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John Sidney McCain III (born August 29, 1936) is the senior United States Senator from Arizona and presumptive Republican Party nominee for President of the United States in the upcoming 2008 election.
McCain graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1958, and became a naval aviator, flying attack aircraft from carriers. During the Vietnam War, he almost lost his life in the 1967 Forrestal fire. Later that year, while on a bombing mission over North Vietnam, he was shot down, badly injured, and captured as a POW.
McCain retired from the Navy in 1981 and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona in 1982. After serving two terms, he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986, winning reelection in 1992, 1998, and 2004. While generally adhering to conservative principles, McCain established a reputation as a political maverick for disagreeing with his party on several key issues. Surviving the Keating Five scandal of the 1980s, he made campaign finance reform one of his signature concerns, eventually co-sponsoring the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act in 2002.
McCain lost the Republican nomination in the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush after several hard-fought primary contests. In the 2008 presidential election cycle, McCain staged a comeback after his campaign stumbled in mid-2007, and by the end of January 2008, he was the Republican front-runner. Following victories in early February 2008, and the withdrawal of his closest competitors, McCain gained enough delegates to become the presumptive nominee on March 4, 2008.
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McCain was born at Coco Solo Naval Air Station in Panama to Navy officer John S. McCain, Jr. (1911-1981) and Roberta (Wright) McCain (b. 1912). At that time, the Panama Canal was under American control, and the McCain family was stationed in the Panama Canal Zone.
McCain has Scots-Irish and English ancestry. His father and paternal grandfather both became four-star United States Navy admirals. His family (including his older sister Sandy and younger brother Joe) followed his father to various naval postings in the United States and the Pacific. Altogether, he attended about 20 schools.
As a child, John McCain was a quiet, dependable, and courteous member of his family. He also had a quick temper and an aggressive drive to compete and prevail.
In 1951, the family settled in Northern Virginia, and McCain attended Episcopal High School, a private preparatory boarding school in Alexandria. In high school, he excelled at wrestling and graduated in 1954.
Following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, McCain entered the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. There, he was a friend and leader for many of his classmates, and stood up for people who were being bullied. He also became a lightweight boxer. McCain had conflicts with higher-ups, and he was disinclined to obey every rule, which contributed to a low class rank (894/899) that he did not aim to improve. McCain did well in academic subjects that interested him, and he graduated in 1958.
John McCain's pre-combat duty began when he was commissioned an ensign, and started two and a half years of training as a naval aviator at Pensacola. There he also earned a reputation as a party man. Graduating from flight school in 1960, he became a naval pilot of attack aircraft. McCain was then stationed in A-1 Skyraider squadrons on the aircraft carriers USS Intrepid and USS Enterprise, in the Caribbean Sea and in the Mediterranean Sea. He survived two airplane crashes and a collision with power lines.
On July 3, 1965 McCain married Carol Shepp, a model originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. McCain adopted her two young children Douglas and Andrew. He and Carol then had a daughter named Sidney.
McCain requested a combat assignment, and in December 1966 was assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal flying A-4 Skyhawks. McCain's combat duty began when he was 30 years old. In summer 1967, Forrestal was assigned to a bombing campaign during the Vietnam War. McCain and his fellow pilots were frustrated by micromanagement from Washington, and he would later write that "In all candor, we thought our civilian commanders were complete idiots who didn't have the least notion of what it took to win the war."
By then a lieutenant commander, McCain was almost killed on July 29, 1967 when he was at the epicenter of the Forrestal fire. McCain escaped from his burning jet and was trying to help another pilot escape when a bomb exploded; McCain was struck in the legs and chest by fragments. The ensuing fire killed 134 sailors and took 24 hours to control. As Forrestal headed for repairs, McCain volunteered for the USS Oriskany.
John McCain's capture and imprisonment began on October 26, 1967. He was flying his twenty-third bombing mission over North Vietnam, when his A-4E Skyhawk was shot down by a missile over Hanoi. McCain fractured both arms and a leg, and then nearly drowned when he parachuted into Trüc BüĄch Lake in Hanoi. After he regained consciousness, a mob attacked him, crushed his shoulder with a rifle butt, and bayoneted him; he was then transported to Hanoi's main Hoa Lo Prison, nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton".
Although McCain was badly wounded, his captors refused to treat his injuries, instead beating and interrogating him to get information. Only when the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a top admiral did they give him medical care and announce his capture. His status as a prisoner of war (POW) made the front pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post.
McCain spent six weeks in the Hoa Loa hospital, receiving marginal care. Now having lost 50 pounds (23 kg), in a chest cast, and with his hair turned white, McCain was sent to a different camp on the outskirts of Hanoi in December 1967, into a cell with two other Americans who did not expect him to live a week. In March 1968, McCain was put into solitary confinement, where he would remain for two years.
In mid-1968, McCain's father was named commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater, and McCain was offered early release. The North Vietnamese wanted a worldwide propaganda coup by appearing merciful, and also wanted to show other POWs that elites like McCain were willing to be treated preferentially. McCain turned down the offer of repatriation; he would only accept the offer if every man taken in before him was released as well.
In August of 1968, a program of severe torture began on McCain. McCain was subjected to repeated beatings and rope bindings, at the same time as he was suffering from dysentery. After four days, McCain made an anti-American propaganda "confession". He has always felt that his statement was dishonorable, but as he would later write, "I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine." His injuries left him permanently incapable of raising his arms above his head. He subsequently received two to three beatings per week because of his continued refusal to sign additional statements. Other American POWs were similarly tortured and maltreated in order to extract "confessions" and propaganda statements, with many enduring even worse treatment than McCain.
McCain refused to meet with various anti-war groups seeking peace in Hanoi, not wanting to give either them or the North Vietnamese a propaganda victory. From late 1969 on, treatment of McCain and many of the other POWs became more tolerable, while McCain continued to be an active resister against the camp authorities. McCain and other prisoners cheered the B-52-led U.S. "Christmas Bombing" campaign of December 1972 as a forceful measure to push North Vietnam to terms.
Altogether, McCain was held as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for five and a half years. He was finally released from captivity on March 14, 1973. McCain's return to the United States reunited him with his wife and family. His wife Carol had suffered her own crippling ordeal during his captivity, due to an automobile accident in December 1969. As a returned POW, McCain became a celebrity of sorts.
McCain underwent treatment for his injuries, including months of grueling physical therapy, and attended the National War College in Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. during 1973-1974. By late 1974 McCain had his flight status reinstated, and in 1976 he became commanding officer of a training squadron stationed in Florida. He turned around a mediocre unit and won the squadron its first Meritorious Unit Commendation. During this period, the McCains' marriage began to falter; he would later accept blame.
McCain served as the Navy's liaison to the U.S. Senate, beginning in 1977. He would later say it represented "[my] real entry into the world of politics and the beginning of my second career as a public servant".> McCain played a key behind-the-scenes role in gaining congressional financing for a new supercarrier against the wishes of the Carter administration.
In 1979, McCain met and began a relationship with Cindy Lou Hensley, a teacher from Phoenix, Arizona, the only child of the founder of Hensley & Co. By then McCain's naval career had stalled; it was unlikely he would be promoted further, because he had poor annual physicals and had been given no major sea command.
His wife Carol accepted a divorce in February of 1980, effective in April of 1980. The settlement included two houses, and financial support for her ongoing medical treatments resulting from the 1969 automobile accident; they would remain on good terms. McCain and Hensley were married on May 17, 1980. McCain retired from the Navy on April 1, 1981, as a captain, and headed west to Arizona. His military awards include the Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Distinguished Flying Cross, and National Order of Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam).
McCain set his sights on becoming a Congressman upon moving to Arizona, because he was interested in current events, was ready for a new challenge, and had developed political ambitions during his time as Senate liaison. Living in Phoenix, he went to work for Hensley & Co., his new father-in-law Jim Hensley's large Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship, as Vice President of Public Relations. There he gained political support among the local business community, meeting powerful figures such as banker Charles Keating, Jr., real estate developer Fife Symington III, and newspaper publisher Darrow "Duke" Tully. In 1982, McCain ran as a Republican for an open seat in Arizona's 1st congressional district. As a newcomer to the state, McCain was hit with repeated charges of being a carpetbagger. McCain responded to a voter making the charge with what a Phoenix Gazette columnist would later label as "the most devastating response to a potentially troublesome political issue I've ever heard":
Listen, pal. I spent 22 years in the Navy. My father was in the Navy. My grandfather was in the Navy. We in the military service tend to move a lot. We have to live in all parts of the country, all parts of the world. I wish I could have had the luxury, like you, of growing up and living and spending my entire life in a nice place like the First District of Arizona, but I was doing other things. As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi.
With the assistance of local political endorsements, his Washington connections, as well as money that his wife lent to his campaign, McCain won a highly contested primary election. He then easily won the general election in the heavily Republican district.
McCain was elected the president of the 1983 Republican freshman class of representatives. Later that year, he opposed creation of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, but eventually changed this view, calling King "a transcendent figure in American history" who "deserved to be honored."
McCain's politics at this point were mainly in line with President Ronald Reagan, and he was active on Indian Affairs bills. He won re-election to the House easily in 1984.
In 1984 McCain and his wife Cindy had their first child together, daughter Meghan. She was followed two years later by son John Sidney IV (known as "Jack"), and in 1988 by son James. Although McCain chooses not to make it a "talking point," James ("Jimmy") served in Iraq until February 2008. In 1991, Cindy McCain brought an abandoned three-month old girl needing medical treatment to the U.S. from a Bangladeshi orphanage run by Mother Teresa; the McCains decided to adopt her, and named her Bridget.
McCain's Senate career began in January 1987, after longtime American conservative icon and Arizona fixture Barry Goldwater retired as United States Senator from Arizona. McCain defeated his Democratic opponent, former state legislator Richard Kimball, by 20 percentage points in the 1986 election.
Upon entering the Senate, McCain became a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, with whom he had formerly done his Navy liaison work; he also joined the Commerce Committee and the Indian Affairs Committee. He continued to support the Native American agenda. McCain was a strong supporter of the Gramm-Rudman legislation that enforced automatic spending cuts in the case of budget deficits.
McCain soon gained national visibility. He delivered a well-received speech at the 1988 Republican National Convention he was mentioned by the press as a short list vice-presidential running mate for Republican nominee George H. W. Bush, and he was named chairman of Veterans for Bush.
McCain became enmeshed in a scandal during the 1980s when he was one of five United States Senators comprising the so-called "Keating Five". Between 1982 and 1987, McCain had received $112,000 in legal political contributions from Charles Keating Jr. and his associates at Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, along with trips on Keating's jets that McCain failed to repay until two years later. In 1987, McCain was one of the five senators whom Keating contacted in order to prevent the government's seizure of Lincoln, which was by then insolvent and being investigated for making questionable efforts to regain solvency. McCain met twice with federal regulators to discuss the government's investigation of Lincoln.
On his Keating Five experience, McCain said: "The appearance of it was wrong. It's a wrong appearance when a group of senators appear in a meeting with a group of regulators, because it conveys the impression of undue and improper influence. And it was the wrong thing to do." Federal regulators ultimately filed a civil suit against Keating. The five senators came under investigation for attempting to influence the regulators. In the end, none of the senators were charged with any crime. McCain was rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee for exercising "poor judgment", but their 1991 report said that McCain's "actions were not improper nor attended with gross negligence and did not reach the level of requiring institutional action against him." In his 1992 re-election bid, the Keating Five affair was not a major issue, and he won handily, gaining 56 percent of the vote to defeat Democratic community and civil rights activist Claire Sargent and independent former Governor Evan Mecham.
During the 1990s, McCain developed a reputation for independence. He took pride in taking on battles against establishment forces, was willing to challenge party leadership, and became hard to categorize politically.
As a member of the 1991-1993 Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, chaired by Democrat and fellow Vietnam War veteran John Kerry, McCain investigated the fate of U.S. service personnel listed as missing in action during the Vietnam War. The committee's unanimous report stated there was "no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia." Helped by McCain's efforts, in 1995 the U.S. normalized diplomatic relations with Vietnam. McCain was vilified by some POW/MIA activists who believed large numbers of Americans were still held against their will in Southeast Asia; they objected to McCain not sharing their belief and his pushing for Vietnam normalization.
McCain made attacking the corrupting influence of large-scale contributions -- from corporations, labor unions, other organizations, and wealthy individuals -- on American politics his signature issue. Starting in 1994, he worked with Democratic Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold on campaign finance reform; their McCain-Feingold bill would attempt to put limits on "soft money". McCain and Feingold's efforts were opposed by some of the moneyed interests targeted, by incumbents in both parties, by those who felt spending limits impinged on free political speech, and by those who wanted to lessen the power of what they saw as media bias. Despite sympathetic coverage in the media, initial versions of the McCain-Feingold Act were filibustered and never came to a vote. The term "maverick Republican" became a label frequently applied to McCain; he has also used the term himself.
McCain also attacked pork barrel spending within Congress. He was instrumental in pushing through approval of the Line Item Veto Act of 1996, which gave the president power to veto individual spending items. It was one of McCain's biggest Senate victories, although in 1998 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the act unconstitutional.
In the 1996 presidential election, McCain was again on the short list of possible vice-presidential picks for Republican nominee Bob Dole. The following year, Time magazine named McCain as one of the "25 Most Influential People in America".
In 1997, McCain became chairman of the powerful Senate Commerce Committee; he was criticized for accepting funds from corporations and businesses under the committee's purview, but in response said the restricted contributions he received were not part of the big-money nature of the campaign finance problem. McCain took on the tobacco industry in 1998, proposing legislation that would increase cigarette taxes to fund anti-smoking campaigns and reduce the number of teenage smokers, increase research money on health studies, and help states pay for smoking-related health care costs. Supported by the Clinton administration but opposed by the industry and most Republicans, the bill failed to gain cloture.
McCain won re-election to a third senate term in November 1998, prevailing in a landslide over his Democratic opponent, environmental lawyer Ed Ranger. In 1999, McCain shared the Profile in Courage Award with Feingold for their work in trying to enact their campaign finance reform, although the bill was still failing repeated attempts to gain cloture.
McCain announced his candidacy for president on September 27, 1999 in Nashua, New Hampshire, saying he was staging "a fight to take our government back from the power brokers and special interests, and return it to the people and the noble cause of freedom it was created to serve". The leader for the Republican nomination was Texas Governor George W. Bush, who had the political and financial support of most of the party establishment.
McCain focused on the New Hampshire primary, where his message held appeal to independents. He traveled on a campaign bus called the Straight Talk Express. He held many town hall meetings, answering every question voters had, in a successful example of "retail politics". He used free media to compensate for his lack of funds; one reporter later recounted that, "McCain talked all day long with reporters on his Straight Talk Express bus; he talked so much that sometimes he said things that he shouldn't have, and that's why the media loved him." On February 1, 2000, he won the primary with 49 percent of the vote to Bush's 30 percent. A McCain victory in the crucial South Carolina primary might give his campaign unstoppable momentum; a degree of panic crept into the Bush campaign and the Republican establishment.
The battle between Bush and McCain for South Carolina has entered American political lore as one of the dirtiest and most brutal ever. A variety of interest groups that McCain had challenged in the past now pounded him with negative ads. Bush tried to co-opt McCain's message of reform, while refusing to disassociate himself from a veterans activist who accused McCain (in Bush's presence) of having "abandoned the veterans" on POW/MIA and Agent Orange issues.
Incensed, McCain ran ads accusing Bush of lying and comparing the governor to Bill Clinton, which Bush said was "about as low a blow as you can give in a Republican primary". An unidentified party began a semi-underground smear campaign against McCain, delivered by push polls, faxes, e-mails, and flyers. It claimed most infamously that McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock (the McCains' dark-skinned daughter Bridget was adopted from Bangladesh), and also that his wife Cindy was a drug addict, that he was a homosexual, and that he was a "Manchurian Candidate" traitor or mentally unstable from his North Vietnam POW days. The Bush campaign strongly denied any involvement with the attacks.
McCain lost South Carolina on February 19, with 42 percent of the vote to Bush'>s 53 percent, in part because Bush mobilized the state's evangelical voters and outspent McCain. The win allowed Bush to regain lost momentum. McCain would say of the rumor spreaders, "I believe that there is a special place in hell for people like those." According to one report, the South Carolina experience left McCain in a "very dark place".
McCain's campaign never completely recovered from his defeat there, although he did rebound partially by winning in Arizona and Michigan on February 22. He made a speech in Virginia Beach that criticized Christian leaders, including Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, as divisive conservatives, declaring "... we embrace the fine members of the religious conservative community. But that does not mean that we will pander to their self-appointed leaders." McCain lost the Virginia primary on February 29 and nine of the thirteen primaries on Super Tuesday to Bush. With little hope of catching Bush's delegate lead, McCain withdrew from the race on March 9, 2000. He endorsed Bush two months later, and made occasional appearances with Bush during the general election campaign.
McCain began 2001 by breaking with the new George W. Bush administration on a number of matters, including HMO reform, climate change, and gun legislation; McCain-Feingold was opposed by Bush as well. In May 2001, McCain was one of only two Senate Republicans to vote against the Bush tax cuts. Later, when Republican Senator Jim Jeffords became an Independent, throwing control of the Senate to the Democrats, McCain defended Jeffords against "self-appointed enforcers of party loyalty". Indeed, there was speculation at the time, and in years since, about McCain himself possibly leaving the Republican Party. McCain has always adamantly denied that he ever considered doing so.
After the September 11, 2001 attacks, McCain supported Bush and the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. He and then-Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman wrote the legislation that created the 9/11 Commission, while he and Democratic Senator Fritz Hollings co-sponsored the Aviation and Transportation Security Act that federalized airport security.
In March 2002, McCain-Feingold passed in both Houses of Congress and was signed into law by President Bush. Seven years in the making, it was McCain's greatest legislative achievement.
Meanwhile, in discussions over proposed U.S. action against Iraq, McCain was a strong supporter of the Bush administration's position. He stated that Iraq was "a clear and present danger to the United States of America", and voted accordingly for the Iraq War Resolution in October 2002. He predicted that U.S. forces would be treated as liberators by a large number of the Iraqi people. In May 2003, McCain voted against the second round of Bush tax cuts, saying it was unwise at a time of war. By November 2003, after a trip to Iraq, McCain was publicly questioning Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, saying that more U.S. troops were needed; the following year, McCain announced that he had lost confidence in Rumsfeld.
In October 2003, McCain and Lieberman co-sponsored the Climate Stewardship Act that would have introduced a cap and trade system of greenhouse gases at the 2000 emissions level; the bill was defeated with 55 votes to 43 in the Senate. They reintroduced modified versions of the Act two additional times, most recently in January 2007 with the co-sponsorship of Barack Obama.
In the 2004 U.S. presidential election, McCain was once again frequently mentioned for the vice-presidential slot, only this time as part of the Democratic ticket under nominee John Kerry. McCain said that Kerry had never formally offered him the position and that he would not have accepted it if he had. At the 2004 Republican National Convention, McCain supported Bush for re-election, praising Bush's management of the War on Terror since the September 11 attacks. At the same time, the Senator defended Kerry's Vietnam war record. By August 2004, McCain had the best favorable-to-unfavorable rating (55 percent to 19 percent) of any national politician.
McCain was up for re-election as Senator in 2004; he defeated little-known Democratic schoolteacher Stuart Starky with his biggest margin of victory, garnering 77 percent of the vote.
McCain continued to support appointments of judges who "would strictly interpret the Constitution", adding Supreme Court confirmation votes in favor of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to those he had previously cast for Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. In May 2005, McCain led the so-called "Gang of 14" in the Senate, which established a compromise that preserved the ability of senators to filibuster judicial nominees, but only in "extraordinary circumstances". The compromise took the steam out of the filibuster movement, but some Republicans remained disappointed that the compromise did not eliminate filibusters of judicial nominees in all circumstances.
Breaking from his 2001 and 2003 votes, McCain supported the Bush tax cut extension in May 2006, saying not to do so would amount to a tax increase. Working with Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy, McCain was a strong proponent of comprehensive immigration reform, which would involve legalization, guest worker programs, and border enforcement components. The Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act was never voted on in 2005, while the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 passed the Senate in May 2006 but failed in the House. In June 2007, President Bush, McCain and others made the strongest push yet for such a bill, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, but it aroused furious grassroots opposition among talk radio listeners and others as an "amnesty" program, and twice failed to gain cloture in the Senate.
Owing to his time as a POW, McCain has been recognized for his sensitivity to the detention and interrogation of detainees in the War on Terror. On October 3, 2005, McCain introduced the McCain Detainee Amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill for 2005, and the Senate voted 90-9 to support the amendment. It prohibits inhumane treatment of prisoners, including prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, by confining military interrogations to the techniques in the U.S. Army Field Manual on Interrogation. Although Bush had threatened to veto the bill if McCain's amendment was included, the President announced on December 15, 2005 that he accepted McCain's terms and would "make it clear to the world that this government does not torture and that we adhere to the international convention of torture, whether it be here at home or abroad".
Meanwhile, McCain continued questioning the progress of the war in Iraq. In September 2005, he remarked upon Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers' optimistic outlook on the war's progress: "Things have not gone as well as we had planned or expected, nor as we were told by you, General Myers." In August 2006, he criticized the administration for continually understating the effectiveness of the insurgency: "We [have] not told the American people how tough and difficult this could be." From the beginning, McCain strongly supported the Iraq troop surge of 2007. The strategy's opponents labeled it "McCain's plan" and University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato said, "McCain owns Iraq just as much as Bush does now." The surge and the war were unpopular during most of the year, even within the Republican Party, as McCain'>s presidential campaign was underway; faced with the consequences, McCain frequently responded, "I would much rather lose a campaign than a war." In March 2008, McCain credited the surge strategy with reducing violence in Iraq, as he made his eighth trip to that country since the war began.
John McCain formally announced he was seeking the presidency of the United States on April 25, 2007 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He stated that: "I'm not running for President to be somebody, but to do something; to do the hard but necessary things not the easy and needless things."
McCain's oft-cited strengths as a presidential candidate for 2008 included national name recognition, sponsorship of major lobbying and campaign finance reform initiatives, leadership in exposing the Abramoff scandal, his well-known military service and experience as a POW, his experience from the 2000 presidential campaign, and an expectation that he would capture Bush's top fundraisers. During the 2006 election cycle, McCain attended 346 events> and helped raise more than $10.5 million on behalf of Republican candidates. McCain also became more willing to ask business and industry for campaign contributions, while maintaining that such contributions would not affect any official decisions he would make.
McCain had fundraising problems in the first half of 2007, due in part to his support for the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, which was unpopular among the Republican base electorate. Large-scale campaign staff downsizing took place in early July, but McCain said he was not considering dropping out of the race.> Later that month, his campaign manager and campaign chief strategist both departed. McCain subsequently resumed his familiar position as a political underdog, riding the Straight Talk Express and taking advantage of free media such as debates and sponsored events. By December 2007, the Republican race was unsettled, with none of the top-tier candidates dominating the race and all of them possessing major vulnerabilities with different elements of the Republican base electorate. McCain was showing a resurgence, in particular with renewed strength in New Hampshire - the scene of his 2000 triumph - and was bolstered further by the endorsements of The Boston Globe, the Manchester Union-Leader, and almost two dozen other state newspapers, as well as from Independent Democrat Senator Joe Lieberman.
All of this paid off when McCain won the New Hampshire primary on January 8, 2008, defeating former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney in a close contest, to once again become one of the front-runners in the race. On January 19, McCain placed first in the South Carolina primary, narrowly defeating former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee. He followed this up with another win a week later in the Florida primary, beating Romney again in a close contest; rival Rudy Giuliani dropped out and endorsed McCain. On February 5, Super Tuesday, McCain won both the majority of states and delegates in the Republican primaries, giving him a commanding lead toward the Republican nomination; Romney departed from the race on February 7. McCain clinched a majority of the delegates and became the presumptive nominee with wins in the Ohio primary and Texas primary on March 4, with the nomination to be made official in September at the 2008 Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
If he wins the presidency, John McCain's birth (in Panama) would be the first presidential birth outside the current 50 states; bipartisan research indicates that he is nevertheless a natural-born citizen of the United States, a constitutional requirement to become president. Also, if inaugurated in 2009 at age 72 years and 144 days, he would be the oldest U.S. president upon ascension to the presidency, and the second-oldest president to be inaugurated (Ronald Reagan was 73 years and 350 days old at his second inauguration). McCain has addressed concerns about his age and past health concerns, stating in 2005 that his health was "excellent". He has been treated for a type of skin cancer called melanoma, and an operation in 2000 for that condition left a noticeable mark on the left side of his face. McCain's prognosis appears favorable, according to independent experts, especially because he has already survived without a recurrence for more than seven years.
After clinching enough delegates for the nomination, McCains focus shifted toward the general election while Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton fought a prolonged battle for the Democratic nomination. McCain staged a "biographical tour", introduced various policy proposals, and sought to improve his fundraising.
Various interest groups have given Senator McCain scores or grades as to how well his votes align with the positions of the group. The American Conservative Union awarded McCain a lifetime rating of 82 percent through 2007, while McCain has an average lifetime 13 percent "Liberal Quotient" from Americans for Democratic Action through 2007.
The Almanac of American Politics rates congressional votes as liberal or conservative on the political spectrum, in three policy areas: Economic, Social, and Foreign. For 2006, McCain's ratings were as follows. Economic: 64 percent conservative, 35 percent liberal (in 2005 the ratings were 52 percent conservative, 47 percent liberal). Social: 46 percent conservative, 53 percent liberal (in 2005 the ratings were 64 percent conservative, 23 percent liberal). Foreign: 58 percent conservative, 40 percent liberal (in 2005 the ratings were 54 percent conservative, 45 percent liberal).
McCain's voting record during the 107th Congress, during 2001 and 2002, placed him as the sixth most liberal Republican senator, according to Voteview.com. His voting record in the 109th Congress, during 2005 and 2006, was the second most conservative among senators, according to the same analysis.
John McCain is said to have a conservative voting record on pro-life and free trade issues. He favors private Social Security accounts, and opposes an expanded government role in health care. McCain also supports school vouchers, capital punishment, mandatory sentencing, and welfare reform.
Arizona Republic columnist and RealClearPolitics contributor Robert Robb, using a formulation devised by William F. Buckley, Jr., describes McCain as "conservative" but not "a conservative", meaning that while McCain usually tends towards conservative positions, he is not "anchored by the philosophical tenets of modern American conservatism".
John McCain's personal character has been a dominant feature of his public image. This image includes the military service of both himself and his family, his maverick political persona, his temper, his admitted problem of occasional ill-considered remarks, and his devotion to his large blended family.
McCain's political appeal has been more nonpartisan and less ideological compared to many other national politicians. His stature and reputation stem partly from his service in the Vietnam War. He also carries physical vestiges of his war wounds, as well as his melanoma surgery; when campaigning he quips, "I am older than dirt and have more scars than Frankenstein."
While considering himself to be a straight-talking public servant, McCain acknowledges being impatient. Other traits include a penchant for lucky charms, and a sense of humor that has sometimes backfired spectacularly, as when he made a joke in 1998 about the Clintons that was not fit to print in newspapers. McCain has not shied away from addressing his shortcomings, and apologizing for them. He is known for sometimes being prickly with Senate colleagues, but his relations with his own Senate staff have been more cordial, and have inspired loyalty towards him.
Regarding his temper, or what might be viewed as passionate conviction, McCain acknowledges it while also saying that the stories have been exaggerated. Having a temper is not unusual for U.S. leaders, and McCain has employed both profanity and shouting on occasion. Such incidents have become less frequent over the years, and Senator Joseph Lieberman has made this observation: "It is not the kind of anger that is a loss of control. He is a very controlled person." Senator Thad Cochran, who has known McCain for decades and has battled him over earmarks, has expressed much greater concern about a McCain presidency: "He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me." Ultimately Cochran decided to support McCain for president, after it was clear he would win the nomination.
All of John McCain's family members are on good terms with him, and he has defended them against some of the negative consequences of his high-profile political lifestyle. McCain's father battled alcoholism, and his wife battled addiction to painkillers; their efforts at self-improvement have become part of McCain's family tradition as well. His family's military tradition extends to the latest generation: son John Sidney IV ("Jack") is enrolled in the U.S. Naval Academy, son James has served with the Marines in Iraq, and son Doug flew jets in the Navy.
