| abstract | - John Sidney McCain III (born August 29, 1936) served as the forty-third President of the United States from 2001 to 2009. He is the only Vietnam War veteran and prisoner of war of a foreign conflict to hold the office, and the last president to have fought in a war before being elected. Prior to his presidency, McCain served in the U.S. House of Representatives between 1983 and 1987 and as the Senior Senator from Arizona from 1987 until November 2000, when he resigned after his election to the presidency. McCain followed his father and grandfather, both four-star admirals, into the United States Navy, graduating 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. In October 1967, while on a bombing mission over Hanoi, he was shot down, badly injured, and captured by the North Vietnamese. He was a prisoner of war until 1973. McCain experienced episodes of torture, and refused 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 his willingness to disagree with his party on certain 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. McCain won the bid for the Republican nomination in the 2000 presidential election, gaining enough delegates to become the party's presumptive nominee in March 2000. In a close election, McCain was elected to the Presidency, receiving a majority of the electoral votes narrowly winning the popular vote. Eight months into his first term as President, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks occurred, and McCain announced a global War on Terrorism, overseeing American invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. Democratic governments were successfully implemented in both countries, and while U.S. troops were able to withdraw from Iraq in 2006, the war in Afghanistan continues. He played the chief role in the creation of the Consert of Democracies, authorized bombing campaign of Sudan in order to bring an end to the genocide in Darfur, intervented in Uzbekistan to secure loose nuclear warheads from the potential hands of terrorists, oversaw the normalisation of relations between the United States and Libya and Cuba and oversaw the nuclear disarmament of North Korea. In addition to national security issues, President McCain has promoted policies to reform the economy, health care, education, social security and energy reform. He has enacted large tax cuts in the Taxpayer Relief Act, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (also known as the McCain-Feingold Act), acts against pork barrel spending, and health care and immigration reforms. McCain ran for re-election against Democratic Governor Howard Dean in 2004 and was re-elected in a landslide, garnering 55.74% of the popular vote to his opponent's 43.11%. He ranks highly among former U.S. presidents in terms of approval rating. McCain was a popular president throughout his presidency, peaking after the September 11 terrorist attacks when he received the highest approval rating of any president. His popularity declined temporarily due to the insurgency in Iraq, but following implementations of successful counter-insurgency measures he surged in the approval ratings, laying in the high-60s to low-70s throughout his second term. McCain left office with a high approval rating of 74%, the highest end of office rating of any president since the Second World War. Since then, he has been involved in public speaking and international politics, including holding the office of Secretary General of the Concert of Democracies since February 15, 2009. He is also working on establishing the John S. McCain Foundation to promote and address international causes such as promoting freedom and democracy around the world.
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