John Mccain

John McCain received two bad beatings in his life. One was physical, as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam war. The other was psychological, delivered by George Bush's campaign team in a dirty tricks operation in South Carolina in 2000 that cost him the Republican nomination and, almost certainly, the presidency.

Both were formative in the complex life of the Arizona senator. His five and a half years in jail in Hanoi forced a rethink of his attitude to war and foreign policy, the dominant theme of his subsequent years as a senator and presidential candidate. The defeat in South Carolina caused him to re-evaluate his approach to campaigning: the legacy is the way he opened his fight for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination - more establishment, more calculating, less maverick.

Although McCain started off as one of the favourites as candidates declared early in 2007, it was Rudy Giuliani who established the early lead. And it was Mike Huckabee, one of the outsiders, who unexpectedly emerged in November to challenge Giuliani.

The support and funding that McCain had expected at the outset failed to materialise and by the summer he was in trouble. McCain's team has burnt through most of the $24m (£12m) raised in the first six months of the year, leaving only $2m in the bank, a paltry sum compared with the other candidates. He wasted substantial amounts on rented accommodation in states such as Alabama and Michigan, which are not key states in the presidential race, and spent $460,000 on private jets and $24,723 on limousines. Extravagances included $27,000 for a parking lot operator in Washington.

He had to pay off lots of staff, closing offices in various states and concentrating his resources on winning New Hampshire. Senior staff also resigned.

After a rough 10 months, he began to bounce back in December, receiving a publicity boost when he won the endorsements of various papers including the Boston Globe, and the independent Democratic senator, Joe Lieberman.

Journalists like McCain because he is has not been formed by focus groups and media advisers but remains identifiably human, given to mood swings, inconsistent, prepared to change his mind and policies. And he is funny. He is also open: almost everything he says on his campaign bus, The Straight Talk Express, is on the record.

Although the public mood swung decisively towards the Democrats in the 2006 November congressional elections, it does not follow that the electorate will automatically opt for a Democrat in the presidential election. Americans have demonstrated in presidential election after presidential election a preference for the candidate of the centre, and there will be none more centrist than McCain.

New Hampshire is a special case, with its tradition of independent-minded, liberal-leaning, fiscally-conservative voters. There, McCain emphasises his independence, his bipartisan approach to politcs.

If he were to become president he would, at 72, be the oldest incumbent to hold the office.
McCain was born into a military family: his father and grandfather were both admirals, and he too joined the navy. As a navy pilot, he had an extremely lucky escape in the early stages of the Vietnam war when a rocket was fired accidentally, hitting his plane as he was preparing to take off from a carrier. The fire killed 132 but he survived.

Shot down four months later over Hanoi, he was beaten up after capture so badly that it inflicted lasting damage. He was held in Hoa Lo prison, nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton by US servicemen. When the Vietnamese learned that his father was commander of the Pacific command, he was offered the chance to return home early but refused to leave while his comrades remained. He spent five more years in jail, plenty of time to reflect on US policy in Vietnam, and emerged with a more considered view of American power.

He stood by America's decision to intervene but drew up a narrow mental tick list of criteria that would justify future interventions elsewhere in the world.

He retired from the navy in 1981 and began his political career a year later when he was elected to the House of Representatives. Applying the new worldview he acquired in the Hanoi Hilton to world politics, he urged the withdrawal of US forces from Lebanon at a time when such a view was regarded as near treason by Republican leaders - before a suicide bomber killed 241 Americans in Beirut, prompting a speedy exit. Another test came in 1991 when the senator - he was elected in 1986 - opposed US troops pushing on from Kuwait to Baghdad.

But McCain changed again, disgusted by the war in Bosnia, to a wider view of when it is right to intervene. And, having been opposed to pushing on from Kuwait to Baghdad, in 1997 he embraced the Iraqi exiles, including Ahmed Chalabi, and said he been mistaken in his opposition to overthrowing Saddam Hussein.

In the 2000 race for the Republican nomination for the presidency, McCain seemed a near certainty, as a real-life American hero: fighter pilot and prisoner of war. He easily beat Bush in the first of the primaries, in New Hampshire, but then came South Carolina, where Bush had the support of the Christian right. A nasty campaign was waged against McCain in which rumours were circulated that he had fathered an illegitimate black child: in fact, he had adopted a Bangladeshi girl. He lost South Carolina and, despite taking Arizona and Michigan, never regained momentum.

McCain had been popular with both Republicans and Democrats but lost some of the Democratic support in 2004 when he gave his support to Bush - in spite of what Bush's campaign team had done to him in South Carolina - turning down an offer from the Democrats to run as John Kerry's vice-president.

For 2008, he has adopted a less maverick approach. He has recruited aides familiar with dirty tricks, but whether this is a defensive or aggressive move will only become apparent in the course of the campaign. And he reached an uneasy peace with the Christian right, delivering a graduation speech at Liberty University, the spiritual home of Jerry Falwell, in May 2006.

At the start of the 2008 campaign, public hostility towards the war was a problem for him. He was a cheerleader for invasion, though within months of occupation he visited Iraq and concluded that it had been a mistake to go in with so few US troops, and that has been a constant refrain ever since. McCain advocated the 'surge' policy, the sending of 30,000 extra US troops to Iraq, that Bush finally announced in January 2007. Reports of an improvement in security as a result of the surge policy have helped him neutralise, at least a little bit, continuing public antipathy towards the war.

McCain's biggest problem may be that he has been around too long and history will record that his best chance was 2000. Conservatives tend not to trust him anyway, just as in 2000, but in the intervening years he has alienated many independents by his support for Bush, his new-found conservatism and accommodation with the religious right. But in a race as open as the Republican one, with no candidate able to establish a commanding lead, McCain is not out yet.

Life and times

Born: August 29 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone, Panama

Family: Married to Cindy Hensley McCain, with children Sydney McCain, Doug Shepp, Andy Shepp, Meghan McCain, John Sidney McCain IV, James McCain, Bridget McCain

Education: Graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1958; National War College, 1973

Career: McCain served in the air force during the Vietnam war and was shot down and captured in 1967. He spent five-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war and was repeatedly tortured. After his release, McCain remained in the US Navy until 1981. Moved to Arizona and won a seat in the US House of Representatives in 1983. He was elected to the Senate in 1986. Ran for Republican presidential nomination in 2000

Religion: Episcopal

Campaign manager: Terry Nelson, political director of George Bush's 2004 campaign

Pollster: Rick McInturff

Fundraising manager: Tom Loeffler

Chief strategist: John Weaver

Media consultant: Mike Murphy

Website:johnmccain.com

Senate website:mccain.senate.gov

MySpace:myspace.com/johnmccain