1968 -- At the age of 31, John McCain found himself a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. A naval aviator, McCain had been shot down over the North Vietnamese capital of Hanoi in October 1967. He managed to eject himself from the plane before it crashed, but he was badly injured and nearly drowned when he came to rest in Truch Bach Lake. After being beaten by civilians who dragged him from the lake, McCain was transported to Hoa Lo Prison, where North Vietnamese doctors told him that it was "too late" to save him. He remained in horrific physical condition for weeks, with unattended broken limbs and a case of dysentery that nearly killed him. (He eventually received medical treatment when his captors learned that McCain's father was a high-ranking Navy officer.) McCain, like other American prisoners, was kept in solitary confinement at the prison. The food was nearly inedible, and McCain lost 50 pounds within a few months. By August 1968, North Vietnamese interrogators began torturing him on a daily basis, demanding that he confess his "crimes" against the Vietnamese people. Eventually, at what he later described as the lowest point of his life, McCain reached his breaking point and signed a "confession," excerpts of which were later read on Radio Hanoi.
2008 -- John McCain stood at the podium at the Xcel Center in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he had just accepted the nomination as the Republican Party's candidate for President of the United States. "I don't mind a good fight," he told the crowd. "For reasons known only to God, I've had quite a few tough ones in my life. But I learned an important lesson along the way: In the end, it matters less that you can fight. What you fight for is the real test." Since 1983, McCain had served in the US Congress -- first as a representative from Arizona's 1st District, and then as one of the state's two senators. During his years in Congress, he had worked on issues such as campaign finance reform and had earned a great deal of visibility as an opponent of "pork barrel spending." Having served in Vietnam, he had taken the lead on numerous issues related to veterans' affairs; he recounted his experiences as a prisoner of war in a 1999 memoir titled Faith of My Fathers. He had run for the GOP nomination in 2000 but finished second to George W. Bush; a second run in 2008 had initially seemed like a failure. In mid-2007, his campaign had nearly run out of money and he was far behind in the polls. But a year later, after the dust settled, McCain had dominated the primary process, winning a vast majority of his party's delegates and sewing up the nomination by early March 2008. Although he would eventually lose the general election to Barack Obama, McCain had secured a place in history as one of the most important political figures of his era.
John McCain always regretted signing a coerced "confession," but he was not alone among his fellow POW's in succumbing to torture. In his memoir, McCain admitted that in his shame, he contemplated suicide; instead of taking his own life, however, McCain actively resisted his captors. He refused to sign a follow-up "confession" and was subjected to months of additional physical abuse as a result. McCain spent two years in solitary confinement, yet he and his fellow prisoners managed to communicate by tapping on the bars of their cells. During the five years he remained at the "Hanoi Hilton," McCain gained a reputation as a leader among the other prisoners. Though he had numerous opportunities to secure an early release, he refused to leave before all those men who ranked beneath him had been let go. When the war ended and he returned to the United States, McCain received an array of honors, including the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, several Bronze Stars, a Navy Commendation Medal, and the Purple Heart. Motivated to understand his experiences as well as the wider circumstances of the American war in Vietnam, McCain pursued graduate studies at the Naval War College before serving as a congressional liaison for the Navy during the late 1970s. Though he had been profoundly shaped by the five and a half years he spent in captivity, McCain was determined to move beyond it and not allow his life to be defined by that experience. During these years, McCain realized that he had an interest in public service and began pondering a career in politics. Aided by the financial assets of his second wife, Cindy -- the heiress to the Hensley and Company beer fortune -- McCain ran for a seat in US House in 1982 and won, setting in motion the next major phase of his life.