On the face of it, John McCain is not a great candidate for president of the United States. His White House rival Barack Obama is young, elegant and new, and can make crowds swoon with his oratory. McCain is old, unexciting and very well-worn, and his speeches can be teeth-grindingly awful. Obama offers optimism and change; McCain offers toil and struggle and, though he is loath to admit it, an inevitable degree of continuity after the fellow Republican George W Bush, who by leading the country into war in Iraq and messing up the economy has become the most unpopular president on record. In contrast to Obama, McCain supported the war from day one. He has also confessed several times that economics is not his strongest suit. At 72, the Republican from Arizona would be the oldest ever first-term president, making a valid concern of the cliché that the vice-president is only a heartbeat away from the presidency. The veteran senator is increasingly prone to gaffes that critics describe as "senior moments". In discussing foreign policy, on which he is regarded as an authority, McCain has repeatedly referred to "Czechoslovakia", a country that ceased to exist in 1993. There was a spell in which he muddled Iraq's Sunnis and Shias and their connections with Iran several times. Travelling on McCain's Straight Talk campaign plane last month, I asked Nicolle Wallace, a senior adviser, about this last blunder. She contended that a candidate who talks so frequently and so freely to the press is more likely to slip up. "He misspoke," she frowned. "When was the last time you misspoke? For me it was this morning. So - news flash! - he is human." Wallace, 36, is among several savvy, ex-Bush operatives who arrived early in the summer to bring some much-needed focus and discipline. They soon launched advertisements mocking Obama's global celebrity and readiness to lead, so playing on doubts about the inexperienced Democrat with an exotic background attempting to become the first black US president. Even before those attacks, the race for the White House was considerably closer than Obama's legions of overseas admirers might care to acknowledge. For all his flaws, McCain possesses virtues such as patriotism, service to nation and a chummy, sport-loving, take-it-or-leave-it demeanour. And in a political realm where personal biography and public policy entwine, he has a life story that touches many fellow countrymen deeply. It is probably safe to say he would be the first American head of state nicknamed McNasty at school. He was a tempestuous teenager, whose first instinct in a dispute was to fight. But John Sidney McCain III was also a prince to the navy born. Both his grandfather and father were distinguished admirals, and there was never any question that he would follow them to the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Training as a naval aviator, the young McCain often rebelled against his heritage. He was nearly expelled, and graduated fifth from bottom of his class, having earned a reputation as a party boy. There were dalliances with the daughter of a North Carolina tobacco magnate, a fashion model in Rio, and Marie the Flame of Florida, an exotic dancer who cleaned her nails with a switchblade at a cocktail party. Then, as he approached 30, McCain found a wife for himself, marrying Carol Shepp, a former model, in July 1965. He adopted her two sons from an earlier marriage and soon had a daughter who wasn't a year old when he was sent to Vietnam.
McCain's life has been punctuated by traumas and accidents. As a trainee pilot, he crashed or ejected three times, and was almost killed before his war had really got going. As he waited to take off from his aircraft carrier, a bomb detonated accidentally, hit his fuel tank and started an inferno that he narrowly escaped but which claimed the lives of 134 servicemen. Desperate for more action after a handful of bombing expeditions, he pushed for a transfer to another carrier, and on Oct 26 1967, Lt-Cdr McCain joined a raid on a power plant in Hanoi, the capital of communist North Vietnam. Just after he fired, the right wing of his A-4 Skyhawk was hit by a surface-to-air missile at 3,000 feet. McCain ejected, breaking both arms and his right knee on the cockpit, and parachuted into Truc Bach lake in the middle of the city in broad daylight. In his 1999 autobiography, Faith of My Fathers, he recounts how a crowd fished him out and set upon him; his right shoulder was broken by a rifle butt and his ankle stabbed by a bayonet before a nurse dispersed the crowd and a lorry arrived to cart him to prison. His injuries were so severe that the Vietnamese initially decreed treatment was futile. They operated, with limited success, on his right knee only when it was discovered that his father was an admiral and they had a prize worth preserving. Bud Day, 63, McCain's first cellmate, recalled, "When he was brought in I did not think he would live until the next day. He had feverish eyes, he was emaciated, filthy, he stunk, and he probably weighed about 95 pounds." Helped by Day and another prisoner, who fed him and lifted him across their dark, humid cell on to and off his tin-bucket toilet, McCain slowly improved. In McCain's second year, the camp officials allowed a Christmas service. When cameras started rolling, the prisoners suspected a propaganda film in the making. McCain started chatting to other prisoners and giving the camera the finger when it came his way. A guard told him to stop talking. "**** you!" he replied before being hauled away. Six months into McCain's detention his father was promoted and placed in charge of military operations in Vietnam. The North Vietnamese had already dangled the prospect of freedom in front of McCain, but now, seeking the major publicity coup of freeing a prisoner they called the "crown prince", they intensified their efforts. The US military's code of conduct for prisoners of war stipulated a first-in, first-out policy towards releases. But the code was relatively new and many POWs in Vietnam considered it acceptable for the very badly injured to jump the queue. McCain could barely walk without crutches, he was plagued by dysentery, and an unlined plaster cast had left ulcers on his upper body. His survival was far from certain, and an inmate he respected told him to go. Despite immense pressure from his interrogators, McCain refused to be freed. As a punishment he was battered repeatedly and suffered rope torture. After four days of such treatment he yielded to demands for a confession of his crimes as an "air pirate", written in as stilted and evidently forced a manner as he could manage. Wracked by guilt, McCain made a half-hearted attempt at suicide that was interrupted by a guard. Declining early release was to be the most important decision McCain would make in his life. It preserved his self-respect, his honour and throughout his political career gave him a near-impregnable integrity, which has been called into question on more than one occasion. Prison may have nearly claimed McCain, but it was also the making of him. He is not haunted by ghosts from Vietnam, nor does he seem bitter - he was an early advocate of normalising relations between Washington and Hanoi. But his imprisonment remains at the core of his political identity. Each of his campaigns has prominently used images of him lying injured on a North Vietnamese hospital bed. Opponents - including Barack Obama - often feel obliged to preface any criticism of his policy with praise of his sacrifice for the nation. McCain never lets a stump speech go by without mentioning that he declined the North Vietnamese offer of freedom. An event in Kansas City, Missouri, in July was typical. Concluding his address to an audience that had opened proceedings by taking the pledge of allegiance before a giant US flag, McCain told how he could not bear to leave prison before Everett Alvarez, the first US pilot to be captured. "I had the opportunity [to go] but I chose my country. And I have done that every time since, so you can count on me - I will put my country first," he said, drawing a warm round of applause. McCain's followers often voluntarily cite his war experience as their prime reason for depositing their trust in him. Sallie Smith, a retired librarian among the crowd in Kansas City, said, "You just know he will stick with the job and he will not let others down. The fact he chose to stay [in prison] and experience what he did says a lot about him." Nine months after McCain and his fellow POWs were released in March 1973, as part of the Paris Accords that left South Vietnam to fend mostly for itself, his immediate desire was to fly again. Declared fit for the air in 1974, he soon realised he would not emulate his father and grandfather, and jumped at the offer of a position in the navy's Senate liaison office. Previous holders of the post had been content to be message bearers from the naval brass and to act as bag carriers for senators on overseas trips. McCain, however, made invaluable friends, who would guide him into political office. "He was buoyant, charming and quite a character," said Rhett Dawson, then an aide to Senator John Tower, a pro-war figure who took McCain under his wing. "It was an exciting time for all of us. On these trips we met the premier of China, President Sadat, the Sultan of Oman. He loved that." If McCain's career was taking shape, his private life was a mess. The womanising had continued and even intensified after his release. While he was in prison, his wife Carol's legs had been shattered in a car crash and after multiple surgeries she was left four inches shorter. Their marriage slowly disintegrated. Before they had fully separated, McCain, then 41, became smitten with a 24-year-old blond woman he met at a naval party in Hawaii. The daughter of a wealthy Budweiser distributor from Phoenix, Arizona, Cindy Hensley too had model looks and was teaching disabled children. They married in 1980, had three children and adopted a girl from Bangladesh. It is undeniable that Cindy gave him two things every politician in America needs - money and a home. Unlike in Britain, US candidates are almost invariably long-term residents of the state they strive to represent. So when McCain first ran to represent Arizona in the House of Representatives in 1982, he faced repeated accusations of being a carpetbagger. The accusation fell flat because McCain was among a flood of new arrivals to Arizona as the state boomed on the back of hi-tech industries, tourism and retirees from the cold northern states. "Arizona has always been a place where people from somewhere else come to. There's a lot of second-chancers here," said Grant Woods, an aide in McCain's early campaigns who became Arizona's attorney general. Phoenix summers are so hot that some drivers keep oven gloves in the car to hold the steering-wheel. But in temperatures of 40.5˚C-plus McCain pounded the streets for weeks on end, introducing himself to voters for five to six hours a day. He was rewarded with the seat in the House of Representatives and was elected to the Senate four years later. But his commitment came at a price: friends believe the early Phoenix campaigns led to the melanoma that was diagnosed in 2000. As a precaution, surgeons stripped the lymph nodes from the left side of his face. If McCain has put in more campaign hours than others, he has also lost his temper more. He once called a fellow Republican senator "a ****ing jerk", and told another that "only an ******* would put together a budget like that". McCain's aides say the temper is under control. And it is true that no major blow-ups have been reported from the current campaign. But his career is littered with apologies for bad judgement, bad temper and bad jokes. Last year a member of an audience containing, not unusually, a high percentage of ex-military folk, asked what he was going to do about the threat from Tehran. McCain responded to the tune of the Beach Boys' Barbara Ann, by singing, "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran". His most offensive attempt at humour was a two-liner told to a Republican audience in 1998: "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because Janet Reno is her father." In just 12 words, he managed to insult the looks of a then 17-year-old, the first female US attorney general, the first lady and lesbians everywhere. A full apology was issued to President Clinton.
Faced with a crisis, McCain has adopted a full-frontal approach, which has helped him foster perhaps the friendliest relationship with the press ever enjoyed by a presidential candidate. In 1994 Cindy was forced to confess that, without her husband's knowledge, she had been addicted to prescription painkillers and had also stolen drugs from the war zone medical charity she led. In February this year, the couple braved the press again to deny all when The New York Times suggested McCain had had an affair in 2000 with a lobbyist 28 years his junior, and perhaps more seriously, that he did favours for her firm's telecommunications clients. The latter part of the accusation echoed a scandal that nearly ended his political career at an early stage. McCain was investigated by the Senate for interfering with a federal investigation into a savings and loans company run by a friend and contributor, Charles Keating. Cleared of the serious charges but found guilty of "poor judgement", McCain offered a thorough apology and in repentance later sponsored major campaign finance reform.
He also became a habitual critic of the influence in Washington of lobbyists. This has led to regular accusations of double standards of a politician whose inner coterie of advisers is dominated by past or present lobbyists. The firm owned by Rick Davis, the man leading McCain's re-election campaign, represented the former Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovich, in contravention of US foreign policy that supported the opposition. Yanukovich was furthermore an ally of Russia's Vladimir Putin, who has been the target of fierce criticism by McCain. The campaign has said that Davis did not work on the Ukraine account. Davis deregistered as a lobbyist in 2005, but in the past has represented the telecommunications giants Comsat and Verizon. Doug Goodyear, the man selected by McCain to run this week's Republican convention in Minnesota (at which McCain will formally accept his party's nomination), had to stand down after it was revealed that he had represented Burma's repressive government in 2002.
In a recent report, a campaign finance watchdog said McCain's staffers, advisers and major fund-raisers have received nearly $900 million (Dh3.31 billion) from domestic clients over the past decade. Campaign Money Watch questioned whether those payments would compromise a McCain administration.
Nothing incites McCain or his friends more than any questioning of his integrity, which is bound up with his sense of honour and his record in Vietnam. The undying loyalty of his followers is typical: they see him as a plain-speaking politician capable of reaching across the aisle. His long Senate career indeed includes co-operative efforts with Democrats on campaign funding, immigration and climate change that have earned him the stinging disapproval of Republican right-wingers. He voted against Bush's 2001 tax cuts because they were too beneficial to the wealthy. Those deviations from the party line have helped McCain to cultivate an image as a maverick with middle-ground appeal that has endured since his failed campaign against Bush for the party's nomination in 2000.
But over the years McCain's record has been reliably conservative, with some notable exceptions, and he is tilting ever right-wards as the election approaches. He has grown more vocal against abortion, reversed his opposition to tax cuts, and wooed members of the Christian Right, whom he once described as "agents of intolerance". How far he would swing back towards the centre in the White House is a very pertinent question. His rhetoric on Iran and Russia is toughening and his criticism of Obama's stance on Iraq is growing stronger.
From Missouri, we flew to Michigan, another of the marginal states that will decide November's election. McCain reminded voters that when Iraq was going horribly wrong in 2006, he stuck his neck out and argued for thousands more US troops to be dispatched to fight insurgents. Now that violence is down, the "surge" is regarded as a success, and McCain has fastened his chances of becoming the next commander-in-chief to his stubborn insistence that he was right. "I know how to win wars, we will win this war," he said in Detroit. "We have succeeded in Iraq. If we continue the strategy we will win the war."
Naturally, he omits to mention that he championed the invasion from its genesis, joining neoconservative hawks in urging Clinton to topple Saddam Hussein in 1998, or that he was cosy with Ahmed Chalabi, the now-discredited Iraqi opposition leader whose faulty intelligence played a major part in the Bush administration's justification for war.
In the early days of the conflict, McCain's assessments were spectacularly wrong. On April 9 2003, the day Baghdad fell, he said, "I think it's clear the end is very much in sight? There are still some foreigners, Syrians and others, hanging around. But it won't be long." He admitted the possibility of a "short period of chaos".
McCain's campaign is defined by two wars: one past, one present. His approach to Iraq evokes the hawkish view that Vietnam was fought without political conviction or public support, and was ended prematurely by Congress. Though he has not gone as far as other veterans who say that Vietnam was winnable outright, he is determined that, now that he is one of those politicians, Washington will not repeat the same mistakes by fighting a war piecemeal and failing to stay the distance. When I met McCain on his Straight Talk Express bus in March, he was adamant that a "premature" withdrawal of US troops from Iraq would lead to genocide and victory for al Qa'eda, just as more than a generation ago supporters of the war in South East Asia warned that leaving the South Vietnamese to fight the North would bring defeat and disorder.
But political campaigns are meant to look forwards, not back. As we waited for McCain's customised Boeing 737 to take off from Detroit, Nicolle Wallace described McCain as a "unique figure in American politics" whose "service to his country is running through his veins". She disagreed that his military record made him too much a man of yesterday. "It is there? but people pick presidents on vision for the future, every time - the most optimistic and promising path for the future."
This election could be the exception that proves the rule.
* Research by Guillaume Simard-Morissette
© Alex Spillius / The Daily Telegraph / 2008
