John McCain– AP
WASHINGTON—Sen. John McCain, who faced down his captors in a Vietnam prisoner of war camp with jut-jawed defiance and later turned his rebellious streak into a 35-year political career that took him to Congress and the Republican presidential nomination, died on Saturday after battling brain cancer for more than a year. He was 81.
McCain, with his irascible grin and fighter-pilot moxie, was a fearless and outspoken voice on policy and politics to the end, unswerving in his defense of democratic values and unflinching in his criticism of his fellow Republican, President Donald Trump.
He was elected to the Senate from Arizona six times but twice thwarted in seeking the presidency.
An upstart presidential bid in 2000 didn’t last long. Eight years later, he fought back from the brink of defeat to win the Republican nomination, only to be overpowered by Democrat Barack Obama.
McCain chose a little-known Alaska governor as his running mate in that race, and turned Sarah Palin into a national political figure.
Rebound
After losing to Obama in an electoral landslide, McCain returned to the Senate, determined not to be defined by a failed presidential campaign in which his reputation as a maverick had faded.
In the politics of the moment and in national political debate over the decades, McCain energetically advanced his ideas and punched back hard at critics—Trump not least among them.
The heir of a decorated military family, McCain embraced his role as chair of the Senate armed services committee, pushing for aggressive US military intervention overseas and eager to contribute to “defeating the forces of radical Islam that want to destroy America.”
Asked how he wanted to be remembered, McCain said simply: “That I made a major contribution to the defense of the nation.”
One dramatic vote he cast in the twilight of his career in 2017 will not soon be forgotten, either: As the decisive “no” on Senate Republican legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, McCain became the unlikely savior of Obama’s trademark legislative achievement.
Small place in US story
Taking a long look back in his valedictory memoir, “The Restless Wave,” McCain wrote of the world he inhabited: “I hate to leave it. But I don’t have a complaint. Not one. It’s been quite a ride. I’ve known great passions, seen amazing wonders, fought in a war, and helped make a peace . . . I made a small place for myself in the story of America and the history of my times.”
Throughout his long tenure in Congress, McCain played his role with trademark verve, at one hearing dismissing a protester by calling out, “Get out of here, you low-life scum.”
But it was just as notable when he held his sharp tongue, in service of a party or political gain.
Most remarkably, he stuck by Trump as the party’s 2016 presidential nominee even when Trump questioned his status as a war hero by saying: “I like people who weren’t captured.”
McCain declared the comment offensive to veterans but urged the men to “put it behind us and move forward.”
His breaking point with Trump was the release a month before the election of a lewd audio in which Trump said he could kiss and grab women.
McCain withdrew his support and said he’d write in “some good conservative Republican who’s qualified to be president.”
By the time McCain cast his vote against the Republican health bill, six months into Trump’s presidency, the two men were openly at odds.
Trump railed against McCain publicly over the vote, and McCain remarked that he no longer listened to what Trump had to say because “there’s no point in it.”
Brain cancer
By then, McCain had disclosed his brain cancer diagnosis and returned to Arizona to seek treatment.
His vote to kill the Republicans’ years-long Obamacare repeal drive—an issue McCain himself had campaigned on—came not long after the diagnosis, a surprising capstone to his legislative career.
In his final months, McCain did not go quietly, frequently jabbing at Trump and his policies from the remove of his Hidden Valley family retreat in Arizona.
John Sidney McCain III was born in 1936 in the Panama Canal zone, where his father was stationed in the military.
He followed his father and grandfather, the US Navy’s first father-and-son set of four-star admirals, to the Naval Academy, where he enrolled in what he described a “four-year course of insubordination and rebellion.”
On October 1967, McCain was on his 23rd bombing round over North Vietnam when he was shot out of the sky and taken prisoner.
Prisoner of war
Year upon year of solitary confinement, deprivation, beatings and other acts of torture left McCain so despairing that at one point he weakly attempted suicide.
When McCain’s Vietnamese captors offered him early release as a propaganda ploy, McCain refused to play along, insisting that those captured first should be the first set free.
In his darkest hour in Vietnam, McCain’s will had been broken and he signed a confession that said, “I am a black criminal and I have performed deeds of an air pirate.”
Even then, though, McCain refused to make an audio recording of his confession and used stilted written language to signal he had signed it under duress.
And, to the end of his captivity, he continued to exasperate his captors with his defiance. —AP