Profile: John McCain
John McCain spent four years a prisoner of war in Vietnam
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Saturday, 25, Oct 2008 05:27
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. During the Clinton administrations he repeatedly disagreed with the Republican line, also helping to normalise relations with Vietnam and anger prisoners of war interest groups in the process.
In 1999 the true extent of his ambitions became apparent when he pitted himself against the might of George W Bush and his Republican funding juggernaut in the battle for the party's 2000 presidential nomination.
Playing on his outsider status, McCain tried to turn his lack of funds to his advantage, campaigning on the Straight Talk Bus and using free media wherever possible.
The approach initially paid off and Bush was defeated in the New Hampshire primary, but negative campaigning from his opponent's camp eventually saw McCain lose out. McCain's underdog, maverick persona became further ingrained on the national psyche however, even seeping out into popular culture.
Eight years on and repeated run-ins with Bush administrations later - although as Barack Obama would point out he has voted with the president 90 per cent of the time - McCain said he was seeking the party's nomination again in a split field involving Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.
McCain began his campaign with the words: "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."
In contrast to the epic, damaging contest that Democratic front-runners Obama and Hillary Clinton found themselves embroiled in, McCain wrapped up the nomination by March.
With his war hero record, agent for change message and considerably more conventional background when compared to Obama, McCain spent the majority of 2008 the front-runner for the White House.
His leftfield choice of a running-mate, callow Alaska governor Sarah Palin, electrified the country's right, with her hockey mom image winning over the party at its convention.
As the true extent of the global economic crisis revealed itself in autumn, however, a reversal in poll fortunes was witnessed, as McCain - tarred by his party association - struggled to distance himself from the policies of the last eight years, despite his maverick image.
At the same time serious doubts were emerging over the credentials of Palin to be a heartbeat away from the presidency when in a series of television interviews she failed to name a single newspaper; a single supreme court judgment she disagreed with; a single example of McCain going against the party majority and even claiming that Alaska's proximity to Russia gave her a good grounding in foreign policy.
A succession of perceived defeats in close-call presidential debates with Obama saw the Democrat enjoy a one-time lead of 14 points amid predictions November 4th could turn into a landslide when Americans give their final judgment on the financial turmoil.
It is when playing the underdog that the pilot turned senator comes into his own, but with just days until the election, McCain could be forgiven for thinking he has left it too late to realise his White House dream.