When John McCain announced last week that he was throwing his hat in the ring
for the race to the White House, a lot of people scratched their heads. Here
is a man desperately behind in the polls, who wants to send more troops to a
war that nearly 70% of Americans oppose, and who would be the oldest US
president. Yet the 70-year-old Vietnam hero is gambling that time is on his
side.
Wednesday’s “soft launch” of McCain’s campaign on the David Letterman show was
the first step to turn the tide of support that has swept his main rival,
Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor lionised for his leadership on
9/11, into a 20-point lead for the Republican ticket.
The talk show venue was plainly an attempt to counter the age issue and
address murmurs that the magic and swashbuckling style that distinguished
McCain’s last run at the presidency in 2000 have faded to a series of
lacklustre compromises designed to placate moderates and conservatives.
“Contrast McCain the popular maverick on his Straight Talk Express bus tour
in 2000 with the gloomy, cautious McCain of today, weighed down by Iraq,” a
political journalist observed.
In the event, whatever political capital the Arizona senator gained for poking
fun at the political charade of his drawn-out announcement was squandered
when he said soldiers’ lives had been “wasted” in Iraq. The following day he
apologised, insisting he should have used the word “sacrificed” — although
his experience as a prisoner of war who survived appalling injuries and
torture in North Vietnam has given him a rare authority to speak on the
sufferings of servicemen.
McCain’s aides are counting on Giuliani’s record coming back to bite him,
given time. When conservatives learn about his pro-choice stance on abortion
and his backing for gun control, they believe, his support will wither.
Giuliani’s three lively marriages and business dealings also offer rich
pickings. “There’s something about Rudy that could implode,” said a
political analyst.
What McCain has — and Giuliani lacks — is a state-by-state organisation that
he has been carefully building for the past two years, ever since he was
singled out as the Republicans’ front-runner. Last year he attended 346
events and raised more than $10.5m for Republican candidates.
By coopting as many Bush supporters as possible, he laid claim to the
formidable Bush machine. But Giuliani can draw comfort from one law of
American politics, which is that no Republican so far ahead at this stage
has failed to win the nomination.
A hawk on foreign policy, McCain’s reputation as a maverick stems from his
support for gay rights, for a guest worker programme for illegal immigrants
and for the environment. Last month he teamed up with Arnold Schwarzenegger,
the governor of California, to call for a nationwide acceptance of the
state’s new low carbon fuel standard.
McCain knows that he is shackled to what he calls “the train wreck” of Iraq.
Having backed Bush in the 2004 election and staunchly endorsed his troop
“surge” in Iraq, he was reduced last week to taking a swipe at Donald
Rumsfeld, calling him “one of the worst” secretaries of defence in American
history for initially failing to send enough troops to get the job done.
McCain’s son James is a newly enlisted marine who may have to serve in Iraq.
Another inexorable factor is his age. Ronald Reagan was 69 at his
inauguration; McCain would be 72. Taking a leaf from Clint Eastwood’s book,
McCain often refers to the vigour of his indomitable mother Roberta and her
twin sister Rowena, who recently celebrated their 95th birthday. But few
have forgotten that he might have died of skin cancer in 2000 had a melanoma
not been spotted in time. His wife, the beer heiress Cindy Hensley, suffered
a stroke in 2004 but appears to have made a full recovery.
The plan is to get McCain out on the road into open discussion meetings where
he can offer visual reassurance about his legendary fitness. His enemies
must hope that his words will be as rude as his health. He once called a
senator a “f****** jerk” and had to apologise after joking of President Bill
Clinton’s daughter: “Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is
Janet Reno (Clinton’s attorney-general, a lesbian who was scurrilously said
to be carrying on with Hillary). One Arizona mayor said he didn’t want
someone as out of control as McCain with his finger on the nuclear trigger.
As a child, he dealt with anger by holding his breath until he blacked out.
There was some doubt whether he was made of the same Right Stuff as his
father, John S McCain, a four-star admiral who commanded all US forces in
the Pacific during the Vietnam war, and whose foreign postings explained why
John Sidney McCain III was born in the Panama canal zone on August 29, 1936.
It seems to have been an unconventional family. His grandfather, a
rear-admiral who took part in key battles against the Japanese in the second
world war, played the horses, drank bourbon and rolled cigarettes with one
hand.
A boisterous, disruptive child, McCain was remembered at prep school near
Washington DC as “a feisty little rat throwing water bombs around the
dormitory”. He hated the US Naval Academy, into which he was enrolled at 16,
and strove in vain to be expelled for his drinking, low grades and fighting.
Although small, he was a natural athlete and an accomplished wrestler.
Matters changed little at flight school, where he drove a Corvette, dated many
women and spent most of his time in bars and at beach parties. But he
discovered a love of flying at the controls of A-1 Skyraiders based on the
USS Intrepid and the nuclear-powered USS Enterprise.
In 1965 he married Carol Shepp, a divorced former model with two children,
shortly before being posted to Vietnam. His reports began to reflect a
growing maturity when he became involved in one of the worst disasters of
the war. In July 1967 he was in his A-4E Skyhawk on the carrier Forrestal
when a deckful of aircraft exploded in a freak accident. With his flight
suit on fire, his arms and legs were hit by hot shrapnel. The incident
killed 134 men, wounded dozens and destroyed 20 planes. “I’m the luckiest
guy you’ll ever meet,” he said later.
His luck was about to run out. Later that year he was ordered to bomb Hanoi.
Heading into a wall of antiaircraft fire and SAM missiles, the right wing of
his A-4 was blown off and he was dropped into a lake in the middle of the
city. Set upon by dozens of furious Vietnamese, a rifle butt broke his
shoulder and he was jabbed in the ankle and groin with a bayonet.
An interminable period of beatings and interrogations began. Discovering who
his father was, his captors sought to embarrass him by offering his son
freedom. When McCain replied that prisoners must be released in the order of
capture, the torture intensified. His left arm was refractured, his teeth
were broken and his ribs cracked. He tried to commit suicide by hanging
himself, but was caught and beaten again. Eventually he signed a
“confession” declaring: “I am a black criminal and I have performed the
deeds of an air pirate.”
In 1973, 5Å years after his capture, he was released. He returned home to find
that his wife had been severely injured in a car accident and had become 4in
shorter and needed crutches to walk. After extramarital affairs, he met
Hensley. A year later in 1980 he divorced his first wife and married his
second. “My wife was faithful and true,” he said later. “She didn’t deserve
my treatment of her.”
He became commanding officer of a training squadron and the US navy’s liaison
to the Senate. He retired from the navy as a captain in 1981 with a chestful
of medals. Going to work for his father-in-law’s beer distributorship in
Phoenix, Arizona, he won a seat in Congress in 1982 and four years later,
when Senator Barry Goldwater retired, McCain was elected to succeed him.
In 1997 Time magazine named McCain as one of the “25 most influential people
in America”. Helped by his best-selling family memoir, Faith of My Fathers,
he made his bid for the Republican nomination to the White House.
His nemesis was George W Bush. It was alleged that voters in the Deep South
were telephoned and asked whether they would support McCain if he had an
illegitimate daughter with a black woman. In fact he had an adopted daughter
from Bangladesh. However, McCain’s own mistakes were sufficient to hobble
his chances.
Although still a towering figure in the Senate, McCain is yesterday’s hero and
Giuliani is today’s. Yet all is not lost. “McCain is a tested brand who has
staying power,” said a hard-nosed political commentator. “I wouldn’t write
him off just yet, but he’s in a serious wobble.”
