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Old-School Values
AudioIf he makes it to the White House, John McCain, who will turn 72 on August 29, will be the oldest person in U.S. history elected to a first term. Polls show him to be out of step with his fellow Americans over the war in Iraq. And he's running against a charismatic, feel-good Democrat in what has become a difficult political environment for Republicans.
Yet Senator McCain forges ahead aggressively, which he was trained to do since birth, either not knowing or not caring that the old-school values he embodies make him seem to the iPod/Facebook generation like a throwback to the age of black-and-white movies.
John Sidney McCain III is the son and grandson of Naval Academy graduates who served in the Second World War and who both became admirals. McCain's father, called Jack, commanded the Pacific Fleet in 1967 when John was shot down over Vietnam. Privately, Jack McCain's eyes welled with tears when he talked of his son, and he chomped down on his cigar when he feared words would fail him. Publicly, he and his wife did their duty. It is a measure of the family stoicism that the night Jack and Roberta McCain learned that their son was either dead or a captive in North Vietnam -- they weren't sure which -- they donned evening clothes to fulfill an engagement at an ambassador's residence in London.
John McCain himself, in his five and a half years in captivity, would refuse early release from the "Hanoi Hilton" (the North Vietnamese wanted to use him as a propaganda ploy), lead the American POWs in church services, and rediscover in that unlikely place a profound passion for his country. As he wrote in his autobiography, Faith of My Fathers, "it wasn't until I lost America for a time that I realized how much I loved her."
In 1981, eight years after returning to the United States, McCain left the Navy to carve out a career in politics, based in his second wife's home state of Arizona. It was not a place he'd lived before, but McCain ran successfully for an open House seat in 1982, ascending four years later to the Senate seat previously held by conservative icon Barry Goldwater.
McCain fashioned himself, as many novice Republicans did in those days, as a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution. He had a better claim than most. Ronald Reagan admired McCain and befriended him, and it's not too much to say that Nancy Reagan adored him for his gallantry and self-effacing manner. But the political leader whom McCain talks about without prompting -- and most resembles temperamentally -- is another Republican president: Theodore Roosevelt, noted warrior, pioneering environmentalist, Republican rebel, big game hunter … and founder of the breakaway Bull Moose Party.
The bull is a fitting totem for McCain; the analogy often comes up when his name is invoked. Three years ago, at a breakfast with various diplomats, McCain was argumentative in responding to a German bureaucrat who had claimed Iran had suspended its nuclear program. One European witness later described McCain to he New Yorker as a "charging bull" who "likes to fight."
This has been McCain's style most of his life. In his 25 years as a congressman and senator, he has been just as willing to pick fights with Republicans (on everything from tax policy to campaign finance reform) as with Democrats (often on issues of national security). Although often lauded as a maverick for his nonconformity, his pugnacious behavior in Munich brought to mind Winston Churchill's description of John Foster Dulles, another headstrong American official, as "a bull who carries his china shop around with him."
That has been McCain's endearing quality as well as his occasional liability. It served him particularly well in the 2000 Republican presidential primaries, when he connected with idealistic young voters. The question this time around is whether it's still the right approach.
Today our nation is weary of a war that appears to be gaining us little except casualties and expense -- a war McCain has supported from the outset -- and is fearful about an economy that features spiking fuel prices along with significant dips in the employment rate, the stock market, and housing prices. Those kinds of worries, and the feelings of malaise and dread they engender, usually portend change in Washington. Many voters, especially those under 30, want a different political party and a fresh face in the White House. McCain's rejoinder, although he won't phrase it quite so starkly, is that it will take a seasoned veteran to get us out of the mess we're in.
A year ago, when Reader's Digest interviewed John McCain, he acknowledged, after the tape recorder had been turned off, that the stalled Iraq war could doom his candidacy. He added, in his stoic fashion, that he'd rather lose an election than a war. It's not clear either will happen: McCain supported the troop surge, even when that was a politically unpopular course to take, and it appears that the surge has helped stabilize security in Iraq. But if the surge is working, it is doing so to further a goal that seems increasingly elusive to Americans.
McCain is aware of this attitude too. But, as he made clear in his interview with Reader's Digest editors at his campaign headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, if nothing else, he plans to go down fighting.
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