John McCain's Family Duty

Washington Post: Candidate's Life Was Framed By His Legendary Navy Forebears

(Washingtonpost.com)  This story was written by Michael E. Ruane as part of a Washington Post series of profiles of the leading presidential candidates.

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About an hour before kickoff, the white-haired man in the crew-neck sweater pulls out his cellphone and calls his son. "Hey, where are you, Jack?" he says. "I'm at the game."

Jack, a 21-year-old Naval Academy midshipman whose formal name is John Sidney McCain IV, has just marched onto the field at Baltimore's M&T Bank Stadium with hundreds of classmates, wearing dark overcoats and white scarves.

It is the morning of the Army-Navy game, and the midshipman's father, John Sidney McCain III, a senator from Arizona and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, is besieged in the Navy hospitality suite.

People want snapshots. People want autographs. People want to introduce their children. But the person McCain really wants to see is not here. And for a few moments on a sunny Saturday in December, the quest for the White House seems less urgent than the search for Jack.

John McCain's life has always been framed by his legendary Navy forebears -- the father and grandfather who were illustrious admirals; the tough, passionate men whose code and calling McCain was preordained to share. He is a product of almost 80 years of family service, which included his 5 1/2 years of torture and deprivation in North Vietnamese prison camps.

Now, at 71, as he seeks the Republican nomination for the second time, the dutiful Navy son who was tempered in one war has become father to sons who may be tempered in another.

Jack is a junior at the academy -- the fourth John S. McCain to attend the school, and the latest to carry the weight of the family legacy there. A younger son, James, 19, known as Jimmy, is a lance corporal in the Marine Corps and has been serving in Iraq for five months. Their father has been among the most ardent supporters of the struggle in Iraq, despite what it has cost him politically and, more important, what it could cost him personally.

"Sure, I worry about them," McCain says of his sons. "But one thing about kids when they're 19, 20, 21: They know they're bulletproof. They know they're never going to get hurt. No matter what. They're never going to get hurt."

A hint of gravity slips into the last sentence, and McCain pauses. "But I also understand their spirit of adventure," he says. The lure of danger and the desire, perhaps, to be tested.

"I think Jimmy joined the Marine Corps because he loved his country, but also because he wanted to be a Marine," McCain says. "He thought: 'Here's the adventure. Here's the action.' That's how 18-year-olds are."

It's how he was, too. War is "the great test of character," he wrote in his 1999 book, "Faith of My Fathers." His father and grandfather had both passed, and in the end, McCain did, too.

But right now, the kickoff approaches and the Navy hospitality suite is still jammed with military brass. Football legend Roger Staubach is here. Country music star Lee Greenwood is here. Only Jack McCain is still missing.

Finally, tracked down by one of his father's aides, he is spotted maneuvering through the crowd. An amiable young man with his mother's fair coloring and sharp features, he is clad in a white shirt, a black tie and a black service coat with golden anchors on the collar. He is wearing a nameplate that reads "McCain '09," a reference to his graduating class.

Father and son head for a quieter part of the room. McCain again takes out his cellphone and calls his wife, Cindy, who is recuperating from knee surgery back home in Phoenix. She hasn't missed an Army-Navy game in years and is feeling low. McCain puts his son on the phone.

"Hey, Mom," Jack says. "How are you?"

The senator rubs the midshipman's chin and asks whether he has shaved.

"I shaved this morning!" he says with a laugh.

A well-wisher approaches. McCain takes a step back and says what he has been waiting to say all morning: "This is my son Jack."

* * *

One summer when he was a student at the Naval Academy, John McCain went to his parents' home on Capitol Hill and asked his father to describe his experiences in World War II.

McCain was 5 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. His grandfather John Sidney McCain Sr. was a crusty, Popeye-like figure known as "Slew" who rolled his own cigarettes and drank, swore and gambled "at every opportunity," McCain wrote in his book. A pioneer and leader in naval aviation, Slew McCain was on the deck of the USS Missouri during the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay.

McCain's father, meanwhile, had been a commander of submarines and had stories of his own. But McCain seldom asked him about the war. It was a form of silent protest. He knew he was destined for the Navy and says he was rebelling against the forces that were propelling him there.

"When I was growing up," McCain says, "it was expected I was going to go to the Naval Academy. It was just one of those things. I can remember as a little kid friends of my dad saying, 'Well, what class is he going to be?' "

In high school, McCain mentioned that he might like to go to Princeton. "It was out of the question," he says. His father drove him to the academy for orientation, according to McCain biographer Robert Timberg.

But McCain's tenure at the academy was turbulent. "I was really rebellious," he says. "I mean, really rebellious." He partied, piled up demerits for misconduct, romanced a Brazilian fashion model, almost quit school and wound up graduating fifth from the bottom of his class. "I hated the place," he wrote.

Frank Gamboa, a retired Navy captain who roomed with McCain at the academy for three years, watched him struggle with his father's expectations. "He resisted the weight of the legacy," says Gamboa, who, as the son of Mexican immigrants from a small town in California, couldn't have come from a more different background. At the same time, Gamboa adds, McCain was proud of his family.

His pride finally won out over his resentment, McCain says, as he matured. As a student, he was steeped in naval warfare in history class, and he rubbed shoulders with the aging heroes of World War II who taught and worked at the academy. His father had fought in that war, too, "and I wanted to know what it was like," McCain says.

His father, a diminutive, cigar-smoking man who was also known as Jack, told him about the three submarines he had commanded. He told him about hunting Japanese warships and being hunted by them. He told him about being depth-charged for hours amid the foul air and tension of a cramped submerged sub.

In one battle, his father's boat remained underwater for 18 hours, eluding enemy warships. Almost out of oxygen, it surfaced with its suffocating crew to fight it out, only to find that the Japanese had given up the chase.

His father told the stories in a matter-of-fact manner, which McCain took as a sign of respect. "I had his trust that I would prepare myself for my turn at war," McCain wrote. "I admired him, and wanted badly to be admired by him."

* * *

McCain's test would come as a Navy pilot during the Vietnam War, when an antiaircraft missile blew the right wing off his jet on Oct. 26, 1967, and he had to eject over Hanoi. His ordeal would last years, break his body and mind, drive him to attempt suicide, make him a national hero, and help ruin his first marriage.

It would also expose his father to an exquisite agony.