Senator John McCain's personal character has dominated the image and perception of him. His family's military heritage, his rebellious nature as a youth, his endurance over his treatment as a prisoner of war, his resulting physical limitations, his political persona, his well-known temper, his admitted propensity for controversial or ill-advised remarks, and his devotion to maintaining his large blended family have all defined his place in the American political world more than any ideological or partisan framing (although the latter became more prominent beginning in 2008 when he was the Republican nominee for president).
McCain embraced and encouraged a popular perception of him as a "maverick" willing to buck partisan trends and stand on his own convictions. Numerous political analysts have contended that the descriptor either mischaracterizes or oversimplifies McCain's political behavior and motivations. During his 2008 campaign and the subsequent eight years of the Obama presidency, several analysts and commentators offered criticisms that McCain had drifted further from embodying the "maverick" image he had previously cultivated for himself.
Due to animus between McCain and President Donald Trump (a fellow Republican), partisan attitudes and favorability towards McCain shifted in his last years of life, particularly after McCain's decisive vote against Senate passage of the AHCA (a Trump and Republican-backed bill that would have enacted "skinny repeal" of the Affordable Care Act without passing a substitution to the ACA's provisions). By the time of his death, McCain was viewed more positively by Democrats and independents than by Republicans. In the leadup to the 2020 election (the first presidential election held after McCain's death, in which Trump was seeking re-election), Democratic nominee Joe Biden prominently evoked his cross-party friendship with McCain. McCain's widow, Cindy, endorsed Biden and filmed a television advertisement that his campaign aired in McCain's home state of Arizona. Biden won Arizona in his successful campaign against Trump, with the evoked memory of John McCain being cited as a factor in that rare Democratic presidential success in Arizona.
Military experiences McCain's experiences as a POW have formed the basis for some of his public and political image. University of Richmond political scientist John Karaagac states that, "The military holds a special place in American society and in American democracy. In both war and peace, the military becomes the archetype of democratic values and aspirations... The competing tension of intense institutional loyalty on one hand and guardian of the republic on the other [leads to a situation where] the military view of politics is bound to be ambivalent."Karaagac, John McCain: An Essay in Military and Political History, p. 248. Karaagac then sees McCain as a focal point of this tension and ambivalence. In part, this is due to McCain's family history: public service is idealized in military tradition, whereas politics is deprecated, and this was the tradition in McCain's family as well. Yet McCain's father also served as a Congressional liaison for a while, and was able to be politically effective without seeming overtly so; part of McCain's youth was spent seeing a steady stream of powerful politicians entertained at his family's house. p. 29. When McCain first began his Senate liaison work, he held congressional leaders in poor regard, due to their actions during and after the Vietnam War.Worth the Fighting For, p. 15. But once he began working with them closely, he found a number of them he admired: "They were statesmen, and although some of them had never served in uniform, I came to appreciate that most were patriots of the first order."
American Prospect editor Michael Tomasky sees McCain's POW experience as being uniquely suited for his country's perceptions of the Vietnam War: "It was by suffering in a cell, serving as a kind of metaphor for American suffering in a war most Americans gave up on early in his confinement, but at the same time holding fast to principle under the most unimaginable circumstances, thereby redeeming some notion of American honor in a dishonorable situation, that McCain became an American hero." This assessment is echoed by The Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, who says that "McCain's is not the heroism of conquest or even rescue, but of endurance, and, even more important, endurance for principle. ... [his] suffering has become in the public imagination a kind of expiation for the war itself. It explains why even people so ideologically distant from him find his experience so moving and his appeal so powerful." The New Republic writer David Grann also concurs in this assessment of McCain's real heroism, but emphasizes that during the 1990s the U.S. national media often overlooked not only political and ideological beliefs of McCain's contrary to theirs, but biographical blemishes as well, in a revival of an old American tradition of hero-building that goes back to Parson Weems. Journalist Andrew Ferguson describes instances where journalists who grew up in the Vietnam era have felt guilt for not having served themselves, and once in contact with McCain have viewed and written favorably about him as a result; the same pattern has been observed by Tomasky and by author David Brock. Longtime Washington journalist Al Hunt states that "The hero is indispensable to the McCain persona" and sees the courage McCain showed as a prisoner of war directly linked to the courage required to take on "the link between money and politics [that] is pervasive throughout American history." Writer Michael Lewis views McCain's political "nerve [as] far more interesting than bravery in combat. It was the nerve of a man engaged in an experiment of behaving like a human being when everyone around him was playing this strange, artificial game."
McCain was a lifelong gambler, from his early military days of playing poker, craps, and roulette and running a friendly Bachelor Officer Quarters gambling den while off-duty in Florida and Texas,Timberg, An American Odyssey, pp. 66–68. to traveling periodically to Las Vegas for weekend-long betting marathons while senator. McCain had a history, beginning with his military career, of appealing to lucky charms and superstitions to gain fortune. While serving in Vietnam, he demanded that his parachute rigger clean his visor before each flight. On his 2000 presidential campaign, he carried a lucky compass, feather, shoes, pen, penny and, at times, a rock. An incident when McCain misplaced his feather caused a brief panic in the campaign. The night before the 2008 New Hampshire primary he slept on the same side of the bed in the same hotel room he had stayed in before his win there in 2000, and after winning carried some of his talismans forward into the following Michigan primary supplemented by others. His superstitions are extended to others; to those afraid of flying or experiencing a bumpy flight, he says, "You don't need to worry. I've crashed four fighter jets, and I'm not going to die in a plane crash. You're safe with me."
McCain's war wounds left him incapable of raising his arms above his head; he was unable to attend to his own hair and he sometimes required assistance in dressing, tasks performed by nearby aides. His former communications director has said, "You comb someone's hair once, and you never forget it." McCain was treated for recurrent skin cancer, including melanoma, in 1993, 2000, and 2002;"Just the facts about McCain", The Arizona Republic. 2006-09-18. Retrieved on 2006-11-17. one of the resulting operations left a noticeable mark on the left side of his face. These medical conditions, combined with his advancing years, led him to repeatedly use a self-deprecating remark during his 2008 presidential campaigning: "I am older than dirt and have more scars than Frankenstein."
Political character and public response Maverick image
McCain was frequently described as a "maverick". He, in part, cultivated this image himself and promoted the use of this descriptor to his political advantage. He especially promoted this label during his campaign in the general election of the 2008 presidential race.
After many years of observing McCain, The New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote in late-2007 that, "there is nobody in politics remotely like him," making reference to his energy and dynamism, his rebelliousness and desire to battle powerful political forces, his willingness to endlessly and truthfully talk with reporters, and his being "driven by an ancient sense of honor." Brooks does not see McCain without political fault, but explains that, "There have been occasions when McCain compromised his principles for political gain, but he was so bad at it that it always backfired." Vanity Fair national editor Todd Purdum sees McCain's efforts in the years leading up to the 2008 election as "trying to make the maverick, freethinking impulses that first made him into a political star somehow compatible with the suck-it-up adherence to the orthodoxies required of a Republican presidential front-runner" and compares it to squaring the circle: "McCain needs to square that circle, and the hell of it is, he just can't." The New Republic senior editor Jonathan Chait thinks that McCain did not do this, but echoed Brooks by saying, "[McCain's] demagoguery comes with an awkward forced smile, which doesn't make it more forgivable but does make it less irritating." Karaagac, though, sees that McCain "as Senator, ... understands how to play the game of politics by knowing when to appear above the fracas."
McCain wrote in his 2002 biography Worth the Fighting For, "I have my reputation ... I'm an independent-minded, well-intentioned public servant to some. And to others, I'm a self-styled, self-righteous, maverick pain in the ass." p. xvii. And while McCain recognizes that deference, finesse, patience, and agility are qualities that are often associated with successful politicians, "God has given me heart enough for my ambitions, but too little forbearance to pursue them by routes other than a straight line." Newsweek editor Jon Meacham observed that, "There is a kind of egotism in McCain—he loves attention, always has, and takes glee in confounding the expectations of the institutions of which he is a part." City University of New York political science professor Stanley A. Renshon found that trait theory does not adequately explain McCain's behavior as a political figure, and that McCain's interior psychology includes a variety of aspects that defy simple analysis in terms of how he might perform in higher leadership roles.
Political character before 2008 campaign