John McCain, the U.S. Navy air warrior who was the Vietnam War’s most famous American prisoner and who evolved into a powerful U.S. senator and Republican presidential candidate, died Saturday at his home in Arizona after a long battle with brain cancer. He was 81.
McCain’s death came nine years to the day of the passing of Massachusetts liberal, Sen. Ted Kennedy, McCain’s friend and frequent senate sparring partner. McCain and Kennedy both died of brain cancer.
A son and grandson of two U.S. Navy four-star admirals, McCain, while increasingly conservative in later years, had an unpredictable streak and emerged as one of President Donald Trump’s strongest critics. A avatar of an older generation’s devotion to duty and service to country, McCain was a clear-eyed fighter who sought common ground with senate colleagues. His vote supporting ObamaCare upset Trump and upended the president’s plan to repeal the repeal the landmark health insurance program.
In a divided country, McCain harkened to an era of bipartisanship and an old-fashioned sense of citizenship and service to principles larger than his ambitions, said U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, who worked closely with the Arizona Republican.
“He lived intensely, could be impatient, and short-tempered,” said Reed. “Yet he was always willing to reach out to friend and foe alike. From campaign finance reform to promoting reconciliation and normalization between the United States and Vietnam, Senator McCain made it his mission to serve others and was unyielding in pursuit of his objectives.”
McCain was chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Reed the committee’s ranking Democrat. In an interview, Reed said McCain ran the committee in a bipartisan manner. On a committee where senators work to bring military and defense programs to their home states, Reed said McCain’s top priority was “always what was best for the men and women in uniform.”
“John valued patriotism over partisanship,” said Reed. Two years ago, Reed said, he accompanied McCain to the annual Army-Navy football game, the service academies biggest athletic rivalry. Annapolis graduate McCain insisted that he and West Point alum Reed sit together at the game. McCain, Reed said, deemed it important to show a polarized nation the two senators were not partisan. Reed and McCain spent half the game on the Navy side and half in the Army cheering section.
Reed also traveled to Vietnam with McCain several years go. “We visited the spot where he was shot down outside Hanoi. Senator McCain recounted how, after the missile sent his plane into the waters of Truc Bach Lake, and with both his arms and leg badly broken, he had to use his teeth to inflate his life vest to keep from drowning. Ever resourceful, ever determined, John McCain personified perseverance and toughness through his life.”
“Even though we found ourselves on opposite sides of many debates, I always admired Senator McCain for his courage, candor, and commitment to serving the public, not just narrow interests,” said Reed.
Wrote Dan Balz, the Washington Post political reporter who followed McCain’s career closely, “The Vietnam prison camp left him physically broken for the rest of his life. Yet even in pain, he operated with remarkable energy, constantly on the move, never looking back, always eager for the next fight. He used straight talk and sarcasm to maintain his buoyancy and to disarm others. He preached that people should serve a cause greater than self and lived what he preached.”
McCain was a resilient politician. In the late 1980s, he got caught up in a Savings & Loan scandal known as the Keating Five, an influence-peddling scheme for whish he was eventually exonerated. In his humiliation, he worked with a Democrat, then-Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold on a campaign finance reform measure that was opposed by President Bush and many members of his own congressional Republican Party.
Mark Salter, McCain biographer and the senator’s longtime collaborator, aide and campaign advisor, said McCain, “was romantic about his causes and a cynic about the world. He had the capacity to be both things and live with the contradictions.”
McCain, Salter said, “understood the world in all its corruption and cruelty. But he thought it a moral failure to accept injustice as an inescapable tragedy of our fallen nature.”
Rhode Island Republican State Chairman Brandon Bell called McCain a “true patriot” and said he would be remembered as a “man who dedicated his life to serving his country and serving it well.”
And Rhode Island’s Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo, called McCain a “war hero, dedicated patriot and true fighter until the very end.”
Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat who traveled with McCain on foreign congressional trips, said, “with love and respect, I mark the passing of a great man, and I will miss him dearly. My heart goes out to Cindy and the entire McCain family.”
Whitehouse, another liberal Democrat with whom McCain didn’t often agree, received a compliment from the Arizonan in his final book, “The Restless Wave.” McCain said Whitehouse, “another frequent traveling companion” is a “smart, widely respected senator.”
But in 2006, McCain was a strong supporter of the Republican Whitehouse defeated, Lincoln Chafee, then an incumbent senator. At a fund-raising event at Chafe’s Exeter home, McCain praised Chafee for working across the aisle with Democrats to deliver for Rhode Island. Chafee would later become an independent, win election as Rhode Island governor, and eventually become a Democrat.
McCain ran for president twice. In 2000, he challenged the front-runner, then Texas Gov. George W. Bush, for the Republican nomination. Bush had the most GOP establishment support and a huge advantage in harvesting campaign money.
So McCain put together an unconventional campaign. He was the first national candidate to use the power of the Internet to raise campaign cash. McCain invited reporters on his campaign bus, which he labeled the Straight Talk Express. He joked that the press was “my base.”
Reporters flocked to the bus, which evolved into a long-running bull session that resembled a late-night time at a college Greek house or dorm room. McCain’s irreverence, humor and candor came through, especially among party moderates. He took questions on any topic.
That year, McCain won the kickoff New Hampshire primary over Bush by a landslide, thanks to the state’s moderate, affluent and well-educated electorate. He also won the Massachusetts and Rhode Island primaries. In Rhode Island, McCain defeated Bush, capturing 60 percent in a record turnout to Bush’s 36 percent. McCain’s big margin was fueled by his ability to attract independent voters to his candidacy.
A man of self-deprecating and sometimes mordant humor, McCain would joke about his five years as a POW by saying “I was tied up there for awhile at the Hanoi Hilton.”
After losing to Bush in the pivotal South Carolina primary, which was limned by racial issues, McCain lost a string of southern primaries and Bush won the Republican nod. Later, McCain would apologize for not condemning the Confederate flag that flew over the Statehouse while campaigning in South Carolina. “I feared that if I answered honestly, I could not win South Carolina. So I compromised my principles. I broke my promise to always tell the truth.”
McCain would often aim higher than some of his supporters. In his 2008 race against then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, McCain was confronted at a campaign rally by a woman who said she couldn’t trust Obama because he was an “Arab.”
McCain’s reply — “No ma’am, he’s a decent family man, citizen who I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues. And that’s what this campaign is all about.”
He took heat in 2008 for choosing then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate. He said later that he should have chosen his friend and onetime Democratic U.S. Sen. Joseph Liberman of Connecticut.
In a 2000 memoir, also written with Salter, McCain summed up his philosophy: “Success, wealth, celebrity, gained and kept for private interest are small things…But sacrifice for a cause greater than self-interest and you invest your life with the eminence of that cause and your self-respect is assured.”
In his final book, McCain, facing death, said, “I hope those who mourn my passing, and those who don’t, will celebrate a celebrate a happy life in imperfect service to a country made of ideals, whose continued success is the hope of the world. wish all of you great adventures, good company and lives as lucky as mine.”
Cody Keenan, a speechwriter for Obama, tweeted that he met McCain once. “I was a 22-year old Senate intern waiting for an elevator. The doors opened and he and another GOP senator were inside. I apologized and said I’d wait for the next one, but McCain told me to hop on.”
“Who do you work for,” he asked. “Ted Kennedy sir.” “He’s a good man,” McCain said. “Without him we’d be lost.”
“The other senator scoffed in disgust and got off the elevator at the next floor. While he was still in earshot, McCain raised his voice a little and said, “Don’t mind him, he’s an asshole.”
When asked by New York Times reporter (and former Providence Journal scribe) Sheryl Gay Stolberg when he wanted on his epitaph, McCain said, “He served his country.”
