Cultural and political image of John McCain
Encyclopedia
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).
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 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. 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
. 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 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."
After many years of observing McCain, New York Times columnist David Brooks
writes 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
does not think McCain has done this either, but echoes 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 has practiced the modern American ritual of falling short of ideals, confessing, and moving on; University of Southern California
Unruh Institute of Politics Director Dan Schnur, a former McCain campaign spokesperson, says McCain "is the best apologizer in politics".
The past McCain sees two perceptions of himself: "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." 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
observes 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.
McCain is 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, to traveling periodically to Las Vegas for weekend-long betting marathons while senator. McCain has 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
while adding 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 leave him incapable of raising his arms above his head; he is unable to attend to his own hair and he sometimes requires 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 has been treated for recurrent skin cancer
, including melanoma
, in 1993, 2000, and 2002; 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."
McCain's own emphasis on personal character in his appeal to voters was revealed in a University of Missouri
study of political discourse in the 2000 Republican primary campaign, which showed McCain using fewer policy, and more character, utterances than any other candidate. Another study of the campaign, by University of North Florida
communications professor John Parmelee, performed a framing theory
analysis of a McCain campaign videocassette sent to voters; it found the video's narrative sought to connect values from McCain's personal life and war record to his political courage and then his political platform. Unlike rival George W. Bush
's campaign videocassette, McCain's did not shy away from negative aspects of his personal history, but instead sought to frame his divorce as a chapter in his character-building POW experience. McCain's appeal has usually not been based on party identification: University of California, San Diego
political science professor Gary Jacobson
's 2006 study of partisan polarization found that in a state-by-state survey of job approval ratings of the state's senators, McCain had the seventh-smallest partisan difference of any senator, with a 2.6 percentage point difference in approval between Arizona's Republicans and Democrats. Likewise, an April 2008 Gallup poll found that the public perception of him as a war hero was not strongly weighted by party identification (unlike the case in 2004 for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry
). While McCain's Gallup poll favorability ratings were beaten down during the course of the 2008 U.S. presidential election, they rebounded to previous levels within days of his defeat.
Nor has conventional ideology defined him: Arizona Republic columnist and RealClearPolitics
contributor Robert Robb, using a formulation devised by William F. Buckley, Jr.
, describes McCain as "conservative" but not "a conservative", meaning that while McCain usually tends towards conservative positions, he is not "anchored by the philosophical tenets of modern American conservatism." New Yorker
writer George Packer
says of McCain, "He doesn’t present himself as a conservative leader; he is simply a leader." Reason
and Los Angeles Times
writer Matt Welch
, author of McCain: The Myth of a Maverick, sees political pundits as projecting their own ideological fantasies upon McCain, with the result that McCain's "maverick" persona shields his actual goals for the nation and national culture. McCain has called himself "a Teddy Roosevelt conservative", and indeed Welch sees Theodore Roosevelt
as the main governmental role model for McCain, and writes that McCain believes in effectively statist solutions that will facilitate the notion "that Americans 'were meant to transform history' and that sublimating the individual in the service of that 'common national cause' is the wellspring of honor and purpose."
An Arizona Republic analysis of Senate votes from 1999 to 2008 found that McCain broke with his party in about a quarter of the close votes where his stance could make a difference, but almost never in the years he was running for president. However, McCain's Senate stances on signature issues of campaign finance reform in 1999 and comprehensive immigration reform
in 2007, while not resulting in very close Senate votes, significantly damaged his presidential prospects in both years.
noted falsehoods stated by the McCain campaign and ponders whether it will be "necessary to wait for one of McCain’s conveniently delayed conversions to righteousness."
This trend continued during the Obama administration and during McCain's 2010 senate re-election campaign
. As McCain shed his past contraorthodox positions and explicitly repudiated the very 'maverick' label itself, The Politico
concluded that "by seeming to do anything to win re-election McCain has torched one of the most famous brands in modern American politics," and Fox News echoed the same sentiment by writing that "McCain abandoned his maverick label and cast aside one of the most powerful brands in American politics as he fought to reassure conservatives they could trust him."
The change caused writers to reassess and question their past conclusions about McCain. David Margolick
, writing for Newsweek
magazine, wondered: "His dramatic shifts raise several questions: How much of his maverick persona over the years has been real and how much simply tactical? Is he in the midst of some struggle for his soul, or is this evolution simply the latest example, dating back to his days at the Hanoi Hilton, of McCain doing whatever it takes to survive? Is the anger people sense in him anger at Obama, or the American electorate, or fate, or himself?" James Fallows
of The Atlantic saw McCain as going against the usual trend of public figures becoming more broad-minded as they get older and concluded, "John McCain seems intentionally to be shrinking his audience, his base, and his standing in history. It's unnecessary, and it is sad." Writer Niall O'Dowd
wrote that McCain had been "a remarkable man, true to his own vision of where true north was on his compass," but then, "something happened ... In his place is this crotchety naysayer who has lost all track of his better self and his better angels." Todd Purdum
, whose long, largely favorable treatment of McCain in an early 2007 issue of Vanity Fair
had been titled "Prisoner of Conscience", wrote a far more bitter piece for the same publication in late 2010 entitled "The Man Who Never Was".
Writers began to seek explanations for what had happened to the John McCain they thought they knew. Explanations varied: political survival, political expediency, the departure of alter-ego Mark Salter
, personal antipathy towards Obama, resentment at Obama's election. New York Times columnist Gail Collins
snarked simply: "But that was the old John McCain, before he was kidnapped by space aliens and reprogrammed."
Several writers sought to frame McCain's career as actually consistent, when viewed through different prisms. Matt Welch
acknowledged that McCain had made a series of "crude reversals" in his political positions, but also extrapolated upon his previous analysis of McCain and wrote that some of the shifts were actually not, and could be explained by virtue of his generational military heritage and that "McCain's core, almost genetic, principle in governance and life is that the United States should remain the unchallenged military superpower keeping the world safe for democracy and commerce." Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein
wrote that McCain's career is better explained by looking at electoral opportunities and his personal resentments at the time than by political or policy positions. Purdum amplified on both these themes and wrote that McCain's political self was connected to his warrior past: "McCain has always lived for the fight, and he has defined himself most clearly in opposition to an enemy, whether that enemy was the rule-bound leadership of the United States Naval Academy, his North Vietnamese captors, the hometown Arizona press corps that never much liked him, his Republican congressional colleagues, the Reverend Jerry Falwell, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Barack Obama, or J. D. Hayworth. He has always been more of an existential politician than a consequential one, in the sense that his influence has derived not from steady, unswerving pursuit of philosophical goals or legislative achievements but from the series of unpredictable–and sometimes spectacular–fights he has chosen to pick."
notes of McCain that, "There is no question that he sometimes loses potential allies by his penchant for telling off other senators." Todd Purdum remarks upon a "temperament that routinely put[s] him atop insiders' lists of the most difficult senators on Capitol Hill." A 2006 Washingtonian
survey of Capitol Hill staff ranked McCain as having the second "Hottest Temper" in the Senate. Former Senator Rick Santorum
says that, "John was very rough in the sandbox. Everybody has a McCain story. If you work in the Senate for a while, you have a McCain story. ... He hasn't built up a lot of goodwill." Writer Elizabeth Drew
quoted a senator who admired McCain as saying, "Dealing with John McCain is kind of like dancing with a cactus."
In 1989, McCain screamed at Senator Richard Shelby
an inch from his face, during a heated cabinet nomination battle for McCain's friend John Tower
. In 1992, McCain and Senator Chuck Grassley
got into a heated argument, with shoving and profanities, over a POW/MIA committee
issue and did not speak to each other for two years, before reconciling. At a meeting in 2007 on immigration legislation, fellow Republican Senator John Cornyn
objected to McCain: "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 replied, "Fuck you! I know more about this than anyone else in the room."
McCain has stated: "It is apparent that I'm not the most popular member of the Senate." The Almanac of American Politics comments that "[McCain's] opposition to what he considers pork barrel spending ... provides him plenty of material for his self-deprecating jokes about how unpopular he is with many colleagues." Regarding his temper, or what cultural writer Julia Keller
characterizes as passionate conviction, McCain acknowledges it, while also saying that the stories have been exaggerated. Renshon notes that having a temper is not unusual for U.S. leaders, with George Washington
, Andrew Jackson
, Ulysses S. Grant
, Theodore Roosevelt
, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton
among those sharing the trait. McCain has indeed employed both profanity and shouting on occasion. Adam Clymer sees McCain's nature as possibly misfit for the Senate: "McCain is an impatient man — perhaps because he lost five years of his life as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam — in an institution that worships delay and rewards endurance." George "Bud" Day
, McCain's former POW cellmate and subsequent lifelong friend, found McCain's temperament in the Senate amusingly consistent with his past practice of going around the POW camp, taunting and yelling obscenities at the North Vietnamese guards. Phillip Butler, who knew McCain at the Naval Academy and was also a POW with him, said, "John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head." McCain's sometimes explosive temper was an integral part of his somewhat unorthodox, but effective and admired, leadership style when he was commanding officer
of the VA-174
naval air squadron in the mid-1970s.
Such incidents have become less frequent over the years: senators supporting his 2008 presidential campaign said that McCain had calmed down during the 2000s, and reporters have noted almost no flare-ups during the 2008 presidential campaign. Senator Susan Collins
, who endorsed McCain in the 2008 primaries on the basis of his character and not his political positions, said, "People tend to feel very strongly about John both ways." Senator Thad Cochran
, who has known McCain and the McCain family for decades and has battled McCain over earmarks
, represents one view: "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me." Ultimately Cochran decided to support McCain for president, after it was clear he would win the nomination. Senator Joseph Lieberman, an enthusiastic cross-party 2008 McCain backer, represents the other view with this observation: "[McCain's] is not the kind of anger that is a loss of control. He is a very controlled person." Following the election, there have been occasional in-Senate flare-ups, such as during the December 2010 debate over repeal of the U.S. military's "Don't ask, don't tell
" policy.
McCain's relations with his own Senate staff have reflected less tension: doors to his office are usually kept open and staffers call him by his first name. Moreover, staffers stay with his office for an unusually long time, over eight years on average at one point. And McCain's senior campaign staff have shown a passionate loyalty towards him, a loyalty that continues even from people who have been forced to leave his campaign after intra-staff squabbles. McCain has had many run-ins and heated confrontations with people in Arizona political circles, but a number of them have later become campaign contributors to him.
story was titled "McCain's WMD Is a Mouth That Won't Quit", while in 2008, The Politico
described McCain's humor as "rooted in a time before there was political correctness" and a characteristic that is viewed either as a mark of authenticity or as out of touch with contemporary mores
. Over the years this trait has led to a series of controversial remarks, with targets both domestic and foreign.
In 1986, Representative McCain was reported to have joked about a woman enjoying being raped by a gorilla, when speaking at a conference of the National League of Cities and Towns in Washington, D.C. Other reports put the alleged ape joke in 1984 rather than 1986. McCain said in the 1980s that he did not recall telling that joke.
In his 1986 senate campaign, at a college appearance he referred to Arizona's Leisure World
retirement community as "Seizure World", remarking that in the previous election, "97 percent of the people who live there came out to vote. I think the other 3 percent were in intensive care." While the young audience laughed, his Democratic opponent soon jumped on the remark; McCain would later concede that it was a joke whose offense he made worse when he did not quickly apologize for it.
In 1998, McCain made a joke during a speech at a Republican fundraiser about President Clinton
's daughter, Chelsea, saying: "Why is Chelsea Clinton
so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno
." The joke was thought so offensive that many newspapers declined to print it verbatim; McCain's biographer Robert Timberg would characterize it as "an unspeakable thing to say, unworthy of him." McCain subsequently said: "This is the bad boy. It was stupid and cruel and insensitive. I've apologized. I can't take it back." His letter of apology to President Clinton was described as "abject, contrite, and profuse." In response, White House spokesman Mike McCurry said: "To make a further issue of the matter would lend further exposure to an offensive joke. In light of the senator's apology, they [the first family] decided to drop the matter."
In the 2000 Presidential race, McCain stated that "I hate the gooks," and that "I will hate them as long as I live." Until the year 2000, McCain used the ethnic slur "gook
" in reference to the individuals who had tortured him in Vietnam, and reaction among Vietnamese American
s to McCain's use of this term was mixed, but they were generally supportive of McCain's candidacy, for example as shown in exit polls in the primary in California. During his presidential campaign that year, he at first refused to apologize for his continued use of the term, stating that he reserved its reference only to his captors; then after continued criticism from some in the Asian American
community, McCain vowed to no longer use the term, saying, "I will continue to condemn those who unfairly mistreated us. But out of respect to a great number of people for whom I hold in very high regard, I will no longer use the term that has caused such discomfort."
At a VFW Hall
in South Carolina in 2007, a veteran asked when the U.S. would "send an air mail message to Iran." McCain jokingly responded by singing "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran," to the tune of The Beach Boys
' "Barbara Ann
" (from the 1980 "Bomb Iran" song parody by Vince Vance & The Valiants
), and then seriously explained his concerns about Iran while stopping short of a bombing endorsement. When later asked about the singing, McCain stated, "My response is: lighten up and get a life." Asked whether it was insensitive, McCain retorted, "Insensitive to what? The Iranians?"
As a guest on the Daily Show a few days later in 2007, and following a trip to Baghdad, host and longtime friend Jon Stewart
asked McCain, "What do you want to start with, the bomb Iran song or the walk through the market in Baghdad?" McCain responded by saying, "I think maybe shopping in Baghdad ... I had something picked out for you, too – a little IED
to put on your desk." When anti-Iraq-war
Democrats objected to the remark, McCain advised that they too, "Lighten up and get a life."
McCain has emphasized the role that the family tradition of service to one's country, as exemplified by his father and grandfather, has played in his life; it was the predominant theme of his 1999 memoir Faith of My Fathers
. Both his forebears had difficulty coping with the end of war; his grandfather felt listless and died several days after the formal conclusion of World War II
, while his father felt despair over his reluctant retirement from the United States Navy and fell into prolonged poor health afterwards. McCain felt that his father's "long years of binge drinking" had caught up with him, despite his mostly successful subsequent recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous
. McCain had been troubled by the sporadic manifestations of his father's alcoholism while growing up, and Matt Welch sees McCain's experience of living with that, as well as witnessing his wife Cindy's three-year addiction to painkillers in the early 1990s, as causing his speech and writings to be populated with the language and emotions of twelve-step program
s. In particular, Welch sees McCain as "disarmingly talented at admitting his narcissistic flaws" and constantly seeking to invest in a cause greater than self-interest.
McCain is known for his responses to attacks upon his family. An opponent of his in the 1982 Republican House primary contacted his first wife Carol
, seeking negative material on McCain. She refused to discuss her marriage, and then next time McCain met the opponent, he said: "I understand you called my ex-wife. I want you to know that, campaign aside, politics aside, you ever do anything like that again, anything against a person in my family, I will personally beat the shit out of you." The smear campaign against his adopted Bangladesh
i daughter during the 2000 South Carolina presidential primary so bothered him that, by some accounts, he considered leaving the Republican Party
.
The traditions McCain was brought up under have extended to his own family. His son John Sidney IV ("Jack") enrolled at the U.S. Naval Academy and graduated in 2009, after which he went to Naval Air Station Pensacola
for training as a naval aviator
, just as his father had, followed by helicopter pilot training at Naval Air Station Whiting Field
, where he graduated from in January 2011. He was subsequently assigned to the HSC-25 "Island Knights"
squadron in Guam
, flying the MH-60S Knighthawk. His son James ("Jimmy") enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 2006, began recruit training
later that year, and by early 2008 was a Lance Corporal
who had served a tour of duty as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He subsequently served a second tour in Iraq as well, then left to attend college, with possible plans to return to the Marines. His daughter Meghan
graduated from Columbia University
, worked and blog
ged on his presidential campaign, and subsequently became a blogging, twitter
ing, and book publishing fixture on the Republican Party scene with some of the same maverick tendencies as her father. His daughter Bridget is a student at Arizona State University
. From his first marriage, his son Doug graduated from the University of Virginia
, became a Navy A-6E Intruder carrier pilot, then a commercial pilot for American Airlines
; his son Andrew is vice president and CFO at Hensley & Co.
and chair of the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce
; and his daughter Sidney is a recording industry executive living in Toronto
who has worked for Capitol Records
and V2 Records
.
Altogether he has seven children, born across four decades, including three with Carol – all of whom are reported to be on good terms with him, his wife, and each other – and, as of 2007, four grandchildren. Cindy McCain suffered a stroke in 2004 due to high blood pressure, but made a mostly full recovery. They reside in Phoenix, and she remains the chair of the large Anheuser-Busch
beer and liquor distributor Hensley & Co.
, founded by her father. By September 2007, McCain's denominational migration was complete, and he was identifying himself as a Baptist
. More broadly, he identifies himself as a Christian
rather than an evangelical Christian.
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
'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).
Military culture and political character
McCain's experiences as a POW have formed the basis for some of his political image.University of Richmond
University of Richmond
The University of Richmond is a selective, private, nonsectarian, liberal arts university located on the border of the city of Richmond and Henrico County, Virginia. The University of Richmond is a primarily undergraduate, residential university with approximately 4,000 undergraduate and graduate...
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 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. 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
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. 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."
The American Prospect
The American Prospect is a monthly American political magazine dedicated to American liberalism. Based in Washington, DC, The American Prospect is a journal "of liberal ideas, committed to a just society, an enriched democracy, and effective liberal politics" which focuses on United States politics...
editor Michael Tomasky
Michael Tomasky
Michael Tomasky is a liberal American columnist, journalist and author. He is the editor in chief of Democracy, a special correspondent for Newsweek / The Daily Beast, a contributing editor for The American Prospect, and a contributor to The New York Review of Books.-Biography:Tomasky was born...
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 Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer
Charles Krauthammer
Charles Krauthammer, MD is an American Pulitzer Prize–winning syndicated columnist, political commentator, and physician. His weekly column appears in The Washington Post and is syndicated to more than 275 newspapers and media outlets. He is a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard and The New...
, 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
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
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
Parson Weems
Mason Locke Weems , generally known as Parson Weems, was an American book agent and author. He is best known as the source of some of the apocryphal stories about George Washington...
. Journalist Andrew Ferguson
Andrew Ferguson (journalist)
Andrew Ferguson is an American journalist and author.He is senior editor of The Weekly Standard and a columnist for Bloomberg News based in Washington, D.C.....
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
David Brock
David Brock is an American journalist and author, the founder of the media watchdog group, Media Matters for America, and a Democratic political operative...
. Longtime Washington journalist Al Hunt
Al Hunt
Albert R. Hunt Jr. is the executive Washington editor for Bloomberg News, a subsidiary of Bloomberg L.P. Hunt hosts the Sunday morning talk show Political Capital on Bloomberg Television, which airs on Friday night.-Personal life:...
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
Michael Lewis (author)
Michael Lewis is an American non-fiction author and financial journalist. His bestselling books include The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Liar's Poker, The New New Thing, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, Panic and Home Game: An...
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."
David Brooks (journalist)
David Brooks is a Canadian-born political and cultural commentator who considers himself a moderate and writes for the New York Times...
writes 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
Vanity Fair (magazine)
Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...
national editor Todd Purdum
Todd Purdum
Todd Stanley Purdum is a national editor and political correspondent for Vanity Fair magazine.-Early life and education:Purdum is a son of Jerry S. Purdum, a Macomb, Illinois insurance broker, investor, and realtor, and Connie Purdum. He was graduated from St...
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
Squaring the circle
Squaring the circle is a problem proposed by ancient geometers. It is the challenge of constructing a square with the same area as a given circle by using only a finite number of steps with compass and straightedge...
: "McCain needs to square that circle, and the hell of it is, he just can't." The New Republic senior editor Jonathan Chait
Jonathan Chait
Jonathan Chait is a writer for New York magazine. He was previously a senior editor at The New Republic and a former assistant editor of The American Prospect. He also writes a periodic column in the Los Angeles Times.- Personal life :...
does not think McCain has done this either, but echoes 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 has practiced the modern American ritual of falling short of ideals, confessing, and moving on; University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
Unruh Institute of Politics Director Dan Schnur, a former McCain campaign spokesperson, says McCain "is the best apologizer in politics".
The past McCain sees two perceptions of himself: "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." 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
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
editor Jon Meacham
Jon Meacham
Jon Meacham is executive editor and executive vice president at Random House. A former editor of Newsweek and a Pulitzer Prize winning bestselling author and a commentator on politics, history, and religious faith in America, he is a contributing editor to Time magazine and editor-at-large of WNET...
observes 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
City University of New York
The City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E...
political science professor Stanley A. Renshon found that trait theory
Trait theory
In psychology, Trait theory is a major approach to the study of human personality. Trait theorists are primarily interested in the measurement of traits, which can be defined as habitual patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion. According to this perspective, traits are relatively stable over...
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.
McCain is 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, to traveling periodically to Las Vegas for weekend-long betting marathons while senator. McCain has 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
Parachute rigger
A parachute rigger is a person who is trained or licensed to pack, maintain or repair parachutes. A rigger is required to understand fabrics, hardware, webbing, regulations, sewing, packing, and other aspects related to the building, packing, repair, and maintenance of parachutes.- Military...
clean his visor before each flight. On his 2000 presidential campaign
John McCain presidential campaign, 2000
John McCain, the United States Senator from Arizona, launched his first candidacy for the presidency of the United States in the 2000 presidential election....
, 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
New Hampshire Republican primary, 2008
The 2008 New Hampshire Republican primary took place on January 8, 2008, with 12 national delegates being allocated proportionally to the popular vote...
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
Michigan Republican primary, 2008
The 2008 Michigan Republican primary took place on January 15, 2008. Mitt Romney came in first with 39 percent of the vote, followed by John McCain with 30 percent and Mike Huckabee in third-place with 16 percent...
while adding 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 leave him incapable of raising his arms above his head; he is unable to attend to his own hair and he sometimes requires 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 has been treated for recurrent skin cancer
Skin cancer
Skin neoplasms are skin growths with differing causes and varying degrees of malignancy. The three most common malignant skin cancers are basal cell cancer, squamous cell cancer, and melanoma, each of which is named after the type of skin cell from which it arises...
, including melanoma
Melanoma
Melanoma is a malignant tumor of melanocytes. Melanocytes are cells that produce the dark pigment, melanin, which is responsible for the color of skin. They predominantly occur in skin, but are also found in other parts of the body, including the bowel and the eye...
, in 1993, 2000, and 2002; 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
John McCain presidential campaign, 2008
John McCain, the senior United States Senator from Arizona, launched his second candidacy for the presidency of the United States in an unsuccessful bid to win the 2008 presidential election. His candidacy, in the works for a number of years, was informally announced on February 28, 2007 during a...
: "I am older than dirt and have more scars than Frankenstein."
Political character and public response
University of Missouri
The University of Missouri System is a state university system providing centralized administration for four universities, a health care system, an extension program, five research and technology parks, and a publishing press. More than 64,000 students are currently enrolled at its four campuses...
study of political discourse in the 2000 Republican primary campaign, which showed McCain using fewer policy, and more character, utterances than any other candidate. Another study of the campaign, by University of North Florida
University of North Florida
The University of North Florida is a public university located in Jacksonville, Florida. A member institution of the State University System of Florida, the university is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to award baccalaureate, master’s...
communications professor John Parmelee, performed a framing theory
Framing (social sciences)
A frame in social theory consists of a schema of interpretation — that is, a collection of anecdotes and stereotypes—that individuals rely on to understand and respond to events. In simpler terms, people build a series of mental filters through biological and cultural influences. They use these...
analysis of a McCain campaign videocassette sent to voters; it found the video's narrative sought to connect values from McCain's personal life and war record to his political courage and then his political platform. Unlike rival George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
's campaign videocassette, McCain's did not shy away from negative aspects of his personal history, but instead sought to frame his divorce as a chapter in his character-building POW experience. McCain's appeal has usually not been based on party identification: University of California, San Diego
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...
political science professor Gary Jacobson
Gary Jacobson
Gary C. Jacobson is a Professor of Politics and the Director of Undergraduate Studies at the University of California, San Diego, where he has been since 1979....
's 2006 study of partisan polarization found that in a state-by-state survey of job approval ratings of the state's senators, McCain had the seventh-smallest partisan difference of any senator, with a 2.6 percentage point difference in approval between Arizona's Republicans and Democrats. Likewise, an April 2008 Gallup poll found that the public perception of him as a war hero was not strongly weighted by party identification (unlike the case in 2004 for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry
John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to former President George W...
). While McCain's Gallup poll favorability ratings were beaten down during the course of the 2008 U.S. presidential election, they rebounded to previous levels within days of his defeat.
Nor has conventional ideology defined him: Arizona Republic columnist and RealClearPolitics
RealClearPolitics
RealClearPolitics is a political news and polling data aggregator based in Chicago, Illinois. The site's founders say their goal is to give readers "ideological diversity." They have described themselves as frustrated with what they perceive as anti-conservative, anti-Christian media bias, and...
contributor Robert Robb, using a formulation devised by William F. Buckley, Jr.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American conservative author and commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing was noted for...
, describes McCain as "conservative" but not "a conservative", meaning that while McCain usually tends towards conservative positions, he is not "anchored by the philosophical tenets of modern American conservatism." New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
writer George Packer
George Packer
George Packer is an American journalist, novelist and playwright.-Biography:Packer's parents, Nancy Packer and Herbert Packer, were both academics at Stanford University; his maternal grandfather was George Huddleston, a congressman from Alabama. His sister, Ann Packer, is also a writer...
says of McCain, "He doesn’t present himself as a conservative leader; he is simply a leader." Reason
Reason (magazine)
Reason is a libertarian monthly magazine published by the Reason Foundation. The magazine has a circulation of around 60,000 and was named one of the 50 best magazines in 2003 and 2004 by the Chicago Tribune.- History :...
and Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
writer Matt Welch
Matt Welch
Matt Welch is an American blogger, journalist, andlibertarian political pundit. Since 2008, he has been the editor-in-chief at the monthly libertarian journal, Reason. From 2006 to 2007, he was an editorial page editor for the Los Angeles Times...
, author of McCain: The Myth of a Maverick, sees political pundits as projecting their own ideological fantasies upon McCain, with the result that McCain's "maverick" persona shields his actual goals for the nation and national culture. McCain has called himself "a Teddy Roosevelt conservative", and indeed Welch sees Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...
as the main governmental role model for McCain, and writes that McCain believes in effectively statist solutions that will facilitate the notion "that Americans 'were meant to transform history' and that sublimating the individual in the service of that 'common national cause' is the wellspring of honor and purpose."
An Arizona Republic analysis of Senate votes from 1999 to 2008 found that McCain broke with his party in about a quarter of the close votes where his stance could make a difference, but almost never in the years he was running for president. However, McCain's Senate stances on signature issues of campaign finance reform in 1999 and comprehensive immigration reform
Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007
The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, or, in its full name, the Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007 was a bill discussed in the 110th United States Congress that would have provided legal status and a path to citizenship for the approximately 12 to...
in 2007, while not resulting in very close Senate votes, significantly damaged his presidential prospects in both years.
"What happened to John McCain?"
By the time of the 2008 general election season, the nature of some of the McCain campaign's tactics had tipped the balance of past respect for some observers. Washington Post columnist and past McCain admirer Richard Cohen said that "the John McCain of old is unrecognizable. He has become the sort of politician he once despised." Writer Michael KinsleyMichael Kinsley
Michael Kinsley is an American political journalist, commentator, television host, and pundit. Primarily active in print media as both a writer and editor, he also became known to television audiences as a co-host on Crossfire...
noted falsehoods stated by the McCain campaign and ponders whether it will be "necessary to wait for one of McCain’s conveniently delayed conversions to righteousness."
This trend continued during the Obama administration and during McCain's 2010 senate re-election campaign
United States Senate election in Arizona, 2010
The 2010 United States Senate election in Arizona took place on November 2, 2010 along with other elections to the United States Senate in other states as well as elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections. The primaries were held on August 24,...
. As McCain shed his past contraorthodox positions and explicitly repudiated the very 'maverick' label itself, The Politico
The Politico
The Politico is an American political journalism organization based in Arlington, Virginia, that distributes its content via television, the Internet, newspaper, and radio. Its coverage of Washington, D.C., includes the U.S. Congress, lobbying, media and the Presidency...
concluded that "by seeming to do anything to win re-election McCain has torched one of the most famous brands in modern American politics," and Fox News echoed the same sentiment by writing that "McCain abandoned his maverick label and cast aside one of the most powerful brands in American politics as he fought to reassure conservatives they could trust him."
The change caused writers to reassess and question their past conclusions about McCain. David Margolick
David Margolick
David Margolick is a long-time contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Margolick has held similar positions at Newsweek and Portfolio. Prior to joining Vanity Fair he was a legal affairs reporter at The New York Times, where he wrote the weekly “At the Bar" column and covered the trials of O.J....
, writing for Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
magazine, wondered: "His dramatic shifts raise several questions: How much of his maverick persona over the years has been real and how much simply tactical? Is he in the midst of some struggle for his soul, or is this evolution simply the latest example, dating back to his days at the Hanoi Hilton, of McCain doing whatever it takes to survive? Is the anger people sense in him anger at Obama, or the American electorate, or fate, or himself?" James Fallows
James Fallows
James Fallows is an American print and radio journalist. He has been a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly for many years. His work has also appeared in Slate, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker and The American Prospect, among others. He is a...
of The Atlantic saw McCain as going against the usual trend of public figures becoming more broad-minded as they get older and concluded, "John McCain seems intentionally to be shrinking his audience, his base, and his standing in history. It's unnecessary, and it is sad." Writer Niall O'Dowd
Niall O'Dowd
Niall O'Dowd , is an Irish journalist and author living in the United States. He was extensively involved in the negotiations leading to the Irish Good Friday Peace Agreement, and is a proponent of comprehensive immigration reform in the United States...
wrote that McCain had been "a remarkable man, true to his own vision of where true north was on his compass," but then, "something happened ... In his place is this crotchety naysayer who has lost all track of his better self and his better angels." Todd Purdum
Todd Purdum
Todd Stanley Purdum is a national editor and political correspondent for Vanity Fair magazine.-Early life and education:Purdum is a son of Jerry S. Purdum, a Macomb, Illinois insurance broker, investor, and realtor, and Connie Purdum. He was graduated from St...
, whose long, largely favorable treatment of McCain in an early 2007 issue of Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair (magazine)
Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...
had been titled "Prisoner of Conscience", wrote a far more bitter piece for the same publication in late 2010 entitled "The Man Who Never Was".
Writers began to seek explanations for what had happened to the John McCain they thought they knew. Explanations varied: political survival, political expediency, the departure of alter-ego Mark Salter
Mark Salter
Mark Salter is an American speechwriter from Davenport, Iowa, known for his collaborations with United States Senator John McCain on several nonfiction books as well as on political speeches....
, personal antipathy towards Obama, resentment at Obama's election. New York Times columnist Gail Collins
Gail Collins
Gail Gleason Collins is an American journalist, op-ed columnist and author, most recognized for her work with the New York Times. Joining the Times in 1995 as a member of the editorial board, from 2001 to 2007 she served as the paper's Editorial Page Editor – the first woman to attain that position...
snarked simply: "But that was the old John McCain, before he was kidnapped by space aliens and reprogrammed."
Several writers sought to frame McCain's career as actually consistent, when viewed through different prisms. Matt Welch
Matt Welch
Matt Welch is an American blogger, journalist, andlibertarian political pundit. Since 2008, he has been the editor-in-chief at the monthly libertarian journal, Reason. From 2006 to 2007, he was an editorial page editor for the Los Angeles Times...
acknowledged that McCain had made a series of "crude reversals" in his political positions, but also extrapolated upon his previous analysis of McCain and wrote that some of the shifts were actually not, and could be explained by virtue of his generational military heritage and that "McCain's core, almost genetic, principle in governance and life is that the United States should remain the unchallenged military superpower keeping the world safe for democracy and commerce." Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein
Ezra Klein
Ezra Klein is a liberal American blogger and columnist for The Washington Post, columnist for Bloomberg, a columnist for Newsweek, and a contributor to MSNBC...
wrote that McCain's career is better explained by looking at electoral opportunities and his personal resentments at the time than by political or policy positions. Purdum amplified on both these themes and wrote that McCain's political self was connected to his warrior past: "McCain has always lived for the fight, and he has defined himself most clearly in opposition to an enemy, whether that enemy was the rule-bound leadership of the United States Naval Academy, his North Vietnamese captors, the hometown Arizona press corps that never much liked him, his Republican congressional colleagues, the Reverend Jerry Falwell, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Barack Obama, or J. D. Hayworth. He has always been more of an existential politician than a consequential one, in the sense that his influence has derived not from steady, unswerving pursuit of philosophical goals or legislative achievements but from the series of unpredictable–and sometimes spectacular–fights he has chosen to pick."
Temperament
Journalist Adam ClymerAdam Clymer
Adam Clymer is an American journalist.-Career:He was with The New York Times from 1977 until July, 2003, and served as its national political correspondent for the 1980 presidential election, polling editor from 1983 to 1990, political editor for George H. W...
notes of McCain that, "There is no question that he sometimes loses potential allies by his penchant for telling off other senators." Todd Purdum remarks upon a "temperament that routinely put[s] him atop insiders' lists of the most difficult senators on Capitol Hill." A 2006 Washingtonian
Washingtonian (magazine)
Washingtonian is a monthly magazine distributed in the Washington, DC area since 1965. The magazine describes itself as "the magazine Washington lives by." The magazine's core focuses are local feature journalism, guide book-style articles, and real estate advice.-Editorial Content:Washingtonian...
survey of Capitol Hill staff ranked McCain as having the second "Hottest Temper" in the Senate. Former Senator Rick Santorum
Rick Santorum
Richard John "Rick" Santorum is a lawyer and a former United States Senator from the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Santorum was the chairman of the Senate Republican Conference -making him the third-ranking Senate Republican from 2001 until his leave in 2007. Santorum is considered both a social...
says that, "John was very rough in the sandbox. Everybody has a McCain story. If you work in the Senate for a while, you have a McCain story. ... He hasn't built up a lot of goodwill." Writer Elizabeth Drew
Elizabeth Drew
Elizabeth Drew is an American political journalist and author.- Biography :A graduate of Wellesley College, she was Washington correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker...
quoted a senator who admired McCain as saying, "Dealing with John McCain is kind of like dancing with a cactus."
In 1989, McCain screamed at Senator Richard Shelby
Richard Shelby
Richard Craig Shelby is the senior U.S. Senator from Alabama. First elected to the Senate in 1986, he is the ranking member of the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs and was its chairman from 2003 to 2007....
an inch from his face, during a heated cabinet nomination battle for McCain's friend John Tower
John Tower
John Goodwin Tower was the first Republican United States senator from Texas since Reconstruction. He served from 1961 until his retirement in January 1985, after which time he was the chairman of the Reagan-appointed Tower Commission that investigated the Iran-Contra Affair. He was George H. W...
. In 1992, McCain and Senator Chuck Grassley
Chuck Grassley
Charles Ernest "Chuck" Grassley is the senior United States Senator from Iowa . A member of Republican Party, he previously served in the served in the United States House of Representatives and the Iowa state legislature...
got into a heated argument, with shoving and profanities, over a POW/MIA committee
United States Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs
The Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs was a special committee convened by the United States Senate during the George H. W. Bush administration to investigate the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue, that is, the fate of United States service personnel listed as missing in action during the Vietnam...
issue and did not speak to each other for two years, before reconciling. At a meeting in 2007 on immigration legislation, fellow Republican Senator John Cornyn
John Cornyn
John Cornyn, III is the junior United States Senator for Texas, serving since 2003. He is a member of the Republican Party. He was elected Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee for the 111th U.S. Congress....
objected to McCain: "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 replied, "Fuck you! I know more about this than anyone else in the room."
McCain has stated: "It is apparent that I'm not the most popular member of the Senate." The Almanac of American Politics comments that "[McCain's] opposition to what he considers pork barrel spending ... provides him plenty of material for his self-deprecating jokes about how unpopular he is with many colleagues." Regarding his temper, or what cultural writer Julia Keller
Julia Keller
Julia Keller is an American writer. She won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for her account of the deadly April 2004 Utica, Illinois tornado outbreak, which was published in the Chicago Tribune, where Keller works as cultural critic...
characterizes as passionate conviction, McCain acknowledges it, while also saying that the stories have been exaggerated. Renshon notes that having a temper is not unusual for U.S. leaders, with George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
, Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States . Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend , and the British at the Battle of New Orleans...
, Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States as well as military commander during the Civil War and post-war Reconstruction periods. Under Grant's command, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America...
, Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...
, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
among those sharing the trait. McCain has indeed employed both profanity and shouting on occasion. Adam Clymer sees McCain's nature as possibly misfit for the Senate: "McCain is an impatient man — perhaps because he lost five years of his life as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam — in an institution that worships delay and rewards endurance." George "Bud" Day
Bud Day
George Everette "Bud" Day is a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel and Command Pilot who served during the Vietnam War, to include five years and seven months as a Prisoner of War in North Vietnam. He is often cited as being the most decorated U.S. service member since General Douglas MacArthur, having...
, McCain's former POW cellmate and subsequent lifelong friend, found McCain's temperament in the Senate amusingly consistent with his past practice of going around the POW camp, taunting and yelling obscenities at the North Vietnamese guards. Phillip Butler, who knew McCain at the Naval Academy and was also a POW with him, said, "John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head." McCain's sometimes explosive temper was an integral part of his somewhat unorthodox, but effective and admired, leadership style when he was commanding officer
Commanding officer
The commanding officer is the officer in command of a military unit. Typically, the commanding officer has ultimate authority over the unit, and is usually given wide latitude to run the unit as he sees fit, within the bounds of military law...
of the VA-174
Attack Squadron 174 (U.S. Navy)
Attack Squadron 174 also known as the "Hellrazors" was a United States Navy attack squadron based at Naval Air Station Cecil Field, Florida, and were attached to Light Attack Wing One. The unit has evolved several times throughout its history that dates back to 1944. When it was established in...
naval air squadron in the mid-1970s.
Such incidents have become less frequent over the years: senators supporting his 2008 presidential campaign said that McCain had calmed down during the 2000s, and reporters have noted almost no flare-ups during the 2008 presidential campaign. Senator Susan Collins
Susan Collins
Susan Margaret Collins is the junior United States Senator from Maine and a member of the Republican Party. First elected to the Senate in 1996, she is the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs...
, who endorsed McCain in the 2008 primaries on the basis of his character and not his political positions, said, "People tend to feel very strongly about John both ways." Senator Thad Cochran
Thad Cochran
William Thad Cochran is the senior United States Senator from Mississippi and a member of the Republican Party. First elected to the Senate in 1978, he is the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Appropriations and was its chairman and 2005 to 2007.-Early life:He was born in Pontotoc,...
, who has known McCain and the McCain family for decades and has battled McCain over earmarks
Earmark (politics)
In United States politics, an earmark is a legislative provision that directs approved funds to be spent on specific projects, or that directs specific exemptions from taxes or mandated fees...
, represents one view: "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me." Ultimately Cochran decided to support McCain for president, after it was clear he would win the nomination. Senator Joseph Lieberman, an enthusiastic cross-party 2008 McCain backer, represents the other view with this observation: "[McCain's] is not the kind of anger that is a loss of control. He is a very controlled person." Following the election, there have been occasional in-Senate flare-ups, such as during the December 2010 debate over repeal of the U.S. military's "Don't ask, don't tell
Don't ask, don't tell
"Don't ask, don't tell" was the official United States policy on homosexuals serving in the military from December 21, 1993 to September 20, 2011. The policy prohibited military personnel from discriminating against or harassing closeted homosexual or bisexual service members or applicants, while...
" policy.
McCain's relations with his own Senate staff have reflected less tension: doors to his office are usually kept open and staffers call him by his first name. Moreover, staffers stay with his office for an unusually long time, over eight years on average at one point. And McCain's senior campaign staff have shown a passionate loyalty towards him, a loyalty that continues even from people who have been forced to leave his campaign after intra-staff squabbles. McCain has had many run-ins and heated confrontations with people in Arizona political circles, but a number of them have later become campaign contributors to him.
Controversial remarks
The characteristics that led to McCain gaining hundreds of demerits at the Naval Academy have never fully left him; by his own admission, he has an "irremediable" personality trait of being "a wiseass," and as he added: "Occasionally my sense of humor is ill-considered or ill-timed, and that can be a problem." Others have concurred: A 2007 Associated PressAssociated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
story was titled "McCain's WMD Is a Mouth That Won't Quit", while in 2008, The Politico
The Politico
The Politico is an American political journalism organization based in Arlington, Virginia, that distributes its content via television, the Internet, newspaper, and radio. Its coverage of Washington, D.C., includes the U.S. Congress, lobbying, media and the Presidency...
described McCain's humor as "rooted in a time before there was political correctness" and a characteristic that is viewed either as a mark of authenticity or as out of touch with contemporary mores
Mores
Mores, in sociology, are any given society's particular norms, virtues, or values. The word mores is a plurale tantum term borrowed from Latin, which has been used in the English language since the 1890s....
. Over the years this trait has led to a series of controversial remarks, with targets both domestic and foreign.
In 1986, Representative McCain was reported to have joked about a woman enjoying being raped by a gorilla, when speaking at a conference of the National League of Cities and Towns in Washington, D.C. Other reports put the alleged ape joke in 1984 rather than 1986. McCain said in the 1980s that he did not recall telling that joke.
In his 1986 senate campaign, at a college appearance he referred to Arizona's Leisure World
Leisure World, Arizona
Leisure World Arizona is a gated, resort style adult community located in Mesa, Arizona. The community is located about one mile north of U.S. Highway 60 on Power Road. The community is bounded by Southern Avenue, Broadway and Power Roads and the Roosevelt Water Conservation District Canal on the...
retirement community as "Seizure World", remarking that in the previous election, "97 percent of the people who live there came out to vote. I think the other 3 percent were in intensive care." While the young audience laughed, his Democratic opponent soon jumped on the remark; McCain would later concede that it was a joke whose offense he made worse when he did not quickly apologize for it.
In 1998, McCain made a joke during a speech at a Republican fundraiser about President Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
's daughter, Chelsea, saying: "Why is Chelsea Clinton
Chelsea Clinton
Chelsea Victoria Clinton is a television journalist, currently serving as Special Correspondent for NBC News, and philanthropist, working through the Clinton Global Initiative. She is the only child of former U.S...
so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno
Janet Reno
Janet Wood Reno is a former Attorney General of the United States . She was nominated by President Bill Clinton on February 11, 1993, and confirmed on March 11...
." The joke was thought so offensive that many newspapers declined to print it verbatim; McCain's biographer Robert Timberg would characterize it as "an unspeakable thing to say, unworthy of him." McCain subsequently said: "This is the bad boy. It was stupid and cruel and insensitive. I've apologized. I can't take it back." His letter of apology to President Clinton was described as "abject, contrite, and profuse." In response, White House spokesman Mike McCurry said: "To make a further issue of the matter would lend further exposure to an offensive joke. In light of the senator's apology, they [the first family] decided to drop the matter."
In the 2000 Presidential race, McCain stated that "I hate the gooks," and that "I will hate them as long as I live." Until the year 2000, McCain used the ethnic slur "gook
Gook
Gook is a derogatory term for East Asians which came to prominence in reference to enemy soldiers. U.S. Marines serving in the Philippines in the early 20th century used the word to refer to Filipinos. The term continued to be used by American soldiers stationed around the world to refer to...
" in reference to the individuals who had tortured him in Vietnam, and reaction among Vietnamese American
Vietnamese American
A Vietnamese American is an American of Vietnamese descent. They make up about half of all overseas Vietnamese and are the fourth-largest Asian American group....
s to McCain's use of this term was mixed, but they were generally supportive of McCain's candidacy, for example as shown in exit polls in the primary in California. During his presidential campaign that year, he at first refused to apologize for his continued use of the term, stating that he reserved its reference only to his captors; then after continued criticism from some in the Asian American
Asian American
Asian Americans are Americans of Asian descent. The U.S. Census Bureau definition of Asians as "Asian” refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan,...
community, McCain vowed to no longer use the term, saying, "I will continue to condemn those who unfairly mistreated us. But out of respect to a great number of people for whom I hold in very high regard, I will no longer use the term that has caused such discomfort."
At a VFW Hall
Veterans of Foreign Wars
The Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States is a congressionally chartered war veterans organization in the United States. Headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, VFW currently has 1.5 million members belonging to 7,644 posts, and is the largest American organization of combat...
in South Carolina in 2007, a veteran asked when the U.S. would "send an air mail message to Iran." McCain jokingly responded by singing "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran," to the tune of The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys are an American rock band, formed in 1961 in Hawthorne, California. The group was initially composed of brothers Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and friend Al Jardine. Managed by the Wilsons' father Murry, The Beach Boys signed to Capitol Records in 1962...
' "Barbara Ann
Barbara Ann
"Barbara Ann" is a song written by Fred Fassert and performed by The Regents in 1961. The recording reached a peak position of #13 on the Billboard Hot 100 record chart....
" (from the 1980 "Bomb Iran" song parody by Vince Vance & The Valiants
Vince Vance & The Valiants
Vince Vance & The Valiants are a country pop and rock and roll musical group from New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. The current Vince Vance, Andy Stone, is the last original member of the Valiants. He was born Andrew John Franichevich Jr...
), and then seriously explained his concerns about Iran while stopping short of a bombing endorsement. When later asked about the singing, McCain stated, "My response is: lighten up and get a life." Asked whether it was insensitive, McCain retorted, "Insensitive to what? The Iranians?"
As a guest on the Daily Show a few days later in 2007, and following a trip to Baghdad, host and longtime friend Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart is an American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian...
asked McCain, "What do you want to start with, the bomb Iran song or the walk through the market in Baghdad?" McCain responded by saying, "I think maybe shopping in Baghdad ... I had something picked out for you, too – a little IED
Improvised explosive device
An improvised explosive device , also known as a roadside bomb, is a homemade bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action...
to put on your desk." When anti-Iraq-war
Opposition to the Iraq War
Significant opposition to the Iraq War occurred worldwide, both before and during the initial 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States, United Kingdom, and smaller contingents from other nations, and throughout the subsequent occupation...
Democrats objected to the remark, McCain advised that they too, "Lighten up and get a life."
Traditions and family
Faith of My Fathers
-See also:* Early life and military career of John McCain* Character Is Destiny* My Dad, John McCain...
. Both his forebears had difficulty coping with the end of war; his grandfather felt listless and died several days after the formal conclusion of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, while his father felt despair over his reluctant retirement from the United States Navy and fell into prolonged poor health afterwards. McCain felt that his father's "long years of binge drinking" had caught up with him, despite his mostly successful subsequent recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous
Alcoholics Anonymous
Alcoholics Anonymous is an international mutual aid movement which says its "primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety." Now claiming more than 2 million members, AA was founded in 1935 by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith in Akron, Ohio...
. McCain had been troubled by the sporadic manifestations of his father's alcoholism while growing up, and Matt Welch sees McCain's experience of living with that, as well as witnessing his wife Cindy's three-year addiction to painkillers in the early 1990s, as causing his speech and writings to be populated with the language and emotions of twelve-step program
Twelve-step program
A Twelve-Step Program is a set of guiding principles outlining a course of action for recovery from addiction, compulsion, or other behavioral problems...
s. In particular, Welch sees McCain as "disarmingly talented at admitting his narcissistic flaws" and constantly seeking to invest in a cause greater than self-interest.
McCain is known for his responses to attacks upon his family. An opponent of his in the 1982 Republican House primary contacted his first wife Carol
Carol McCain
Carol Shepp McCain is a former model, director of the White House Visitors Office, and event planner. She was the first wife of United States Senator and two-time presidential candidate John McCain.-Early life and first marriage:...
, seeking negative material on McCain. She refused to discuss her marriage, and then next time McCain met the opponent, he said: "I understand you called my ex-wife. I want you to know that, campaign aside, politics aside, you ever do anything like that again, anything against a person in my family, I will personally beat the shit out of you." The smear campaign against his adopted Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
i daughter during the 2000 South Carolina presidential primary so bothered him that, by some accounts, he considered leaving the Republican Party
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
.
The traditions McCain was brought up under have extended to his own family. His son John Sidney IV ("Jack") enrolled at the U.S. Naval Academy and graduated in 2009, after which he went to Naval Air Station Pensacola
Naval Air Station Pensacola
Naval Air Station Pensacola or NAS Pensacola , "The Cradle of Naval Aviation", is a United States Navy base located next to Warrington, Florida, a community southwest of the Pensacola city limits...
for training as a naval aviator
Naval Aviator
A United States Naval Aviator is a qualified pilot in the United States Navy, Marine Corps or Coast Guard.-Naming Conventions:Most Naval Aviators are Unrestricted Line Officers; however, a small number of Limited Duty Officers and Chief Warrant Officers are also trained as Naval Aviators.Until 1981...
, just as his father had, followed by helicopter pilot training at Naval Air Station Whiting Field
Naval Air Station Whiting Field
Naval Air Station Whiting Field is a United States Navy base located near Milton, Florida, in central Santa Rosa County, and is one of the Navy's two primary pilot training bases . NAS Whiting Field also provides training for U.S. Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Air Force student pilots, as well as...
, where he graduated from in January 2011. He was subsequently assigned to the HSC-25 "Island Knights"
HSC-25
Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron Twenty Five "Island Knights" is a United States Navy helicopter squadron based at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. The "Island Knights" are the Navy's only forward deployed Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron...
squadron in Guam
Guam
Guam is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States located in the western Pacific Ocean. It is one of five U.S. territories with an established civilian government. Guam is listed as one of 16 Non-Self-Governing Territories by the Special Committee on Decolonization of the United...
, flying the MH-60S Knighthawk. His son James ("Jimmy") enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 2006, began recruit training
Recruit training
Recruit training, more commonly known as Basic Training and colloquially called Boot Camp, is the initial indoctrination and instruction given to new military personnel, enlisted and officer...
later that year, and by early 2008 was a Lance Corporal
Lance Corporal
Lance corporal is a military rank, used by many armed forces worldwide, and also by some police forces and other uniformed organizations. It is below the rank of corporal, and is typically the lowest non-commissioned officer, usually equivalent to the NATO Rank Grade OR-3.- Etymology :The presumed...
who had served a tour of duty as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He subsequently served a second tour in Iraq as well, then left to attend college, with possible plans to return to the Marines. His daughter Meghan
Meghan McCain
Meghan Marguerite McCain is an American columnist, author, and blogger. She is a daughter of U.S. Senator John McCain and Cindy Hensley McCain. McCain first received media attention in 2007 for her blog, McCain Blogette, on which she documented life on the campaign trail and mused about...
graduated from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, worked and blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
ged on his presidential campaign, and subsequently became a blogging, twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
ing, and book publishing fixture on the Republican Party scene with some of the same maverick tendencies as her father. His daughter Bridget is a student at Arizona State University
Arizona State University
Arizona State University is a public research university located in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area of the State of Arizona...
. From his first marriage, his son Doug graduated from the University of Virginia
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...
, became a Navy A-6E Intruder carrier pilot, then a commercial pilot for American Airlines
American Airlines
American Airlines, Inc. is the world's fourth-largest airline in passenger miles transported and operating revenues. American Airlines is a subsidiary of the AMR Corporation and is headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas adjacent to its largest hub at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport...
; his son Andrew is vice president and CFO at Hensley & Co.
Hensley & Co.
Hensley & Co., also known as Hensley Beverage Company, is an Anheuser-Busch beer wholesaler and distributor headquartered in the West Phoenix area of Phoenix, Arizona. It markets to the Phoenix, Tempe, and Prescott Valley areas. It is the third-largest Anheuser-Busch distributor in the United...
and chair of the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce
Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce
The Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce is the largest association of businesses in the state of Arizona, and one of the largest in the Southwestern United States, with more than 2,900 business members...
; and his daughter Sidney is a recording industry executive living in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
who has worked for Capitol Records
Capitol Records
Capitol Records is a major United States based record label, formerly located in Los Angeles, but operating in New York City as part of Capitol Music Group. Its former headquarters building, the Capitol Tower, is a major landmark near the corner of Hollywood and Vine...
and V2 Records
V2 Records
V2 Records is a record label that is owned by Universal Music Group as of October 2007. The label was founded in 1996 by Richard Branson, five years after he sold Virgin Records to EMI....
.
Altogether he has seven children, born across four decades, including three with Carol – all of whom are reported to be on good terms with him, his wife, and each other – and, as of 2007, four grandchildren. Cindy McCain suffered a stroke in 2004 due to high blood pressure, but made a mostly full recovery. They reside in Phoenix, and she remains the chair of the large Anheuser-Busch
Anheuser-Busch
Anheuser-Busch Companies, Inc. , is an American brewing company. The company operates 12 breweries in the United States and 18 in other countries. It was, until December 2009, also one of America's largest theme park operators; operating ten theme parks across the United States through the...
beer and liquor distributor Hensley & Co.
Hensley & Co.
Hensley & Co., also known as Hensley Beverage Company, is an Anheuser-Busch beer wholesaler and distributor headquartered in the West Phoenix area of Phoenix, Arizona. It markets to the Phoenix, Tempe, and Prescott Valley areas. It is the third-largest Anheuser-Busch distributor in the United...
, founded by her father. By September 2007, McCain's denominational migration was complete, and he was identifying himself as a Baptist
Baptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...
. More broadly, he identifies himself as a Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
rather than an evangelical Christian.