In both his military and political careers, McCain earned a reputation for being feisty and combative. He followed into the family business, becoming a decorated, if at times reckless, fighter pilot who conducted nearly two dozen bombing runs in Vietnam before being shot down, captured and tortured. While he ultimately made his name on the national political stage, the scion of two four-star admirals was, at his core, a lifelong military man. But even after four decades in public life, McCain’s experience as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam continued to define him in the minds of many Americans, admirers and detractors alike.
McCain won the election, launching a political career that earned him two terms in the House, six in the Senate, and his party’s presidential nomination in 2008. Then, after explaining that career military people tend to move a lot, he delivered a retort that made the attacks against him seem ridiculously petty: “As a matter of fact… the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi.”
“Listen, pal, I spent 22 years in the Navy,” the exasperated candidate reportedly shot back at one event. When John McCain made his first bid for public office in 1982, running for a House seat in Arizona, critics blasted him as a carpetbagger, pointing out that he’d only lived in the state for 18 months.
Senator John Sidney McCain III, circa 1964. American Navy Lieutenant, and future U.S.
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