HARI SREENIVASAN:
Good evening and thank you for joining us.
Senator John McCain, the influential Arizona Republican senator and two-time presidential candidate, died yesterday at his home near Sedona, Arizona. He was 81 and had an aggressive brain cancer for the past year.
Crowds lined the route as the hearse bearing his body traveled from his ranch to a Phoenix funeral home last night. In Washington, D.C., flags were lowered to half staff.
And in Vietnam, where then-Navy pilot McCain was captive for more than five years as a prisoner of war, mourners placed flowers on a memorial honoring him. As senator, his political leadership was key in normalising relations between Vietnam and the U.S.
John Sidney McCain III was born in 1936 on an American naval base, the son of a naval officer stationed in the Panama Canal zone.
He went on to attend the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland–following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather–who both served as four star admirals. McCain graduated in 1958 and became a navy pilot two years later.
He volunteered for combat during the Vietnam war. In October of 1967 his plane was shot down over Hanoi, during a bombing mission. He was captured, beaten and tortured, and held as prisoner of war for five and a half years. In that time he tried to take his own life twice and signed a coerced confession. He refused an offer of early release after the Vietnamese learned that his father was a high ranking navy official.
McCain was released in 1973, returning to the U.S. a hero.
In 1982, McCain began what would be his decades-long political career, winning a seat in the U.S. Congress from his home state of Arizona twice.
Four years later he was elected to the Senate where he remained for six terms.
But his political career was not always successful. In 2000, he made his first presidential run, and lost to George W. Bush in the primaries.
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