What Fascinates Americans About John McCain

U.S. Election Campaign

The Republican candidate was shot down over Hanoi, tortured in prison, and almost killed. Today John McCain is 71 years old, prone to fits of anger, and combative. He is a hero for many Americans, exactly like the younger Obama. The battle between the two for the Presidency will be difficult.

A cellmate in the Hanoi prisoner of war camp described how the young pilot, John McCain, looked 40 years ago. “I’ve seen death, and it looked better than he did.” McCain was shot down over Hanoi on October 26, 1967. While ejecting from the plane, he broke his leg and both arms, landed in a city lake, and almost drowned. Pedestrians pulled him out of the water, soldiers bayoneted him on the lakeside, and then he went to a hospital.

McCain was laid up in his prison cell until the end of December 1967 and weighed 100 pounds. His hair was snow white, his neck was “as thin as a chicken,” his broken arm raised above his body with a chest cast, and the scrawny broken leg had burning scars. “His eyes, I’ll never forget it, burned bright” is what his cellmate told the author of the book, “The Nightingale’s Song.” “They were insect eyes, bulging out, like in a concentration camp. I thought the Vietnamese brought him here so they could say we had killed him. I didn’t give him a chance.”

McCain is not George W. Bush

The opposition says that McCain is “McBush.” At most, he will change the hand towels in the White House. That is his idea of political change. It irritates the Democratic Party that this view is not widely accepted. Indeed, there are Republicans who see a mountain of problems for the party because of Obama, according to the “Politico” newspaper which cites anonymous sources in Bush’s party. But the money is beginning to come in.

McCain raised 21 million dollars in April. Together with donations, which go to the party instead of to the candidates, the Republicans currently are 15 million dollars behind the Democrats. This is why Obama sent an open message to his supporters. McCain is trailing him in important states according to public opinion polls. “We only have five months until the election,” said an Obama aide with noticeable worry on the day after his candidate clinched the nomination. The Democrats know that McCain is not George W. Bush, because of Vietnam.

He survived five and a half years in prison. Hanoi had wanted to extract a confession from him saying that he was an “air pirate.” They wanted it because McCain’s father was the Admiral of the Pacific Fleet. McCain’s grandfather commanded a carrier battle group against Japan, witnessed Japan’s surrender on the battleship “Missouri,” and died of exhaustion the day he returned home from the war. Hanoi knew all of this.

They resorted to torture to force McCain’s statement. The interrogators beat him during the day. He spent nights suffering from dysentery and broken limbs while shackled to a chair. After seven days, he signed the statement. “Every man has a breaking point. I had reached mine.” After signing the statement, McCain knotted his shirt to a window in the cell to get ready to kill himself, but a guard saw what he was doing and stopped McCain’s suicide attempt. Since prison, he can no longer raise his arms. He must have his hair combed.

When John McCain speaks about war, he knows what he is talking about. Four weeks ago, he said “war is misery without end. Only idiots or crooks speak about it sentimentally.” Opponents say that he still has an incorrect picture because he did not experience Vietnam as an infantryman. McCain believes in the fact that Vietnam had been betrayed by politics. From his vantage point, he wants to prevent the exact same thing from happening in Iraq.

An American Hero

Like Obama, McCain likes to write books. In 1999, he acknowledged his military family in “Faith of My Fathers.” Then followed titles such as “Worth the Fighting For: The Education of an American Maverick, and the Heroes Who Inspired Him,” “Why Courage Matters: The Way to a Braver Life,” and “Character is Destiny: Inspiring Stories Every Young Person Should Know and Every Adult Should Remember.” Books like these would be appealing to the middle class, and outside of New York and California, America is mainly middle class.

Obama is a young hero without scars. McCain is covered with scars, both visible, from skin cancer on his face, and invisible. He has behind him a divorce, several affairs, and a bad corruption scandal that had almost ended his career in 1989. McCain says that he has learned from all of them. When Obama acknowledges him as an “American hero,” adding with “answers from yesterday,” women in the audience get a thoughtful glimpse into McCain. He is considered to be quick tempered, but there are many men like him who fly off the handle over little things in everyday life. McCain was tortured.

He does in fact have a temper. “Newsweek” magazine described a scene which occurred in Munich’s “Bayerische Hof” Hotel. In 2006, McCain and his Senate colleague, Joe Liebermann, met with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. During a discussion about Belarus, Steinmeier was speaking with diplomatic caution. Then suddenly, as a witness told the magazine, “McCain turned red, stood up, and said ‘I didn’t come to Munich to hear this kind of crap.'” Liebermann interrupted to say “John, I think there’s been a problem in the translation.” German visitors have found him to be quite different. They see him as being well-informed, considerate, and reflective. However, his coarse laugh reveals a volcanic side to his personality.

In 2000, he ran against George W. Bush for the White House. The campaign against him was very nasty. McCain is married to the heiress to a multimillion dollar fortune, although they separate their property. They adopted a dark-skinned girl from Bangladesh. That is why, eight years ago, opponents spread rumors that he had “an illegitimate child with a black woman”. McCain suspected Bush. He was so furious that he did not vote for Bush. In 2004, Democrats say that he should have considered running with John Kerry against Bush. McCain disputes this because it hurts him with conservatives. On the other hand, it’s good for him to be in the middle, and that’s why he doesn’t deny it vigorously.

Democrats are Nervous

McCain believes that many people are short-sighted because of Iraq. However, he has the ears of both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democrat Ted Kennedy. He is in favor of environmental protection and women’s rights. He sometimes takes an absurd political zigzag course and concedes that he does not know much about economics. (That’s why he had Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of the computer company Hewlett Packard, join his campaign.) When in Washington, he lives in a small apartment near the airport rather than in expensive Georgetown. His wife provides him with a jet.

The Democrats laugh openly at the idea that he could win. Nevertheless, they are still nervous. McCain is considered to be bipartisan, which is significant. In 2004, he defused a bitter congressional battle over the nomination of federal judges. He drafted a liberal immigration reform package with Ted Kennedy. He worked on campaign finance reform with liberal Democrat Russ Feingold. He also sided with George W. Bush to pass laws against flag burning and to stop passage of aggressive legislation against China. These were all issues which had divided the Republicans. To appease the right wing of the Republican Party, McCain publicly reconciled with Bush in 2004.

When measured against the current condition of the Republicans, McCain said on Friday that he is in good shape. This smells like a landslide victory for Obama. But for someone like McCain who stood on the brink of physical death in 1968 and political death in the summer of 2007, polls can no longer rattle him.