'White Tornado'

But even his failures just seem to deepen the character lines. The life story works politically because McCain wears it lightly. It's part of his campaign advertising but not his basic stump speech. "I'm always a little embarrassed and nostalgic when I see some of those [Vietnam] pictures," he says. When asked about his years in captivity, he insists he wasn't a hero. And, determined to avoid seeming grim, he recalls that he had some good times in prison, re-creating movies with other POWs ("One-Eyed Jacks" was a favorite). In hawking his new memoir, "Faith of My Fathers," McCain says he wants Tom Cruise to play him in the movie, but his children favor Danny DeVito.

The self-deprecating jokes help pre-empt criticism and have earned him the fondness of the national press. "One thing you can count on--I'll say something stupid--because that's the way I am," he tells reporters on his New Hampshire bus. The home-state press, particularly The Arizona Republic, has been more skeptical, citing examples of what the paper calls his "volcanic" temper. While the entire Arizona GOP congressional delegation supports his campaign, McCain has strained relations with Republican Gov. Jane Hull and former attorney general Grant Woods, a onetime McCain aide. The Republic reported last week that in 1988 McCain denounced two reporters looking into his role in the "Keating Five" scandal as "liars." "Even the Vietnamese didn't question my ethics," he snarled.

After Cindy McCain admitted in 1994 to pilfering prescription pills from a relief organization she ran, the paper's cartoonist, Steve Benson, drew her holding an emaciated black child upside down and shaking him. The caption: "Quit your crying and give me the drugs." McCain refused to speak to the paper for a year.

McCain's anger is the dark side of his candor. In 1989, he tongue-lashed several senators for changing their votes on the nomination of his friend John Tower to be secretary of Defense. The former mayor of Phoenix, Paul Johnson, says he and the senator almost came to blows one day in 1992. But McCain's friends note that most of The Arizona Republic's examples of temper tantrums are several years old. "He's changed," insists Warren Rudman, his former senate colleague. "Mellow isn't the right word, but he's learned control. When he came to the Senate [in 1987], on an anger scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being wacko angry, he was a 7; now he's a 3 or 4." One sign that the temper may be more often in check is the intense loyalty of his staff, whose tenure averages more than eight years, extraordinarily long service for aides on Capitol Hill.

Some of the anger may prove useful politically. For instance, McCain bluntly informs colleagues inside the GOP caucus that their pork-barrel projects are hypocritical for budget-balancing Republicans. "I don't win any Miss Congeniality awards in Washington," he tells New Hampshire voters with a proud smile.

The interplay of anger and honor in John McCain's life began long before Vietnam. As a 2-year-old, McCain writes, "when I got angry I held my breath until I blacked out." Reared in a Navy family that moved often, McCain responded to new schools by getting into fistfights. He was "Punk," "McNasty," "John Wayne McCain" and later, turning prematurely gray, "The White Tornado."