Profiling the president
Saturday, 25 Oct 2008 19:50
John McCain or Barack Obama: America decides on November 4th
inthenews.co.uk looks at the life stories of John McCain and Barack Obama, one of whom will be elected US president on November 4th.
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John McCain
Looking back at the events of John McCain's life, it is easy to see why some say he was born to be president.
The Arizona senator nominee is just ten days away from discovering whether he will be sitting in the White House come 2009, ten years after announcing his first campaign to become the Republican nominee.
At 72, he would be America's oldest ever president at time of inauguration.
But then Mr McCain's life has defied convention so often – almost so much as to become conventional once again – it would not be beyond him to do so.
Born John Sidney McCain III at a military base in Panama, the man who would run for president followed his father into the armed forces, graduating close to the bottom of his class from the US naval academy in 1958.
Nine years into his navy pilot career, where he had flown jets from aircraft carriers, the aviator was shot down on a bombing mission in north Vietnam, seriously injured and captured by the Viet Cong.
McCain would spend the next four years as a prisoner of war and the torture he suffered during that period has left him with physical limitations that endure to the day (he cannot lift his arms above his head).
Upon release McCain stayed with the navy until 1981, when he retired with the rank of captain, when his political career began.
Having recently moved to Arizona, McCain served two terms in the House of Representatives before being elected to the Senate in 1986 and subsequently re-elected in 1992, 1998 and 2004.
It was during his first-term that he suffered his most serious political blip as part of the Keating Five, a group of senators that received thousands of dollars worth of political contributions from Charles Keating and the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association.
When Lincoln Savings went under, Keating appealed to McCain and his four fellow senators to intervene to prevent government regulators from seizing the business.
McCain, cleared by the Senate ethics committee but rapped over poor judgment, vowed to never accept donations from big business as a result, making attacks upon contributions from wealthy individuals and corporations a major aspect of his politicking.
It was from this point onwards that the senator began to cultivate his maverick image being painted by the media and party hierarchy.
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Barack Obama
For millions of Americans, Barack Obama offers political hope in a way not seen in Washington in a generation.
The junior senator from Illinois and presidential nominee of the Democrat party has generated enormous enthusiasm throughout his long campaign leading to November 4th.
So much so that he became the first candidate to break free of the public financing system since it began in the 1970s, raising over $600 million in the process and outstripping the coffers of his Republican rival.
Now Mr Obama, leading in the polls by around five per cent with ten days to go until decision day, is the frontrunner in the race against John McCain.
He is within reach of becoming the first African-American president of the United States. Such a development would be truly historic – and utterly in keeping with his unusual life.
Mr Obama already has experience of being the first African-American president. In 1991 he reached the summit of the Harvard Law Review, by which time his academic prowess was stunningly clear.
After growing up with his white mother in Hawaii, and for a few years in Indonesia, he moved to New York where he graduated from Columbia University in 1983.
Mr Obama spent his mid-20s as a community organiser, working in the grassroots of politics in Chicago with a church-based group. The Democrats would make much of his efforts to address crime and unemployment during this period, even if Republican Sarah Palin poured scorn on this so-called 'life experience' in her convention speech.
Her political opponents claim this stage of his life allowed him to apply the values taught to him by his mother – empathy and service. His parents have a political value of their own, even if it is an unusual one for presidential candidates. Mr Obama's grandfather was a domestic servant to the colonial British in Kenya; his father grew up there but won a scholarship to the University of Hawaii where he met Mr Obama's mother. Ann Dunham grew up in Kansas; her small-town roots provide a useful balance to his perceived east coast elitist background.
Mr Obama's background, his identity, is above all African-American however.
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