John McCain: straight talker who likes a fight
por Tom Leonard
"Hey, jerk." John McCain's standard greeting to visitors to his campaign bus, the Straight Talk Express, is not one that one can imagine Mitt Romney or Hillary Clinton risking. They might be misinterpreted and have to put out a clarification of their remark and later maybe a clarification of their clarification. Nor can one imagine Mrs Clinton allowing reporters to squeeze in next to her around a small horseshoe-shaped banquette for a press conference fuelled by doughnuts and hamburgers.
And herein lies part of the secret to McCain's popularity, a bluff, take-me-as-you-find-me attitude that seems to disarm even the most liberal journalist who crosses his path. Some on both the left and right warn that the popular perception is wrong - that McCain is not the great centrist but is considerably more Right-wing than people assume, especially on Iraq and the economy. But few seem to listen, preferring the stereotype of the brave and honest old warhorse, the man-in-the-middle who frightens the life out of the Democrats because he might steal their votes and annoys the hell out of Republicans because he refuses to toe the party line. McCain is also the great comeback king (to say nothing of allegedly being descended from a Scottish king - along with Barack Obama), the man who sweeps aside speculation about his age - 71- by pointing out his sprightly mother, 95.
He is witty enough to be a regular guest on Jon Stewart's Daily Show, the place where liberal America gets its laughs, and is a good friend of its host.
He has hosted Saturday Night Live and made cameo appearances in the thriller series 24 and the comedy film Wedding Crashers.
McCain jokes can be really quite good.
On losing to George W Bush in 2000: "I slept like a baby... I slept for two hours, woke up and cried. Then slept for two hours, woke up and cried."
He can turn it on himself, too. "I am older than dirt and have more scars than Frankenstein," has been a popular McCainism in this campaign.
There is a flip-side to McCain's loquaciousness - the bon mots are sometimes not so funny.
He has a notoriously dreadful temper, regularly topping annual in-house lists of the Senate's most difficult member.
He once called a senator a "f***ing jerk" and had to apologise after saying of the Clintons' daughter: "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno (Bill Clinton's lesbian attorney-general, who was said to have been having an affair with Hillary).
Questioned last year about possible military action against Iran, McCain responded by singing "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys song Barbara Ann. Asked later if he had been insensitive, he said: "Insensitive to what? The Iranians?"
McCain is aware of his problem, admitting he has the personality trait of being a "wiseass".
But of course Americans know that McCain has a serious side, a very serious side. It is rooted in the experience that many - probably McCain, too, given how much he alludes to it - regard as the most important entry on his CV - his five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Despite a strong aversion to being ordered around, McCain was always bound for the military.
Born in Panama in 1936, he was the son and grandson of admirals. A disruptive, pugnacious child, McCain was remembered at prep school as "a fiesty little rat throwing water bombs around the dormitory". He remembers getting so angry that he would hold his breath until he blacked out.
He hated US Naval Academy, where he tried unsuccessfully to be expelled for his low grades. He also indulged in fighting - he was only 5'7 but wrestled and boxed - and drinking. At flight school, it was much the same - endless partying and an exotic dancer called Marie The Flame of Florida for a girlfriend.
But he loved flying and in October 1967 - two years after he had married Carol Shepp, a divorced former model - he was on a bombing sortie over Hanoi during the Vietnam War, when an enemy missile sheered the wing off his A4 Skyhawk.
Both his arms and a leg were broken as he ejected, he landed in a lake and almost drowned.
The North Vietnamese who captured him immediately only allowed him hospital treatment when they realised his father was an admiral.
Their brutal efforts to extract a confession for war crimes included two years in solitary confinement during which McCain communicated with comrades in adjoining cells by tapping out code with a drinking cup.
He was beaten and tortured remorselessly, his teeth fractured and his ribs cracked. He tried to hang himself once with his prison shirt but was thwarted by his guards. He later wrote a stilted two-sentence confession for his "deeds of an air pirate" - a lapse for which he says he has never forgiven himself.
But it was, he insists, his only lapse. He rejected claims made in a leaflet circulated before the South Carolina primary earlier this month that he had betrayed fellow POWs in return for medical treatment.
McCain countered that he actually turned down offers to release him before fellow prisoners. On one occasion, when coerced to give the names of his squadron members, McCain supplied the names of the Green Bay Packers American Football team.
Released in 1973, he was a changed man. His hair had gone prematurely grey, he had acquired a permanent limp and his arms were so injured that he has never been able to raise them above shoulder level. McCain said the war had transformed his personality too, taking at least some of the aggressive edge off his personality.
After a six year absence, he returned home to find his wife had been involved in a severe car crash that had left her four inches shorter. He had a series of affairs, in his typically self-analytical way later blaming the marriage collapse on "my own selfishness and immaturity more than it was to Vietnam".
He married again, this time to Cindy Hensley - the glamorous blonde nearly always at his side now - 17 years his junior and the daughter of an Arizona beer magnate.
Today, he has seven children, born across four decades, including a girl he and Cindy adopted from a Bangladeshi orphanage run by Mother Teresa. McCain never made it to Admiral, retiring from navy in 1981 as a captain, albeit a heavily decorated one.
He moved to Arizona and soon went into politics, elected to the US House of Representatives the following year.
By 1986, he was a senator and went on to be re-elected for three more terms. As in Vietnam, he earned a reputation as brave, tough and maverick, opposing his party over myriad issues, including illegal immigration, campaign finance reform, tax cuts, torture of terrorist suspects and oil drilling in Alaska.
His battle with George W Bush for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination has gone down as the most bitter conflict in recent American political history.
Before the South Carolina primary, rumours were spread that McCain had gone mad in Vietnam and that he had fathered an illegitimate black child. McCain hit back at the "intolerance" of the religious Right and many in the Republican party have never forgiven him.
Despite his no-nonsense image, McCain is deeply superstitious. He carried a string of lucky charms during the 2000 campaign, including a lucky compass, pen, feather, shoes, penny and rock. When he temporarily mislaid the feather, the campaign team went into panic mode.
Before the New Hampshire primary this year, he made sure he slept on the same side of the bed in the same hotel room he had stayed in before he won there in 2000. It worked.
