McCain: Rabble-rouser and standard-bearer

updated 7:48 a.m. ET Aug. 30, 2008

WASHINGTON - In John McCain's thinking, it is one thing to break the rules and quite another to break the faith. He's spent a lifetime walking the line between the two.

The high school troublemaker became one of the Naval Academy's "Bad Bunch," graduating fifth from the bottom of his class. The underachiever at Annapolis became a "bad apple" to his captors in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp, turning his defiance into a virtue. The "tough resister" of the Hanoi Hilton became an American hero, soon on the fast track to a seat in the Senate.

McCain never lost his anti-authoritarian streak along the way, though, and it has been both his greatest asset and Achilles' heel in a lifetime of politics.

Ever disinclined to follow the herd, Republican McCain has achieved his greatest legislative successes when making alliances with Democrats. He's also piled up a full repertoire of over-the-top wisecracks, and had enough flare-ups with colleagues that more than one McCain defender has felt compelled to offer assurances that "no punches were thrown" in one situation or another. This is not typically part of the boilerplate when discussing United States senators.

'Honorable', 'ambitious' maverick
"He's always had that somewhere-between-independence-and-renegade streak," says former Sen. Gary Hart, who served as a groomsman when McCain married his second wife.

Now, on the verge of his 72nd birthday, McCain is trying once again to strike the right balance, this time in pursuit of the presidency.

He is offering himself both as a rabble-rouser and a reliable Republican standard-bearer.

He has written dismissively of the "obfuscation of politics." But he's also trimmed his sails in pursuit of the prize.

He has worried that the idea of a being maverick may be getting "tired," but insists he's got the energy and ideas to inspire a dispirited nation.

He will belt out a belly laugh for Borat, or for Wilford Brimley.

When McCain was asked, in a recent AP interview, to list some adjectives to describe himself, "honorable" and "ambitious" were the first two words to tumble out of his mouth.

Video   McCain addresses leadership Aug. 16: John McCain answers questions from Pastor Rick Warren on leadership, moral failures and energy policy at the Saddleback Civil Forum. Video courtesy Saddleback Church. MSNBC

Those qualities can pack a powerful one-two punch for a candidate — or tug in opposite directions.

"In the political arena," McCain says, "you don't have to have gray areas on your principles and values, but you have to have some compromising postures in order to achieve a common goal."

A whole life before the war
So much of John McCain's identity revolves around his history as a prisoner of war that it is easy to overlook all that came before.

And there was a lot — "a whole life," in McCain's own words.

By the time McCain was shot out of the sky over Vietnam at age 31, he'd already crashed a plane into Corpus Christi Bay, ejected from another jet that flamed out as he was flying solo, survived an explosion aboard the carrier Forrestal that left 134 dead, and generally lived large, as he once said of his grandfather.

He'd toyed with the idea of joining the French Foreign Legion. (That idea fizzled when he found out the legion required nine years of service.)

He'd been poised to fly into combat from the deck of the USS Enterprise during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

He'd knocked down power lines flying too low over southern Spain.

He'd romanced a Brazilian fashion model in Rio.

He'd married a beautiful divorcee, adopted the former model's two boys and had a daughter with her.

Insubordination and rebellion
A predilection for what McCain describes as "quick tempers, adventurous spirits, and love for the country's uniform" was encoded in the family DNA.

His father and grandfather, the Navy's first father-and-son set of four-star admirals, had set such a low standard for good behavior at the Naval Academy that John Sidney McCain III's self-described "four-year course of insubordination and rebellion" got little more than a yawn from his family.

Speaking of his father, McCain once pronounced himself "little short of astonished by the old man's reckless disregard for the rules."

And yet, for all the raucous tales of misconduct, the midshipmen of the McCain family abided by the school's honor code not to lie, cheat or steal.

McCain now pronounces his son Jack an exception to the family pattern of misbehavior at Annapolis, and jokes, "I'm astonished."

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