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John McCain

1936–2018 · 82 years Specialist

A four-star admiral's son who became famous for surviving, not commanding

Portrait of John McCain — United States Congress — 2009-01-23 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

John McCain was born at a naval air station in the Panama Canal Zone, son and grandson of four-star admirals, and grew up assuming the Navy for himself too. He was not a natural fit: at the Naval Academy he graduated 894th of 899, notorious for demerits and bar fights rather than flying or discipline. He became a naval aviator anyway, crashed two aircraft in training without lasting career damage, and in 1965 married Carol Shepp, a former model with two children from an earlier marriage, whom he adopted. By his early thirties he had a reputation as a competent but unremarkable pilot, flying ground-attack missions off a carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin -- one mission from the event that defined the rest of his public life.

On October 26, 1967, on his 23rd bombing mission over Hanoi, McCain was shot down, breaking both arms and a leg on ejection, and was captured. He spent five and a half years as a prisoner of war, including long solitary confinement and, from 1968, sustained beatings that left him permanently unable to raise his arms above his head -- he refused early release offered because of his father's rank, insisting on the order in which prisoners had been captured. Released in 1973, he entered politics, won a House seat from Arizona in 1982 and Barry Goldwater's Senate seat in 1986, and spent three decades there as a defense hawk who broke with his party on campaign finance and immigration. He ran for president twice, losing the 2000 nomination to George W. Bush and the 2008 election to Barack Obama.

McCain's reputation as a straight-talking reformer sat uneasily beside two episodes he spent decades explaining. His first marriage ended in 1980, not long after Carol survived a car accident that left her shorter and in constant pain -- McCain had already been seeing Cindy Hensley, a businesswoman seventeen years younger, and married her a month after the divorce was final. In the 1980s he was one of the Keating Five, senators who took contributions from savings-and-loan owner Charles Keating and met regulators on his behalf during a collapse that cost taxpayers billions -- the Senate Ethics Committee cleared him of breaking rules but rebuked him for poor judgment. McCain later called it his career's worst mistake and used it to argue for the campaign finance law bearing his name, turning a low point into his signature achievement.

Diagnosed with glioblastoma in July 2017, McCain returned to the Senate weeks later to cast the deciding thumbs-down vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act, then spent most of his final year away from Washington. He died at his Cornville, Arizona ranch on August 25, 2018, four days before turning 82. At his own request, Donald Trump was not invited to the funeral -- George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the two men who had defeated him for the presidency, delivered eulogies. Inside the Republican Party his coalition-building conservatism lost ground almost immediately to the movement that had beaten him twice, and by the 2020s his name was shorthand for a party no longer in the majority.

Lifespan

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John McCain's life against the full span of the corpus.

Notable works

Faith of My Fathers book
Memoir, co-written with Mark Salter 1999
Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act law
Known as McCain-Feingold 2002
Detainee Treatment Act law
The McCain Amendment, banning inhumane treatment of detainees 2005
McCain Institute for International Leadership company
Founded at Arizona State University 2012

Life in brief

with age at each point

August 29, 1936 aged 0 Born in the Panama Canal Zone
1958 aged ~22 Graduates the Naval Academy, 894th of 899
October 26, 1967 aged 31 Shot down over Hanoi and captured His 23rd bombing mission of the war.
March 14, 1973 aged 36 Released after five and a half years as a POW
1982 aged ~46 Elected to the U.S. House from Arizona
1986 aged ~50 Elected to the U.S. Senate, succeeding Barry Goldwater
2008 aged ~72 Wins the Republican presidential nomination and loses the general election to Barack Obama
July 25, 2017 aged 80 Casts the deciding vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act, weeks after his cancer diagnosis
August 25, 2018 aged 81 Dies at his ranch in Cornville, Arizona