McCain -- the mouth that roared

WASHINGTON -- John McCain has stocked his arsenal with a variety of weapons over the years, like fists when he was in school and bombs when he was at war. But his WMD is a mouth that won't quit. He possesses wisecracks of mass destruction.

Who else would refer to the Arizona retirement community of Leisure World as "Seizure World," as he did in his first Senate campaign? Just for fun, out loud? He couldn't help himself. (He won anyway.)

Consider McCain's life as a series of impolitic one-liners, each one illuminating complex threads of the past.

"John Sidney McCain the Third. What's yours?"

McCain's blunt challenge to an upperclassman who demanded his name in a cafeteria confrontation typified the insouciance that risked getting him drummed out of the Naval Academy.

McCain comes from a line of underperformers who became overachievers, and an even longer military lineage stretching back before the Revolution. The first John McCain can be seen in photos of Japan's surrender on the deck of the USS Missouri in 1945. The vice admiral commanded aircraft carrier task forces in the Pacific war. His son John commanded all U.S. forces in the Pacific in the Vietnam era, issuing directives that intensified bombing even as his son, the third John, was captive in the target zone.

The rootless McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone and attended some 20 schools before Annapolis, where he graduated fifth from the bottom of his class in 1958.

"It doesn't take a lot of talent to get shot down."

McCain was a party man when he took pilot training out of the academy, driving a Corvette, hitting the bars and dating "Marie the Flame of Florida," a dancer who cleaned her fingernails with her switchblade. He said he "generally misused my good health and youth."

By the time he went to war in the spring of 1967, he was the husband of former Philadelphia model Carol Shepp. And he was a father.

In October of that year, age 31, McCain was on his 23rd bombing mission when a missile took off his right wing, sending his A-4 Skyhawk bomber spiraling. McCain ejected, losing consciousness until he found himself 15 feet deep in a Hanoi lake. His arms and a knee were broken; he pulled the inflating pins of his life jacket with his teeth.

Once the North Vietnamese realized they had an admiral's son, they saw him as a propaganda tool worth exploiting and accorded him the medical treatment they had previously withheld. Still, McCain would not cooperate with their plan.

As McCain said, there was nothing heroic about being unlucky enough to be hit with a missile. What made him a hero in the eyes of fellow prisoners was his refusal to accept early release until those who had been at Hoa Lo longer were let go.

"In Washington, I work with boobs every day."

McCain learned the ways of Washington as the Navy's liaison to the Senate in the 1970s, staying with the service until 1981. His marriage fell apart, the consequence of his philandering.

He blamed his "selfishness and immaturity."

This is a man who has survived two plane crashes into the drink, torture, a deadly explosion aboard an aircraft carrier, a Senate scandal and skin cancer. In yet another stroke of luck, his wife let him go without wringing his neck. She has supported his career ever since.

A month after divorcing Carol, he married Cindy Hensley, daughter of a Phoenix beer magnate, moved to Arizona and soon plunged into politics, winning a House seat in 1982. Even while building a reliably conservative voting record, McCain took an early step on the road that would make him an iconoclast in Republican ranks.

He spoke out and voted against a resolution authorizing President Reagan to keep Marines in Lebanon for 18 more months. Then terrorists bombed the Marine barracks in a deadly assault that prompted Reagan to end the peacekeeping mission.

After two House terms that made him a standout in tight circles if a star in none, he rolled over a Democratic opponent to win his Senate seat.

McCain reached beyond waste to take on the system of campaign financing, an issue that joined him with like-minded Democrats and split him from Republican leaders.

He performed a cameo as himself two years ago in the R-rated comedy "Wedding Crashers," which one wag called a "boob raunch fest." Too undignified for a senator and presidential hopeful?

"In Washington, I work with boobs every day," McCain said. He observed that the capital has many qualities, but "a sense of humor is not one of them."

"The president is a lonely man in a dark room when the casualty reports come in."

McCain dropped the somber weight of that line into an occasion meant for balloons, the announcement of his first presidential campaign. This is one reason he frustrates his advisers. But it helps explain why his Straight Talk Express got traction in 2000.

"I'm older than dirt, more scars than Frankenstein, but I learned a few things along the way."

In 2004, when AP asked candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination to name their favorite Republican, John Kerry, John Edwards and Joe Lieberman all said McCain. The conservative Republican has had an odd attraction for Democrats, who practically sanctified him in some of their speeches. It was a testament to his genuine friendships and alliances.

The Arizona senator was an early and cutting critic of Bush's conduct of the Iraq war. He is also, paradoxically, a vital Bush ally on pressing ahead with the mission. McCain perilously staked his 2008 campaign on success in Iraq even as support for the war plunged.

He had entered the race competing against the high expectations set for him, and having to answer the question of whether he might be too old to start a presidency -- he's 70.

One recent morning he came into AP offices for an hourlong interview, showing up early and alone, talking for an hour without the cushion of an aide in the room, delving into minutiae of foreign affairs and domestic policy, cracking self-deprecating jokes. He couldn't remember when he'd taken a day off. When he left, he supposed a car might be waiting for him downstairs.

The old war and torture wounds, aggravated now by arthritis, give him a slight limp and he cannot raise either arm above his head. He's had three episodes of melanoma, the most aggressive form of skin cancer, and carries a scar on his left cheek from that.

Yet it's possible to see the flyboy of long ago in him still, the solo pilot who would blow off the preflight checklist as if it were nothing more than red tape. He itched to take off. "Kick the tires and light the fires," he would say.