Word: mccains
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...this race that McCain first tested his powers of inoculation, which have served him well ever since. He didn't have to worry about critics raising the question of his womanizing and the collapse of his first marriage because McCain had said flat out, as he does to this day, that these failures were his fault. He instructed his adviser Smith not to constantly harp on the Story. "He wasn't comfortable exploiting it," Smith recalls. "'Whatever you do, be tasteful,' he would say. 'I don't want to be the POW candidate. I want to be John McCain from...
From the start, McCain was attacked as an opportunist and a carpetbagger. His high-priced Washington consultants, big war chest and television ads did nothing to alter that image. At a debate with his three Republican primary opponents, he took aim at the issue and killed it dead. "Listen, pal," he replied to a challenge to his status as an Arizonan. "I spent 22 years in the Navy. My father was in the Navy. My grandfather was in the Navy. We in the military service tend to move a lot. I wish I could have had the luxury, like...
...McCain was enough of a celebrity among freshman Representatives that they elected him President of their 1982 class. And to the extent that he focused on anything, it was helping lawmakers who had never worn a uniform make smarter decisions about what American soldiers should and should not be asked to do. He spoke out passionately about the need to aid the Nicaraguan contras. But even early on, he was not just Reagan's pet. In September 1983, barely nine months after taking office, he loudly opposed keeping U.S. Marines in Lebanon an additional 18 months. Though lots of speakers...
...hell, and politics can be too when you treat it like one. Home-state politicians complain that as he rose to power, McCain worked to turn the Arizona Republican Party into his personal fleet, tacking to his orders and subject to his discipline. Anyone who stepped out of line would find McCain out recruiting primary challengers, even down to the city-council races. "You are either with him," says a local politician who supports McCain, "or you're wearing the black hat." Says his former administrative assistant Grant Woods, with whom relations have gone sour: "As a maverick McCain doesn...
...until he fought for and won Barry Goldwater's Senate seat in 1986 that McCain began to search for a broader mission. "In the Senate you have greater freedom," recalls former administrative assistant Chris Koch. "It's not that he had a specific agenda of A, B, C. He just wanted to get out of being perceived as just a Navy guy and war hero who is good on national security." And soon enough he had a chance to fight for a cause closer to his constituents' hearts--when he resisted a rise in Medicare premiums. It was his greatest...