John McCain (President McCain)

John Sidney McCain III (born December 11, 1943) is the forty-fourth and current President of the United States. He served as the senior United States Senator from Arizona from 1987 to 2008 before being sworn in as President on January 20, 2009.

McCain graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1958. He became a naval aviator, flying ground-attack aircraft from aircraft carriers. During the Vietnam War, he nearly lost his life in the 1967 USS Forrestal fire. Later that year while on a bombing mission over North Vietnam, he was shot down, badly injured, and captured as a prisoner of war by the North Vietnamese. He was held from 1967 to 1973, experiencing episodes of torture and refusing an out-of-sequence early repatriation offer; his war wounds left him with lifelong physical limitations.

He retired from the Navy as a captain in 1981, moved to Arizona, and entered politics. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982, he served two terms, and was then elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986, winning re-election easily in 1992, 1998, and 2004. While generally adhering to conservative principles, McCain at times has had a media reputation as a "maverick" for disagreeing with his party on several key issues. After being investigated and largely exonerated in a political influence scandal of the 1980s as a member of the "Keating Five," he made campaign finance reform one of his signature concerns, which eventually led to the passage of the McCain-Feingold Act in 2002. He is also known for his work towards restoring diplomatic relations with Vietnam in the 1990s, and for his belief that the war in Iraq should be fought to a successful conclusion in the 2000s. McCain has chaired the Senate Commerce Committee, has opposed pork barrel spending, and played a key role in alleviating a crisis over judicial nominations.

McCain lost his bid for the Republican nomination in the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush. He ran again for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, and gained enough delegates to become the party's presumptive nominee in March 2008. In a close election, McCain was elected to the Presidency, receiving a majority of the electoral votes and narrowly winning the popular vote.

As President, McCain's main policies have largely focused on foreign policy and the economy. He has enacted cuts in pork barrel spending, tax credits for families that purchase health insurance, increased use of nuclear energy and off-shore oil drilling, as well as guest worker programmes. As an early supporter of the Surge in Iraq, he implemented a similar Surge strategy in Afghanistan. As a result of the successes of the Surge, he also redeployed troops in Iraq to Afghanistan. He also deployed troops in Norway to support their NATO ally in their war against Russia, which eventually led to a Russian withdrawal.