Against all odds, McCain fights for GOP nod

In Decision 2008, a close race for the White House is sparking record turnout in many primaries as voters make their choices. Who are the candidates at the center of this historic election campaign, and how did they get here?

As the stakes get higher, there's also more controversy. Recently, a newspaper report raises questions about a potentially improper relationship with a lobbyist and about the media's role in campaign politics.

This month, Senator John McCain emerged as the presumptive Republican nominee for president. But on the heels of his taking a commanding lead in the delegate count, the New York Times publishes a controversial article: Anonymous sources allege that during his last presidential run in 2000, campaign staffers questioned a relationship between McCain and a Washington lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, whose clients had business before his Senate committee. The story threatens his momentum and his reputation.

McCain and Iseman deny they had a romantic relationship. McCain denies the accounts reported in the article, of staffers so concerned about the relationship they confronted him and tried to keep the two apart.

In the immediate fallout, the Times takes at least as much criticism as the candidate.

For Senator John McCain, the campaign trail has always been a fight to survive, and it may just be a contest he's been preparing for his whole life.

John Sydney McCain III is born
It's 1936 and FDR is in his second term. The Great Depression is waning and swing is the music of the era.

Across the Americas, in the Panama Canal Zone, John Sydney McCain III is born.

He's part of a legendary naval family, a lineage that extends all the way back to revolutionary times.

On Dec. 7, 1941, he's just 5 years old when the United States enters World War II. His father and grandfather are called into action.

As the war rages, his dad, Jack McCain, patrols the Pacific as a submarine commander.

And his grandfather, John "Slew" McCain, a Navy vice-admiral, fights the Japanese to Tokyo Bay.

When the Japanese formally surrender in September 1945, "Slew" McCain attends the signing ceremony aboard the USS Missouri.

Sadly, “Slew” McCain barely tastes victory, suddenly dying four days later in his San Diego home.

After the war, the McCains crisscross the United States, moving from base to base.

As Jack McCain travels the world, young John and his siblings are raised almost single-handedly by their mother, Roberta.

Sen. McCain: My father was gone so much at sea and so there was a kind of a self-reliance on ourselves and within the family.

The McCains move back east to Washington, D.C.

High school years
In 1951, John enters Episcopal High School, where he quickly discovers there's more to life than the military.

In high school, he loves music, partying, and chasing the girls.

And the heroes of McCain’s teenage years were the leading men of Hollywood: the rebels.

Sen. McCain: Marlon Brando was one of my favorite actors; James Dean, of course. I don't think there's any doubt that there's a certain emulation in my behavior of some of these role models of mine, both good and bad.

He's a lackluster student, but John excels in physical sports. And he continues to refine his rebel image.   

Joe McCain, brother: He was the coolest guy on Earth. I mean he was super cool. I always remember when he came around with his friends, he was always the guy with the joke, and when he smoked, it was always hanging out of his mouth. And he always had these kinds of wry expressions.

But in 1954, McCain’s fun-filled high school days come to an end.

Following in his fathers' wake, McCain sets course for the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, the class of 1958.

Sen. McCain: It was always a certainty that I was going to go to the Naval Academy as my father and grandfather had before me. Not that I didn't' want to go to the Naval Academy, but my sort of resentment that it was a preordained kind of an operation.

At first he enjoys the physical challenge of basic training.

But McCain refuses to submit to the rigid discipline and often humiliating hazing rituals. He spends the next four years fighting the system.

Sen. McCain: I viewed it as a competition, to see how much I could get away with, and at the same time remain at the school, a very careful balancing act [laughs].

While most midshipmen are towing the line, McCain spends much of his four years crossing it. Partying is becoming his trademark.

Frank Gamboa, Naval Academy Classmate: If you went to a party with John, you were going to party right until the absolute last man coming racing back to the Naval Academy just before the end of curfew [laugher]. So if you didn't want to live on the edge, then you never went to a party with John McCain.

Sen. McCain: We had incredible enjoyable times with each other, and of course our constant search for female companionship consumed a great deal of our time as well. Not to mention the time we spent trying to illegally consume alcoholic beverages So, it was fun.

With bad grades and a rash of discipline demerits, McCain comes perilously close to flunking out of the academy.

But McCain hangs on, barely. In May 1958, with President Eisenhower himself passing out diplomas, McCain graduates, fifth from the bottom of his class.

Sen. McCain: President Eisenhower had asked to see the anchorman, the person who had finished at the bottom of the class. I remember at the time regretting a bit that I hadn't done a little worse so that I would have gotten to go up and shake hands with the president.

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