Task: Sentence Composition
Input (English): The “Getting to Know the Real John McCain” commentary that began making the rounds in forwarded emails in August 2017 contains a combination of verifiable facts and opinions about John McCain’s first marriage to Carol Shepp McCain. The commentary is largely based on a Daily Mail article that ran in 2008, when John McCain was running for president. The article included rare public comments from McCain’s ex-wife, Carol Shepp McCain, about the couple’s divorce and about John’s mindset after he returned from Vietnam after spending five and a half years as a prisoner of war. We couldn’t track down the original “Getting to Know the Real John McCain” commentary, or verify that a woman named Burma Davis Posey was its actual author. But we can look at some of the biographical details included in the commentary. The commentary’s central theme is that Carol McCain was a loyal wife and mother — and that John selfishly divorced her because of life-altering injuries that she sustained in a car accident on Christmas Eve of 1969. Both John and Carol McCain have agreed that their divorce fell apart because of John’s immaturity, but Carol disputes the idea that her accident was the central cause. For his part, John McCain wrote in his 2002 memoir “Worth Fighting For” that: “My marriage’s collapse was attributable to my own selfishness and immaturity. The blame was entirely mine.” For her part, Carol McCain told the Daily Mail in a 2008: “My accident is well recorded. I had 23 operations, I am five inches shorter than I used to be and I was in hospital for six months. It was just awful, but it wasn’t the reason for my divorce. My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens…it just does.” And the commentary’s claims about John McCain meeting Cindy and beginning a relationship with her before his first marriage ended appears to be true. John claimed in “Worth Fighting For” that his relationship with Cindy didn’t begin until after he separated from Carol, but others dispute that. A 2008 Los Angeles Times story that quotes a friend of John McCain who was at the reception in Hawaii where John met Cindy said that some people in his social circle believed that the McCains had already separated by the time John and Cindy met based on John’s behavior: By contrast, some of McCain’s friends, including the Senate aide who was at the reception where McCain first met  (Cindy) Hensley, believed he was separated at that time. Albert “Pete” Lakeland, the aide who was with McCain at the reception in Hawaii in April 1979, said of the introduction to Hensley: “It was like he was struck by Cupid’s arrow. He was just enormously smitten.” As the pair began dating, Lakeland allowed them to spend a weekend together at his summer home in Maryland, he said. The senator has acknowledged that he behaved badly, and that his swift divorce and remarriage brought a cold shoulder from the Reagans that lasted years. In the end, the “Getting to Know John McCain” commentary draws from a number of credible reports that were published during the 2008 presidential campaign. Many of the biographical details about John McCain and his first marriage are true, but they’re also colored by the author’s unfavorable view of McCain. A number of rumors about John McCain went viral in July and August 2017 as the senator’s battle with brain cancer, and his deciding “no” vote on the Obamacare repeal bill drew attention to him. We investigated claims that Richard Nixon pardoned John McCain and that John McCain started the USS Forrestal fire.
Output (English):  A commentary titled, “Getting to Know the Real John McCain” by Burma Davis Posey began making the rounds in August 2017 after Senator McCain voted against the GOP’s plan to repeal Obamacare.