John McCain
Candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential
nomination
by Beth Rowen
Although John McCain is once again touring the country in his
Straight Talk Express campaign bus, he’s running a markedly different
campaign for the Republican presidential nomination than he did in
2000.
McCain has tempered his maverick nature. Instead of challenging
many conventional Republican ideals, he is reaching out to the party’s
conservative base as well as its moderate contingent.
Mended Fences
with Bush
The four-term senator from Arizona has patched up his once troubled
relationship with President Bush—McCain’s former rival whose
vitriolic smear campaign during the South Carolina primary in 2000 very
likely cost him the Republican nomination and handed McCain his first ever
electoral loss. He supported Bush’s tax cuts, which he once deemed
fiscally irresponsible, and defended Bush in 2006 when fellow Vietnam
veteran John Kerry famously botched a joke that was intended to lampoon
Bush’s intellect, but instead came out as an insult to troops in Iraq.
(And who can forget Bush’s embrace of McCain during the 2004
presidential race?)
McCain’s détente with Bush has its
limits, however. In 2005, under the threat of a presidential veto, the
Senate passed McCain’s anti-torture amendment that banned
“cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment” of prisoners held in
U.S. custody. Although he supports the war in Iraq and endorsed the surge of
troops that arrived in Baghdad in February 2007, McCain has been critical of
Bush’s execution and management of the war. He reserved his sharpest
criticism for former secretary of defense Donald
Rumsfeld.
“I think that Donald Rumsfeld will go down as one
of the worst secretaries of defense in history,” McCain said at a
speech in February 2007.
A Champion of Reform
Although McCain
has somewhat reinvented himself as a mainstream Republican candidate, he can
still spark the ire of many in his party. Indeed, his support of the failed
Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act alienated many core Republicans. Some
observers say it affected his fundraising over the summer.
In July,
McCain’s campaign nearly imploded. He was running precariously low on
money, with only about $2 million on hand, and his longtime strategist John
Weaver quit, leading the charge to the door for other members of his senior
staff. McCain survived the storm, and now boasts that he’s running a
lean, mean machine.
McCain has remained steadfast in his opposition to
pork-barrel spending and committed to campaign-finance reform. He
co-sponsored legislation, passed in 2002, with Democrat Russ Feingold that
banned soft money—unlimited contributions to political parties. McCain
still has a penchant for calling things—and people—as he sees
them. He derided the diminutive North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as a
“pip-squeak in platform shoes.”
McCain has consistently
leaned conservative. He is anti-abortion, and favors teacher testing and
school vouchers. He believes in small government and lower
taxes.
Vietnam Veteran, U.S. Senator
John S. McCain was born
August 29, 1936 in the Panama Canal
Zone into a family steeped in military history. At age 17, McCain
enrolled in the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. He graduated four years
later, fifth from the bottom of the class. As an ensign in the Navy he
trained as an aircraft carrier pilot.
His service in Vietnam was nothing short of catastrophic. In
July 1967, aboard the USS Forrestal, he narrowly escaped death when
the aircraft carrier was accidentally hit by a missile and engulfed in
flames. More than 130 men died in the accident. Only three months later,
McCain set off for a bombing mission over Hanoi. His plane was hit by a
missile, and he went down. He suffered two broken arms and a broken leg. He
was snatched up by the North Vietnamese, who interned him in the "Hilton
Hanoi."
McCain's father, Admiral Jack McCain, became commander of U.S.
forces in the Pacific shortly after the younger McCain was taken prisoner.
McCain’s captors offered him early release as propaganda, but he
refused and spent five-and-a-half years as a POW, two of them in solitary
confinement.
After a long rehabilitation, McCain resumed his service
with the Navy. He served as U.S. Navy Liaison Officer to the U.S. Senate
from 1977 to 1980, and retired as a captain in 1981. He served two terms in
the U.S. House of Representatives before being elected to the Senate in
1986. He was re-elected in 1992, 1998, and 2004.
Not Without
Scandal
The decorated war hero has weathered his scandals, including
his admitted infidelity that led to the break-up of his first marriage.
Senator McCain was also a member of the Keating Five, a group of five
senators who worked behind the scenes on behalf of savings and loan operator
Charles H. Keating, later convicted of fraud.
After his loss in 2000,
McCain doubted he’d take another shot at the presidency. Though a few
years older and a little slower on his feet, McCain, a former boxer, still
has the fight in him. If he wins in November 2008, McCain will be 72, the
oldest person—by more than two years—ever elected president.
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