Republican Senator,John McCain Dies at 81

Legendary senator John McCain has died after a nearly year-long bout with glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer. He was 81.

“Senator John Sidney McCain III died at 4:28pm on 25th August 2018,” his family said in a statement. “With the Senator when he passed were his wife Cindy and their family. At his death, he had served the United States of America faithfully for sixty years.”

“My heart is broken. I am so lucky to have lived the adventure of loving this incredible man for 38 years,” Cindy McCain, his wife, tweeted on Saturday. “He passed the way he lived, on his own terms, surrounded by the people he loved, in the the place he loved best.”

Meghan McCain, his daughter, also shared a lengthy statement on Twitter that included: “My father’s passing comes with sorrow and grief for me, for my mother, for my brothers, and for my sisters. He was a great fire who burned bright, and we lived in his light and warmth for so very long.”

The son and grandson of Navy admirals, McCain survived being taken prisoner during the Vietnam War, before launching a storied career in politics, rising to become the 2008 Republican nominee for president. Throughout his career, McCain leveraged his relationship with the media — his “base,” he joked — to craft an image as a “straight-talking maverick,” a patriot who put country over party. Transcending an era of bitter partisanship and polarization, the charismatic McCain built a following across the American political spectrum.

McCain’s legacy is more complex than his legend, of course. Many of his maverick moments covered for less-noble motivations – of pique or public relations. And his dying regret that he did not select Joe Lieberman as his running mate does not heal the damage he did to our body politic. By tapping Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for the 2008 ticket, McCain opened a Pandora’s Box of right-wing populism, energizing the nascent Tea Party and presaging the triumph of Donald Trump.

Born at a naval air station in Panama, John Sidney McCain III grew up in Washington, D.C., in the shadow of admirals. His four-star grandfather commanded carrier operations in the Pacific during World War II. His distant father, “Junior,” also rose to four-star rank, serving as Commander-in-Chief of Pacific Command during the Vietnam War.

The third John S. McCain fell farther from the tree. Growing up rebellious and hot-tempered, McCain graduated near the bottom of his class at Annapolis. As a young Navy pilot, he displayed a higher aptitude for carousing than flying. He crashed planes and even caused a minor international incident while “clowning” in the skies over southern Spain.

Deploying to Vietnam in 1967, Lt. Commander McCain was at the center of a catastrophic accident aboard the USS Forrestal; the ensuing inferno claimed 134 sailors’ lives and nearly sank the carrier. Months later, flying a bombing run over Hanoi, McCain was shot down and captured — suffering through more than five years as a prisoner of war. His crash injuries were ill-treated, and McCain was tortured into writing a propaganda statement for the North Vietnamese. “I had learned what we all learned over there,” McCain would reflect. “Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine.”

North Vietnamese claimed to have shot down and captured U.S. Navy flier Lt. Commander John Sydney McCain, shown in file photo, son of Adm. John S. McCain, Jr., Commander of American Naval Forces in Europe. He was said to have been aboard a two-man F4 Phantom fighter shot down by a surface to air missile over Hanoi.

On his homecoming, McCain penned a first-person account of his captivity for U.S. News and World Report, in which he wrote of his torture by the “gooks” and his admiration for “President Nixon’s courage” — including “the bombing in Cambodia.” Loyalty to the Republican war president earned McCain cachet in right-wing politics. And after his Naval career and first marriage stalled out, McCain moved with his new wife, Cindy, to Arizona, and pivoted to politics, winning election to the House of Representatives in 1983.

McCain diminished himself early, opposing the creation of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday – a vote he would later regret. McCain also grabbed the national spotlight by opposing President Ronald Reagan’s deployment of Marines to Lebanon. The media “tend to notice acts of political independence from unexpected quarters,” McCain later wrote. Suddenly, he found himself “debating Lebanon on programs like MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour and in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post,” he added. “I was gratified by the attention and eager for more.”