John McCain, born in 1936, Republican member of the United States Senate from Arizona (1987- ) and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000 and 2008. McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone into a family with a long history of military service. Both his father and grandfather were well-known navy admirals. McCain received a bachelor’s degree in 1958 from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, and was in the U.S. Navy from 1958 to 1981.

McCain served in the Vietnam War (1959-1975). The North Vietnamese held him as a prisoner of war for more than five years after the aircraft he piloted was shot down over North Vietnam. During his imprisonment, McCain was tortured. After he returned from Vietnam, McCain attended the National War College from 1973 to 1974, and then served as Senate Navy liaison from 1977 to 1981. McCain moved to Arizona in 1981 and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982. In 1986 McCain was elected to the Senate.

In the late 1980s McCain became embroiled in the Keating Five Scandal as one of five U.S. senators who attempted to intervene with banking regulators on behalf of Charles Keating, a Phoenix financier and real estate developer who headed the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. Keating had been a long-time friend and campaign contributor to McCain. After banking regulators began investigating whether Keating had used depositors’ money from Lincoln to invest in questionable real estate deals, McCain was one of five U.S. senators who met with the regulators and urged them to ease up on their investigation.

In 1989 Lincoln went bankrupt, and in the scandal that followed McCain’s role as one of the Keating Five became known. The scandal sent Keating to prison and ended the political careers of three of the Keating Five who were formally censured by Congress in 1991. McCain was reprimanded for “poor judgment” but because he had not been as involved as the others, he escaped censure and was reelected to another term in the Senate in 1992. The scandal, however, apparently had a major impact on McCain who wrote in his memoir, Worth the Fighting For (2002), that he considered it one of the worst experiences in his life and one that made him aware of the importance of combating corruption.

In 1999 McCain announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in the 2000 election. Running on a platform of campaign finance reform, he posed a strong challenge to Texas governor George W. Bush, the eventual nominee. McCain won primaries in seven states before he ended his campaign in March 2000 after losing the South Carolina primary. McCain was widely believed to have been the victim of “dirty tricks” during the South Carolina primary as a rumor spread that he was the father of an illegitimate black child.

McCain has sponsored or been active in shaping several major pieces of legislation. Following through on his platform of campaign finance reform, he joined Democratic senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin to sponsor the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, popularly known as the McCain-Feingold Act. The main provision of the act prohibits political parties from raising and spending unregulated funds. See also Electoral Reform.

In 2005 McCain spearheaded efforts to close loopholes in laws aimed at preventing the torture and abuse of prisoners captured in the “war on terror.” After having been tortured himself as a POW in Vietnam, McCain actively opposed violations of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture, arguing that torture was not only a violation of human rights but also that it harmed the war on terror because it led to bad intelligence. “The abuse of prisoners harms, not helps, our war effort,” McCain argued in support of what became known as the McCain amendment. Passed by Congress in December 2005, the amendment bans cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of any person in U.S. custody, regardless of nationality or where they are held. However, shortly after the law’s passage, President Bush issued a signing statement saying that he reserved the right to ignore any part of the law that he deemed a hindrance to the war on terror.

In 2007 McCain formally announced his candidacy for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. After his campaign got off to a slow start, McCain had to reorganize his campaign staff. By March 2008, however, having won most of the party’s primaries and caucuses, McCain had secured enough delegates to ensure his nomination at the Republican Convention in September 2008.