John McCain is serving his third term as United States Senator from Arizona.  He entered the United States Naval Academy at seventeen and graduated with a Bachelors of Science degree in 1958.  His name is synonymous with the War in Vietnam where, as a POW, he was held prisoner for 5 1/2 years -- two of them in solitary confinement.

The year before his capture in 1967, McCain served aboard the USS Forrestal, nearly dying when a pilot accidentally fired a missile into his jet.  One hundred and thirty-four men died as exploding bombs crippled the carrier in what became the Navy's worst non-combat disaster ever.  Afterwards, McCain could have left the war zone for home, but he chose to stay in the Navy.

Returning to duty in the skies over Hanoi, McCain was shot down and carried off by an angry mob that nearly beat him to death.  While held captive and routinely tortured, John McCain rejected offers of early release, knowing the Vietnamese were trying to use him to curry favor with his father, an admiral in the U.S. Navy. 

McCain's supporters cite this story to draw a sharp contrast between their man and candidates who're dogged by accusations their powerful fathers kept them out of harm's way.

John McCain stayed in the Navy after his release from the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" in 1973.  He retired with the rank of Commander in 1981 and won a seat in the House of Representatives the following year.  After serving two terms in the House, McCain set his sights on the Senate, where Arizona's voters sent him in 1986. 

During his time in Washington, Senator McCain's gained a repution as a maverick, bucking his party's leadership on issues such as campaign finance reform.  When President Clinton wanted to normalize relations with Vietnam, he turned to John McCain for support.  The message was clear: if McCain could forgive then we all could forgive, and for the first time in 20 years there's now a United States representative in Vietnam.

In 1997 John McCain was appointed Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.  Because of his crackdown on waste in government, he earned the nickname "The Sheriff."

John and Cindy McCain married in 1980.  They have four children together, Meghan, Jack, Jimmy and Bridget.  John McCain is sixty-three-years old.  Senator McCain has one child from his previous marriage.