. He admitted later that he had been selfish and immature.
In 1981, he retired from the navy and ran for Congress the next year; he won his Senate seat in 1986. A maverick, he supported the invasion of Iraq – but was highly critical of the way the Pentagon handled its aftermath; he was in favour of gun control and liberal on immigration. In the 2000 presidential race, he lost the GOP nomination to George W. Bush; in 2008, he won that, but lost the election to Barack Obama, a man he respected. When, on the campaign trail, a voter suggested that his rival was an Arab and untrustworthy, he grabbed the mic, and told her: “No ma’am, he is a decent family man and citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with.” Although he had a temper, and was not untainted by scandal (he was said to have done too much for corporate lobbyists), Mccain was regarded as a politician of rare integrity. “I will work with anyone to get this country moving again,” he once said. “I will listen to any idea that is offered in good faith and intended to help solve our problems.”