Bridging 2 marriages, a large, close-knit brood

The funnest guy in the room
The second chapter of Mr. McCain’s parenting life found him an established politician who spent most of his time in Washington, leaving his wife and small children for most of the week.

Mr. McCain has made concerted efforts to compensate for the many years that separate him and his second set of children. He has been known to accompany them to the MTV awards; he once woke Meghan with the news that Jennifer Lopez and Sean Combs had broken up. Mr. McCain’s aversion to relaxing is a trait all his children know well: he is the first one up on vacation, dragging the willing, and often the less than willing, on a hike.

Mr. McCain was the sort of father who would not discuss his torture at the hands of Vietnamese captors, who kept his emotions close, and whose second-oldest son saw him emotional only once, when a pet dog died. He was not the father sitting in the front row at back-to-school night, lobbing questions about curriculum, or the presence at the end of the bed after a bad date. But each of his children described him still as the most fun guy in the room.

“I know he had me later on in life, but I’ve never felt it,” Meghan said.

Following in dad's footsteps
Mr. McCain has frequently said he never pushed his children toward a military career. Yet three of his four sons have been in the service; the fourth, Andy, was turned down by the Naval Academy. Doug was a Navy pilot, Jack is in the academy and Jimmy, whom Mrs. McCain described as “the sensitive one,” stunned many of his siblings by enlisting in the Marines.

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“What I tried to teach them growing up was the importance of family and the importance of being in a historical family,” Mrs. McCain said.

When Jack, who once came home from summer camp with a trunk of clothes packed by his mother completely untouched, applied to the Naval Academy it was “the only school he applied to,” she said.

He told her, “I want to be a part of our family legacy,” Mrs. McCain said.

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Yet the McCain children have also taken pains to separate themselves from their father’s name. Meghan, through a mix-up, once found herself in France with no place to stay, and slept in a bookstore rather than plead her case at the American Embassy. The singer Moby said he was friendly with Sidney for a number of years before he knew who her father was.

“There’s no reflected glory for kids of a candidate,” Andy said. “We’ve just chosen to lead our lives as out of the spotlight as we can.”

Marc Santora contributed reporting.

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