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John McCain - Hero Or Rat ? And Everything Else

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HikerGuy83:
Some other threads have digressed to the subject of John McCain.

As I followed him (as best I could) he seemed very inconsistent in his positions.  He could be very animated about some things that were minor and totally deadpan on things that were pretty important.

I have read several articles on him that paint a different picture. 

I would like to gather information here (so we can keep it away from other threads) and so a picture can be painted that is based on true history (including things he might have said).

Let's keep in fact related if we can...please.

HikerGuy83:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1024927/The-wife-John-McCain-callously-left-behind.html

This article is about his first marriage.

His first wife, Carol, is the main subject. 

But there is a lot of commentary on McCain.

From this article, I get that:

1. Carol, his first wife, had been married before.
2. She had two children.
3. She divorced her first husband for infidelity (and got what ????)
4. She met McCain when he was 27 or 28.
5. They were married in March, 1965.
6. He gets shot down.
7. She is in a near lethal car wreck that required several major surgeries and left her somewhat disfigured.  Christmas 1969
8. She does not tell McCain.
9. Ross Perot pays for her medical care.
10. He returns in 1973.  Privately he is appalled at his wife's appearance (she has gained weight and lost 5 inches due to bone removal from the accident)
11. He has admitted that he caroused around while still married.
12. 1979 - He meets Cindy at a cocktail party.....
13. He pursues her for six months flying around the country to meet up with her (obviously an affair).
14. He decides to end his marriage - Carol and the kids are devastated.
15. April 1980 - The divorce if finalized - Carol did not contest
16. McCain agrees to a generous divorce settlement.
17. McCain and City are married in 1980......

From there he was introduced into politics and never looked back.

The Reagans cared for Carol.  She was part of the 1980 campaign and planned several key events.

Commentary from Ross Perot (2008):

But Ross Perot, who paid her medical bills all those years ago, now believes that both Carol McCain and the American people have been taken in by a man who is unusually slick and cruel – even by the standards of modern politics.

‘McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory,’ he said.

‘After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history.’

Bigun:
Read this: http://www.gopbriefingroom.com/index.php/topic,372764.msg2321940.html#msg2321940

HikerGuy83:
I had read it before (on that thread).

I want to keep things as compartmentalized as I can to treat this in detail.

I was going to look up comments on his temper from several articles.

He was known for getting really upset.

HikerGuy83:
I did some searching on McCain's temper. 

The following were examples of what some have written:

But it is not just McCain's politics that are disturbing. It is his personality, too. For McCain has a secret reputation as a man with a ferocious, unpredictable temper. He is a man who has a knack for pursuing vendettas against those he thinks have slighted him, even if they are lowly aides.
The list of worrying incidents is long. In 1995 he ended up almost physically scuffling with aged Senator Strom Thurmond on the Senate floor. And, according to some accounts, in 2006 he had a fight with Arizona congressman Rick Renzi, throwing blows in a scrap whose details have only recently been detailed in Schecter's book. Schecter unearthed another unpleasant incident from 1992 in which McCain, tired after a long day's campaign, reacted badly to his wife Cindy teasing him about his baldness. 'At least I don't plaster on the make-up like a trollop, you bleep,' McCain snapped in front of eyewitnesses. Schecter says he has three sources for the story. McCain's campaign have denied it.
Such public outbursts, and many other private ones, have concerned people even in his own party. Former New Hampshire Republican Senator Robert Smith publicly voiced his concerns, once saying McCain's temper ' ... would place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world perhaps in danger'. That sentiment was echoed by Mississippi Republican Senator Thad Cochran, who told a Boston newspaper: 'The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.'
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jun/22/johnmccain.uselections2008
In winter 2007, John McCain’s presidential bid was bleeding for money. The campaign had fired senior staff. And the candidate had only 54% of support from Republicans in his home state of Arizona ahead of the primaries. But it was a speech Vladimir Putin gave at the Munich Security Conference—where the Russian president lambasted the United States for cultivating a world of “instability and danger”—that set the senator’s teeth on edge.

“I remember John McCain becoming furiously angry with this speech and wanting to do an immediate press conference to respond to it,” McCain’s former foreign policy advisor Niall Ferguson, a British historian, told Observer. “That’s when I saw the impulse McCain, ‘Fighting John,’ who had to be talked out of this vehement rejoinder of Putin.”

“Fighting John” was a side of McCain that commanded the respect of his fellow soldiers, and later defined his career as a politician. Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, who also advised the senator’s 2008 bid for the presidency, recalled his interviews with half a dozen Naval officers who had been detained with McCain at Hao Lo Prison—the infamous Vietnamese torture site nicknamed ‘Hanoi Hilton’ by American soldiers.

“They all said, pretty much this: ‘John and I have always gotten along most of the time, but we have on occasion gotten in fights…Last time we played poker, we nearly brained each other, but I love him like a brother and would follow him anywhere,'” Woolsey told Observer. “And that’s John McCain.”

https://observer.com/2018/08/how-john-mccains-temper-drove-him-from-hanoi-hilton-to-the-senate/
About a year later, McCain reportedly erupted again, this time at a meeting with Arizona's then-Gov. Evan Mecham, who was about to be impeached after being indicted on felony charges.

Karen Johnson, then Mecham's secretary and now an Arizona state senator, recalled how McCain told Mecham that he was "causing the party a lot of problems" and was an embarrassment to the party.

"Sen. McCain got very angry," Johnson recalled, "and I said, 'Why are you talking to the governor like this? You're causing problems yourself. You're an embarrassment.' "

Johnson would go on to work at three different jobs over the next five years, and she said that each time, McCain would contact her boss and try to get her removed.

The McCain campaign didn't respond to repeated requests for comment.

https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article24498646.html

And article on his temper…..

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991031/aponline183823_000.htm
John McCain’s Democratic colleagues in the Senate are zeroing in on his oft-discussed temper, questioning whether the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is too volatile to be commander in chief.
In separate interviews with Politico on Tuesday, Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said they have seen McCain “explode.”
“He has a huge anger problem,” Boxer said. “And he never hid that. ... I have seen it happen on the Senate floor many, many times. … He has exploded at me a couple times.”
Boxer said McCain has always apologized after the dust-ups. Nonetheless, she insinuated that McCain’s temperament makes him unfit for the White House.
“It’s all well and good to apologize,” Boxer added, “but if you are in charge of that black box, I worry about that.”
Durbin noted McCain’s temper is “well documented,” saying that he had been on the receiving end of it for what he considered “minor things.”

“I was in a confrontation with him … and he was quick to explode,” said Durbin. “It simmered for a long time.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2008/08/democrats-take-aim-at-mccains-temper-012846


In January, Thad Cochran, a Republican senator for Mississippi, said the thought of Mr McCain as president sent a “cold chill down my spine”, describing him as “hotheaded” and “erratic”. James Dobson, the influential evangelical leader, said he could not support Mr McCain, in part because he “has a legendary temper and often uses foul and obscene language”.
On Capitol Hill, his outbursts are part of congressional folklore. One of the most recent came last year when, according to witnesses, he shouted, "bleep you!” at John Cornyn, a Republican senator for Texas, during a heated exchange over immigration reform.
A similar tirade in 1999 cost him the support of Pete Domenici, a New Mexico senator, in the 2000 presidential election. “I decided I didn’t want this guy anywhere near a trigger,” said Mr Domenici.
https://www.ft.com/content/f28123a8-0725-11dd-b41e-0000779fd2ac
The senator’s temper and temperament remain in question. His biographer quotes him: “At the smallest provocation I would go off into a mad frenzy, and then suddenly crash to the floor unconscious.” Has he moderated over time? Apparently. Somewhat. Senators who have had John McCain scream hyphenated obscenities at them nose-to-nose include Rick Santorum, Richard Shelby, Thad Cochran, and James Inhofe. Most colleagues decline comment. The man has been called psychologically unstable.

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