John McCain, the longtime senator and 2008 GOP presidential nominee who refused to leave fellow prisoners of war behind to escape years of torture in Vietnam, and whose maverick streak as Arizona’s senior statesman at times frustrated fellow Republicans and confounded President Donald Trump, has died, his family confirmed in a statement Saturday. He was 81. less

FILE - In this June 3, 2016, file photo, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., greets the audience as he arrives to deliver a speech in Singapore. McCain catapulted to national prominence with his 2000 bid for the GOP presidential nomination, when his willingness to challenge ideas held sacred by his party helped him catch fire among Republicans in a long-shot bid against George W. Bush. McCain chose a little-known Alaska governor as his running mate in that race, and turned Sarah Palin into a national political figure. I’ve known great passions, seen amazing wonders, fought in a war, and helped make a peace … I made a small place for myself in the story of America and the history of my times.”

One dramatic vote he cast in the twilight of his career in 2017 will not soon be forgotten, either: As the decisive “no” on Senate GOP legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, McCain became the unlikely saviour of Obama’s trademark legislative achievement. Most remarkably, he stuck by Trump as the party’s 2016 presidential nominee even when Trump questioned his status as a war hero by saying: “I like people who weren’t captured.” McCain declared the comment offensive to veterans, but urged the men “put it behind us and move forward.”

His breaking point with Trump was the release a month before the election of a lewd audio in which Trump said he could kiss and grab women. John Sidney McCain III was born in 1936 in the Panana Canal zone, where his father was stationed in the military. He followed his father and grandfather, the Navy’s first father-and-son set of four-star admirals, to the Naval Academy, where he enrolled in what he described a “four-year course of insubordination and rebellion.” His family yawned at the performance. During the Vietnam War, after his Navy bomber was shot down in 1967, he was held as a prisoner of war by the North Vietnamese for five and a half years. In 1968, after McCain's father had been named the commander of the U.S. forces in the Pacific, he was offered an early release but refused until those who had been at the prison longer than he were let go. He was elected to the House of Representatives from Arizona in 1982 and to the Senate in 1986. “He cultivated the image,” Robert Timberg wrote in a biography, “John McCain: An American Odyssey” (1995). He showed us who we are and who we can be when we are at our best.
U.S. Senator and 2008 presidential nominee John McCain (R–AZ) dies at the age of 81.