'White Tornado'

After the POWs were finally released in 1973, McCain learned politics working as a Navy liaison in the Senate. He met Cindy, the daughter of a wealthy Arizona beer distributor, in Hawaii in 1980. Neither knew the other's real age until they got their marriage license (she had lied to seem older; he younger). William Cohen, now secretary of Defense, was the best man. The couple moved to the Phoenix area explicitly to run for Congress in 1982. The carpetbagger issue died abruptly when McCain said "the place I've lived longest in my life was Hanoi." When one of his opponents contacted his first wife looking for dirt (she supports her ex-husband politically and refused to comply), McCain threatened to beat him up. He won easily, and moved up to the Senate in 1986, despite a campaign gaffe in which he called the Leisure World retirement community "Seizure World."

Shortly after arriving in the Senate, McCain faced a challenge that he says made him feel worse than anything in Vietnam. Over the years, McCain had received $112,000 in campaign contributions and nine free trips to the Bahamas from Charles Keating, a developer and savings and loan kingpin who later went to jail for the biggest S&L rip-off of all. Keating wanted McCain to pressure federal regulators on his behalf; when the senator refused, Keating called him "a wimp." But McCain did attend two meetings with the regulators, thereby becoming immortalized as one of the "Keating Five." In 1991, the Senate Ethics Committee dealt harshly with most of the other senators but cleared McCain of everything except "poor judgment," an assessment he does not dispute. His fervor for campaign-finance reform is a direct result of that experience. Once again, the subject is honor.

McCain's presidential campaign will ultimately rise or fall on whether he can give that ancient idea new life. The strength of our democratic system, our faith in its integrity, is being sapped and dishonored by money. Whatever happens to his own political ambitions, John McCain knows honor, personal and national, and may help the rest of us light our way back to it.

Newsweek Poll

Believe It
McCain scores on sincerity: 58% of GOP primary voters say he's a man who says what he believes. But Bush is ahead 67% to 50% on the ability to get things done.