Part Deux

McCain returned to the US to spend months rehabbing his extensive injuries, and attended the National War College in '73-'74. By '74, McCain had defied naysayers and passed his flight physical, getting back into the cockpit. He became XO and then Commanding Officer at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, turning around a questionable unit that was awarded the Meritorious Unit Commendation under his command. By '77, McCain had briefly considered a run for Congress, but at the prodding of Admiral James Halloway, took up the Naval Liason post to the Senate. He made connections on both sides of the aisle that would serve him well in his second career. Retirement came in '81, as a Captain and with an impressive array of medals that included the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, a Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

McCain moved to Phoenix, AZ that year, his new wife Cindy's hometown. Her father owned a Anheuser-Busch distributorship, and McCain took over as VP of Public Relations. Among the plethora of business and political contacts he made was Charles Keating, Jr., who would later play an important role in McCain's political education. He ran for the Republican House seat vacated by John Jacob Rhodes in '82. Campaigning amid charges of carpetbagging, McCain offered a memorable rebuke: "Listen, pal. I spent 22 years in the Navy. My grandfather was in the Navy. We in the military service tend to move a lot. We have to live in all parts of the country, all parts of the world. I wish I could have had the luxury, like you, of growing up and living and spending my entire life in a nice place like the first district of Arizona, but I was doing other things. As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi." This type of quote would become McCain's signature. His bid was successful.

During his stint in the House, McCain rarely strayed from Reagan. However, two memorable forays into independence illustrated his sagacity. He voted against a resolution to keep a contingent of Marines in Lebanon, citing a lack of real objectives. The resolution passes, but two months later the catastrophic Beirut bombing of a barracks facility killed hundreds of servicemen. He also was pivotal in overriding Reagan's veto of the Comprehensive Apartheid Act to sanction the Government of South Africa. In '85, McCain traveled to Hanoi with Walter Cronkite, the first of several trips back to the site of his imprisonment. It was a ratings bonanza, and would solidify McCain's constant presence in the national political media.

In 1986, McCain moved over to the Senate, filling the seat left vacant by conservative icon Barry Goldwater. He was immediately assigned to the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, and became an effective, if a little brash, Senator. He came to the nation's attention again during the 1988 Republican National Convention, giving a passionate speech regarding his time as a POW. During the nomination hearings for his friend John Tower to the Secretary of Defense post, which was squashed, McCain also began his prickly and contentious relationship with the radical religious right, calling Moral Majority's co-founder a "pompous, self serving son of a bitch." However, he did suffer some serious setbacks. His connections with Charles Keating proved disastrous, when Keating's Lincoln S&L Association became insolvent in '87. Keating sold investment in risky real estate ventures as an FDIC insured savings account to regain solvency - but during the frenzy of the S&L scandals, federal regulators attempted to shut it down. Keating reached out to his political friends to intervene on his behalf, and McCain was one of the 5 Senators who met with the Federal Home Loan Board to this end. The real estate venture failed, and many went bankrupt. The government filed a 1.1 billion dollar civil racketeering and fraud suit, and McCain was rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee and branded in the press as a member of the "Keating Five." His obsession with Campaign Finance Reform began with this scandal.

In 1991, McCain and his wife brought a 3-month old abandoned Bangladeshi girl they found at an orphanage ran by Mother Teresa back to the states, for medical treatment for a severely cleft palate. They decided to adopt her, and after a drawn out process the adoption was finalized in '93. They named her Bridget. He also at the time joined with Senator John Kerry on the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs to investigate the fates of missing service personnel in Vietnam. McCain was reported to have pored over a million documents for thousands of hours, and the committee final report said there was scant evidence for the presence of widespread personnel captive in Southeast Asia. McCain was vilified by veterans groups and POW/MIA activists, who labeled him the "Manchurian Candidate" and claimed he committed treason to secure release from Hanoi. These two events would come into play in his 2000 presidential bid - then Governor of Texas George W. Bush and the RNC used the Manchurian Candidate label as well as postulating that McCain had an illegitimate black child to win over voters in the South Carolina primary. In '94, he worked with Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin to create a comprehensive Campaign Finance Reform bill to eliminate soft money, among other things. This crusade lasted until the bill finally passed in 2001. Pork Barrel spending was also a personal issue to McCain, and in '96 he was instrumental in passing a Line Item Veto Act - one of McCain's biggest political victories. However, the law was eventually struck down by the Supreme Court.

This is a small sampling, and McCain's time in the Senate since the 2000 election has been re-hashed ad-nauseum and doesn't need to be recounted here. His campaign for '08 has been gaining momentum, so the vetting process will be thorough. His only obstacle may be his mouth, which I find a bit endearing. Here are some gems. He referred to the retirement community Leisure World in Arizona as Seizure World, and joked that "97% of the people there vote, the other 3% are in the ICU." On one of his dozens of appearances on The Daily Show, his friend Jon Stewart asked "Should we start with the bomb Iran song or the walk through the Baghdad Market?" McCain jumped on it, responding "I think maybe shopping in Baghdad. . . I picked something up for you, too-an IED for your desk." Crooked gasbag John Murtha demanded an apology on the floor of the Senate, claiming that making jokes about IEDs to two bit comedians was unconscionable with so many troops dying at their hands. Said McCain: "Lighten up and get a life." In a meeting on illegal immigration in early 2007, McCain got in an argument with John Cornyn of Texas, who reportedly said "Wait a second here. I've been sitting in here for all of these negotiations and you just parachute in here on the last day. You're out of line," to which McCain responded "Fuck you. I know more about this than anyone in the room."

Unfortunate outbursts aside - well, unfortunate but funny, at least - I feel McCain would be a decent fit, especially considering what's out there. I hope I have illuminated his past for some. This information from the last two posts was culled from the Arlington National Cemetery website, the US Navy and US Senate websites, Faith of My Fathers, Wikipedia, and google of googled articles.