John McCain

McCain .. nicknames "Punk" and "McNasty" due to his combative and fiery disposition (wrestling . boxing) , he enjoyed and cultivated that tough guy image;

He did not take well to those of higher rank arbitrarily wielding power over him – "It was bull****, and I resented the hell out of it"[15] – ..At 5 foot 7 inches and 127 pounds (1.70 m and 58 kg), he competed as a lightweight boxer ..was fearless and "didn't have a reverse gear," as he later put it....

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...Despite his difficulties, he later wrote that he never wavered in his desire to show his father and family that he was of the same mettle as his naval forbears. ..graduated from the Naval Academy in 1958; he was sixth from the bottom in class rank, 894th out of 899.

He began as a subpar flier, with limited patience for studying aviation manuals. .... During a practice run in Texas, his engine quit while landing, and his aircraft crashed into Corpus Christi Bay, though he escaped without major injuries

His aviation skills improved, but he had another close call when he and his plane emerged intact from a collision with power lines, ...

In December 1965,[30] he had his third close call when a flameout over Norfolk, Virginia led to his ejecting safely, and his plane crashed.

..assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal, flying A-4 Skyhawks with the VA-46 "Clansmen"..

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….McCain was almost killed in action on July 29, ... a Zuni rocket from an F-4 Phantom was accidentally fired across the carrier's deck. ... . ignited the fuel and knocked two bombs loose.[41] McCain later said, "I thought my aircraft exploded. Flames were everywhere."[39] McCain escaped from his jet .... The ensuing fire killed 134 sailors, injured scores others, destroyed at least 20 aircraft, and took 24 hours to control. A day or two after the conflagration, McCain told New York Times ..in Saigon that, "It's a difficult thing to say. But now that I've seen what the bombs and the napalm did to the people on our ship, I'm not so sure that I want to drop any more of that stuff on North Vietnam."

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...... Back at the "Hanoi Hilton", McCain and the other POWs cheered the intense, Hanoi-focused, B-52-led U.S. "Christmas Bombing" campaign of December 1972 – whose explosions lit the night sky and shook the walls of the camp, and whose daily orders were issued by McCain's father, knowing his son was in the vicinity – as a forceful measure to force North Vietnam to terms.[57][78]

……Altogether, McCain was held as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for five and a half years.

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1965, McCain married Shepp in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (she had married and then divorced one of his classmates)
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Upon his return to the US, McCain was reunited with his wife Carol, who had suffered her own crippling, near-death ordeal during his captivity, due to an automobile accident in December 1969 that left her facing months of operations and physical therapy;[81] by the time he saw her again she was four inches shorter, on crutches, and substantially heavier.

…………. he would later say, "My marriage's collapse was attributable to my own selfishness and immaturity more than it was to Vietnam, and I cannot escape blame by pointing a finger at the war. The blame was entirely mine."[89] His wife Carol would later echo those sentiments, saying "I attribute [the breakup of our marriage] more to John turning 40 and wanting to be 25 again than I do to anything else."

In April 1979,.. McCain met and began an extramarital relationship with Cindy Lou Hensley, 17 years his junior, (wealthy)

…..McCain filed for and obtained an uncontested divorce from his wife Carol in Florida on April 2, 1980. [26] He gave her a settlement that included houses ..and financial support for her ongoing medical treatments resulting from the 1969 automobile accident; ….. McCain's children were upset with him and did not attend the wedding,

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in 1977 McCain was appointed the Navy's liaison to the U.S. Senate.

... McCain played a key behind-the-scenes role in gaining congressional financing for a new supercarrier against the wishes of the Carter administration and Navy Secretary W. Graham Claytor Jr.[91][82]

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McCain’s politics at this point were mainly in line with President Ronald Reagan, .... his vote against a resolution allowing President Reagan to keep U.S. Marines deployed .. in Lebanon, on the grounds that he "[did] not foresee obtainable objectives in Lebanon," would seem prescient (foreknowledge) after the catastrophic Beirut barracks bombing a month later;[89] this vote would also start his national media reputation as a political maverick.[89]
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In 1986 he broke ranks again in voting to successfully override Reagan's veto of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act that imposed sanctions against South Africa.

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..McCain got the Indian Economic Development Act of 1985 signed into law.[101]
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He often supported the Native American agenda, advocating self-governance and sovereignty, ... "Never deceived them," McCain once said, "They have been deceived too many times in the last 200 years."

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McCain butted heads with Moral Majority co-founder Paul Weyrich, who was challenging (his friend) Tower regarding alleged heavy drinking and extramarital affairs.[111] Thus began McCain's difficult relationship with the Christian right, as he would later write that Weyrich was "a pompous self-serving son of a bitch."

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.. real estate venture failed, leaving many broke. Federal regulators ultimately filed a $1.1 billion civil racketeering and fraud ...

In the end, none of the senators were convicted of any crime, although McCain was rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee for exercising "poor judgment" in intervening with the federal regulators on Keating's behalf.[119]

.... McCain was not dismissed from the case because without him, the investigation would have solely been against Democrats.

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………….McCain also branched out and worked with Democratic senators. He was a member of the 1991–1993 Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, chaired by Democrat and fellow Vietnam War veteran John Kerry, ..more visits to Vietnam ....After many years of disliking Kerry due to his actions with Vietnam Veterans Against the War,[126] McCain developed "unbounded respect and admiration" for Kerry during the hearings.

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Having survived the Keating Five scandal, McCain made attacking the corrupting influence of big money on American politics his signature issue. ...worked on campaign finance reform; their McCain-Feingold bill would attempt to put limits on "soft money", funds that corporations, unions, and other organizations could donate to political parties, which would then be funneled to political candidates in circumvention of "hard money" donation limits.[103] From the start, McCain and Feingold's efforts were opposed by large money interests, 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

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……..McCain also attacked pork barrel spending within Congress, believing that the practice did not contribute to the greater national interest.[103] Towards this end he was instrumental in pushing through approval of the Line Item Veto Act of 1996,[103] which gave the president the power to veto individual items of pork. Although this was one of McCain's biggest Senate victories,[103] the effect was short-lived as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the act unconstitutional in 1998.[

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…McCain used his chairmanship to take on the tobacco industry in 1998, proposing legislation that would increase cigarette taxes in order 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. The industry spent some $40–50 million in national advertising in response;[141][103] while McCain's bill had the support of the Clinton administration and many public health groups, most Republican senators opposed it, stating it would create an unwieldy new bureaucracy

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On February 1, 2000, he won the primary with 49 percent of the vote to Bush's 30 percent, and suddenly was the celebrity of the hour. ..McCain became Bush's only serious opponent. Analysts predicted that a McCain victory in the crucial South Carolina primary might give his insurgency campaign unstoppable momentum; a degree of fear and panic crept into not only the Bush campaign[147] but also the Republican establishment and movement conservatism.

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The 2000 battle between Bush and McCain for South Carolina has entered American political lore as one of the nastiest, dirtiest, and most brutal ever.

(McCain lost to Bush who had to appeal to the religious right)

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2020hindsight said:

c) a rough diamond, ..

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McCain: I learned from Keating Five case

WASHINGTON (AP) ”” Sen. John McCain's ethics entanglement with a wealthy banker ultimately convicted of swindling investors was such a disturbing, formative experience in his political career that he compares the scandal in some ways to the five years he was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

"I faced in Vietnam, at times, very real threats to life and limb," McCain told The Associated Press. "But while my sense of honor was tested in prison, it was not questioned. During the Keating inquiry, it was, and I regretted that very much."

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In his early days as a freshman senator, McCain was known for accepting contributions from Charles Keating Jr., flying to the banker's home in the Bahamas on company planes and taking up Keating's cause with U.S. financial regulators as they investigated him.

The Keating Five was the derisive name given McCain and four Democratic senators who were defendants in a congressional ethics investigation of their connections to Keating. McCain is the only one still in the Senate. They were accused of trying to intimidate regulators on behalf of Keating, a real estate developer in Arizona and owner of Lincoln Savings and Loan based in Irvine, Calif.

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The Ferret said:

I like the guy. Everytime I hear him speak he actually says something meaningful, minus the cliches, minus the spin, minus the gloss. He comes across as genuine and WYSIWYG.

He is not liked much by the conservative right of the Republican party. He is more centrist (but still right of course) than others. He seems quite progressive despite his age and background.

I think he would make an excellent President.

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Julia said:

Are you happy with his philosophy re Iraq?

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in 1977 McCain was appointed the Navy's liaison to the U.S. Senate. ... McCain played a key behind-the-scenes role in gaining congressional financing for a new supercarrier against the wishes of the Carter administration and Navy Secretary W. Graham Claytor Jr.

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skint said:

.1. I hope Obama gets the guernsey. Be good to see Al Gore stick his hand up for the Vice-Presidency.

2. Failing that I think Kev should consider "annexing" the States, and perhaps selling it to China.

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Julia said:

I don't actually like any of the three candidates: McCain for the reasons you have outlined, Hillary because she seems to have such a precarious relationship with the truth, and Obama because he lacks experience to go with his impressive rhetoric.

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