Understanding how McCain suffered as a POW provides a direct lens as to how he became such a strong advocate against the use of torture. Details of that account were taken from an interview he gave with U. Naval Academy graduates including McCain. On Oct. The sheer force of the ejection broke his right leg and both arms, briefly knocking him unconscious before he landed in a small lake. Burdened with heavy equipment, he sank to the bottom and had to kick to the surface for gulps of air.
Eventually, McCain used his teeth to activate his life preserver. But once on the surface, he was pulled ashore by a group of North Vietnamese who proceeded to attack him, tearing at his clothes and slamming a rifle butt into his right shoulder, shattering it.
The group also bayoneted McCain in the abdomen and foot. News reporter. His captors initially refused to provide McCain any medical treatment, but that all changed after they discovered that his father was a U. Navy admiral. When the Bush fusillade began, McCain's first response was to hit back.
His campaign aired a television spot comparing Bush to then-President Bill Clinton - a move the then-Texas governor called "as low a blow as you can give". McCain would later order an end to his negative adverts after a woman at a town hall forum told him her son had become distraught after receiving a Bush campaign call that labelled the Arizona senator a liar and a cheat.
Bush ended up taking the South Carolina primary by 11 points. The Arizona senator would win a few more contests, but the well-financed and organised Bush machine regrouped and ground him down.
Those heady days after New Hampshire in were probably as close to the presidency as McCain came in his life. Bush, with a strong conservative tailwind, went on to defeat Al Gore later that year.
McCain went back to the Senate and focused on passing campaign finance reform, biding his time until , and making the kind of establishment connections to ensure his next bid for the presidency would begin from a position of strength. By the time of McCain's trip to Lakeville, Minnesota, for the kind of town hall forum he'd been doing throughout the campaign, his presidential bid was in trouble.
He was trailing in the polls, and the stock market was in freefall. McCain's surprise pick for vice-president, little-known Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, was "going rogue" - lashing out at Democrats, questioning Obama's patriotism and accusing him of "palling around with terrorists". She was giving voice to a Republican base growing increasingly unsettled and angry at the prospect of an Obama presidency after eight years of Republican rule.
Some conservative talking heads and grassroots fringe groups were questioning Obama's citizenship, religious affiliation and eligibility to run for president. It all came to a head at a high school gymnasium in Lakeville. When one supporter said he was "scared" of an Obama presidency, McCain replied that the then-senator from Illinois was a decent person.
The audience booed, as members of the crowd shouted that the Democratic nominee was a liar and a terrorist. Then an older woman with frazzled white hair said she could not trust Obama, adding she had "read about him" and "he's an Arab".
McCain shook his head and took the microphone back. Brooke Buchanan, McCain's campaign press secretary, was standing by him at the Lakeland event and says she could tell it was a fiery atmosphere in the high school gym that day - and that McCain would probably pay a political price for his answer.
It wasn't the right thing, and it wasn't the way that Senator McCain wanted to run his campaign. Over the course of the Obama presidency, the anger and resentment within portions of the Republican base that McCain had tried to confront in Minnesota grew more prominent. The party started to look more like Palin - a harbinger of Mr Trump's unvarnished conservative populism - and less like the Arizona senator. But in the end, there were forces bigger than them.
It was the middle of the night when Brooke Buchanan's phone rang. It was McCain. She no longer worked for the senator, but the two still talked almost daily. We're going to be making some news. The US Senate was considering whether to repeal portions of the Affordable Care Act, a comprehensive health-insurance regulation law that was Obama's signature legislative achievement.
The fate of the bill hung in the balance, as only one more "no" vote would kill the legislation and McCain was one of the few remaining undecideds. It was almost in the morning. As Buchanan watched on her television, McCain walked out on to the Senate floor and turned to the clerk tabulating votes.
He held out his right arm - the one that hadn't been repeatedly broken in Vietnam - and gave a quick thumbs-down. McCain - who had flown back from Arizona for the vote after undergoing emergency surgery for his recently diagnosed brain tumour - had bucked his party's leadership one last time. He had defied President Trump, the man who had stunned Washington when he questioned McCain's heroism as a prisoner of war.
It was a tough decision to take, but again it was one of those times when the true McCain shined. Buchanan says McCain voted no, in part, to allow other Republican senators who had misgivings about the repeal legislation, including his friend Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, to vote in favour and avoid angering the pro-repeal Republican base.
It was McCain's most direct break with Mr Trump, but since then he stepped up his criticism. He also took swipes at him in a memoir released shortly before his death. He also, according to the New York Times, told friends he did not want the president at his funeral - a final rebuke of the man who won the office McCain sought twice, but never achieved.
He was not perfect, but he was the first one to admit that. Image source, Getty Images. Released from prisoner of war camp. Image source, Alamy. Elected to Congress. McCain, his temper flashing, shot back. McCain went back to Vietnam several times, including here in Cleared in corruption scandal. This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
South Carolina defeat. McCain almost won anyway. McCain lost a bitter presidential election in , but he was fair and even-handed in his relationship with President Barack Obama. The two were never friends, but they respected each other. The current President will not be there. View the discussion thread. John McCain: death of a hero. David Lambertson. Related Content. UN report on US killing of Iranian commander misses the mark. Show Comments View the discussion thread.
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