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Born into Navy royalty -- both his father and grandfather achieved the rank of admiral -- McCain was just another risk-taking fly boy until he was captured by the North Vietnamese. Shot down over Hanoi on Oct. 26, 1967, as John Hubbell wrote in "P.O.W.," "No American reached [the prison camp] Hoa Lo in worse physical condition than McCain."

He suffered unimaginable torture, particularly once the North Vietnamese realized that he was the son of the commander of the Pacific Fleet. Recognizing the propaganda value of letting McCain free, so as to demoralize less-connected soldiers and POWs, his Vietnamese captors offered McCain an immediate ticket home.

"I wouldn't even consider any kind of release," McCain said, according to the moving account of his POW experience in Robert Timberg's "The Nightingale's Song." "They'll have to drag me out of here." Leaving would be dishonorable, he thought. It would be detrimental to morale, and would violate the "first in, first out" rule of prisoner release.

They beat him senseless, over and over, until he signed a piece of paper confessing his "war crimes" -- a perfectly understandable, even relatively innocuous, action that he still has yet to forgive himself for. "The cockiness was gone," Timberg wrote, "replaced by a suffocating despair." The despair, the beatings and the brutality lasted five and a half years.

He returned to a hero's welcome, as well as months of grueling physical therapy and a collapsing marriage. He remains humble about it all, which is one of the reasons why reporters fall in love with him so quickly, as well as why he may make a compelling candidate.

"What I would like to tell you is that it turned me into a perfect individual motivated only by the most noble of principles and ambitions," McCain says of his experience. "But ... the fact is, that's not true. I was privileged to serve in the company of heroes; I failed in prison as well ... But I continue to strive to do the right thing, although I fail very frequently."

One failure -- though it wasn't the big deal opponents made it seem -- was his role as one of the fabled Keating Five -- the five senators accused of muscling regulators on behalf of savings and loan shyster Charles Keating. McCain was eventually cleared of all but poor judgment, but he refuses to cut himself any slack. By all rights, McCain could be bitter: The Democrat-controlled Senate Ethics Committee, which normally strives to be nonpartisan, refused the advice of its counsel and insisted on lumping him and then-Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, in with the far-more-sullied Keating Three, all Democrats, because they wanted at least one Republican to share the heat.

But McCain only criticized himself about the matter. "I can't tell you the hoops we have to go through in this office before a letter goes out with my name on it. The stuff we go through because ... appearance is reality and ... you can get into trouble."

Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., who's endorsed McCain's presidential run, says that stance shows McCain's political growth. "When he first came to Congress [in 1983], he was still trying to make up for his six lost years in the POW prison camp," Kolbe says. "He didn't tolerate delays, he didn't tolerate views that didn't seem to match his. He has changed." While Kolbe says that McCain's one major flaw remains his fickle short fuse, he allow that "he really has learned to reign that in."

And Kolbe has personal experience with McCain's willingness to take stands that won't endear him to the average GOP primary voter. "He was very supportive of me when I was 'outed' by the Advocate," Kolbe says. Kolbe went to McCain's office to tell him what was about to happen, but before the congressman could get a word out, McCain put up his hands in protest.

"You don't have to say anything more," McCain said. "It doesn't make a goddamn bit of difference to me if you're gay. You're a good congressman and a good friend." When Tempe, Ariz., Mayor Neil Giuliano went through a similar ordeal, McCain was just as supportive.

"One of the reasons I have this confidence about not changing is because I'm not afraid of losing," McCain says. "In 10 months, this nominating process will be over. And if I lose, I have to live in Arizona, have four wonderful kids, be in the Senate and be chairman of the Commerce Committee. I'm not afraid of losing."

In fact, he doesn't seem afraid of anything. Sometimes this is disastrous -- witness his awful joke about Chelsea Clinton. Other times he can make you want to give him a big sloppy kiss -- as CBS's Mike Wallace recently did when he said he would campaign for him if he got the nomination.

Which is why, when he looked at me matter-of-factly and told me that it was just common sense that the NRA-backed loophole exempting gun show firearms buyers from background checks was wrong, and should be closed, I believed him. It made sense. Though he's a longtime friend of the NRA, I knew he'd bucked big-time money lobbies of all shapes and sizes, and I believed he'd buck this one.

And then he caved. I felt disappointed, and exasperated, but having spent a month studying and reading up on the man, I didn't write him off. On Thursday morning, McCain awoke and, bolstered by a number of other GOP senators who were alarmed at what had happened the day before, or else by how it was playing in the media (or a potent combination of both), McCain brokered a compromise. McCain thought Lautenberg's bill had been too extreme -- mandating a three-day waiting period, even though some gun shows don't last that long. But the GOP alternative, calling for "voluntary" checks (read none), sat on the other extreme.

McCain was looking for something in the middle, instant -- but mandatory -- background checks. "I'm doing what it takes to close this loophole," McCain told his staff. The NRA is said to be "grudgingly" supporting the new moves, but ultimately the battle could get nasty. McCain doesn't seem to care: "This is not an overly burdensome requirement in the face of the tragic shootings at Columbine High School," he said in a statement issued Thursday evening. "Rather, it is a responsible means of lessening the likelihood of unlawful gun purchases."

So in the end, he's not the superhero his supporters depict, nor is he the opportunistic bully described by detractors. In the end, he's just a man, as he told me -- many times -- himself. And he's betting that if voters get to know him, they'll appreciate him in all his complexity.

"I don't think the Republicans are smart enough to nominate him," says Feingold.
salon.com | May 14, 1999

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