page_title: Cultural and political image of John McCain
section_title: Traditions and family
hierarchical_section_title: Cultural and political image of John McCain / Traditions and family
caption_attribution_description: Senator John McCain and his wife Cindy. Official photo
context_page_description: Senator John McCain's personal character has dominated the image and perception of him. His family's military heritage, his rebellious nature as a youth, his endurance over his treatment as a prisoner of war, his resulting physical limitations, his political persona, his well-known temper, his admitted propensity for controversial or ill-advised remarks, and his devotion to maintaining his large blended family have all defined his place in the American political world more than any ideological or partisan framing.
context_section_description: McCain emphasized the role in his life of the family tradition of service to one's country, as exemplified by his father and grandfather; it was the predominant theme of his 1999 memoir Faith of My Fathers.  Both his forebears had difficulty coping with the end of war; his grandfather felt listless and died several days after the formal conclusion of World War II, while his father felt despair over his reluctant retirement from the United States Navy and fell into prolonged poor health afterwards.  McCain felt that his father's "long years of binge drinking" had caught up with him, despite his mostly successful subsequent recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous.  McCain had been troubled by the sporadic manifestations of his father's alcoholism while growing up, and Matt Welch saw McCain's experience of living with that, as well as witnessing his wife Cindy's three-year addiction to painkillers in the early 1990s, as causing his speech and writings to be populated with the language and emotions of twelve-step programs.  In particular, Welch saw McCain as "disarmingly talented at admitting his narcissistic flaws" and constantly seeking to invest in a cause greater than self-interest.
  McCain is known for his responses to attacks upon his family.  An opponent of his in the 1982 Republican House primary contacted his first wife Carol, seeking negative material on McCain.  She refused to discuss her marriage, and then next time McCain met the opponent, he said: "I understand you called my ex-wife. I want you to know that, campaign aside, politics aside, you ever do anything like that again, anything against a person in my family, I will personally beat the shit out of you."  The smear campaign against his adopted Bangladeshi daughter during the 2000 South Carolina presidential primary so bothered him that, by some accounts, he considered leaving the Republican Party.
  The traditions McCain was brought up under have extended to his own family.  His son John Sidney IV ("Jack") enrolled at the U.S. Naval Academy and graduated in 2009, after which he went to Naval Air Station Pensacola for training as a naval aviator, just as his father had, followed by helicopter pilot training at Naval Air Station Whiting Field, where he graduated from in January 2011.  He was subsequently assigned to the HSC-25 "Island Knights" squadron in Guam, flying the MH-60S Knighthawk.  His son James ("Jimmy") enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 2006, began recruit training later that year, and by early 2008 was a Lance Corporal who had served a tour of duty as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom.  He subsequently served a second tour in Iraq as well, then left to attend college, with possible plans to return to the Marines. His daughter Meghan graduated from Columbia University, worked and blogged on his presidential campaign, and subsequently became a blogging, Twittering, and book publishing fixture on the Republican Party scene with some of the same maverick tendencies as her father.  His daughter Bridget is a student at Arizona State University.   From his first marriage, his son Doug graduated from the University of Virginia, became a Navy A-6E Intruder carrier pilot, then a commercial pilot for American Airlines; his son Andrew is vice president and CFO at Hensley & Co. and chair of the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce; and his daughter Sidney is a recording industry executive living in Toronto who has worked for Capitol Records and V2 Records.
  Altogether he has seven children, born across four decades, including three with Carol—all of whom are reported to be on good terms with him, his wife, and each other—and, as of 2007, four grandchildren.  Cindy McCain suffered a stroke in 2004 due to high blood pressure, but made a mostly full recovery.  They reside in Phoenix, and she remains the chair of the large Anheuser-Busch beer and liquor distributor Hensley & Co., founded by her father.  By September 2007, McCain's denominational migration was complete, and he was identifying himself as a Baptist.  More broadly, he identified himself as a Christian rather 
caption: John and Cindy McCain, c. 2007
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