| abstract
| - John Sidney McCain III (born August 29, 1936) is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the oldest man elected to the office of the presidency, and the first president born outside of contiguous United States. McCain previously served as the senior United States Senator from Arizona from January 1987 until he resigned after his election to the presidency in November 2008. 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, and for his belief that the war in Iraq should be fought to a successful conclusion. McCain has chaired the Senate Commerce Committee, has opposed spending that he considered to be pork barrel, and played a key role in alleviating a crisis over judicial nominations. McCain ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, but lost a heated primary contest to George W. Bush. In 2008, after coming back from early reversals in the Republican Party presidential primaries, he secured his party's nomination. In the 2008 presidential election, he defeated Democratic nominee Barack Obama and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. In April 2011, he announced that he would be running for re-election in 2012 and on November 6, 2012, he defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to win a second term. As president, McCain signed economic stimulus legislation in the form of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 in response to the 2007–2009 recession in the United States. Other major domestic policy initiatives include the Comprehensive Budget Control and Deficit Reduction Act of 2010, the Line-Item Veto and Rescissions Act of 2009, the Commercial Banking Stability and Security Act, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010, and the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act. In foreign policy, McCain announced the end of U.S. military involvement in the Iraq War, increased troop levels in Afghanistan, signed the New START arms control treaty with Russia, ordered U.S. military involvement in Libya and Syria, ordered U.S. military involvement against Al Qaeda in Yemen, and ordered the military operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan..
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