Public image of John McCain

Senator John McCain's personal character has dominated the image and perception of him. His family's military heritage, his rebellious nature as a youth, his endurance over his treatment as a prisoner of war, his resulting physical limitations, his political persona, his well-known temper, his admitted propensity for controversial or ill-advised remarks, and his devotion to maintaining his large blended family have all defined his place in the American political world more than any ideological or partisan framing (although the latter became more prominent beginning in 2008 when he was the Republican nominee for president.

McCain embraced and encouraged a popular perception of him as a "maverick" willing to buck partisan trends and stand on his own convictions. Numerous political analysts have contended that the descriptor either mischaracterizes or oversimplifies McCain's political behavior and motivations. During his 2008 campaign and the subsequent eight years of the Obama presidency, several analysts and commentators offered criticisms that McCain had drifted further from embodying the "maverick" image he had previously cultivated for himself.

Due to animus between McCain and President Donald Trump (a fellow Republican), partisan attitudes and favorability towards McCain shifted in his last years of life, particularly after McCain's decisive vote against Senate passage of the AHCA (a Trump and Republican-backed bill that would have enacted "skinny repeal" of the Affordable Care Act without passing a substitution to the ACA's provisions). By the time of his death, McCain was viewed more positively by Democrats and independents than by Republicans. In the leadup to the 2020 election (the first presidential election held after McCain's death, in which Trump was seeking re-election), Democratic nominee Joe Biden prominently evoked his cross-party friendship with McCain. McCain's widow, Cindy, endorsed Biden and filmed a television advertisement that his campaign aired in McCain's home state of Arizona. Biden won Arizona in his successful campaign against Trump, with the evoked memory of John McCain being cited as a factor in that rare Democratic presidential success in Arizona.

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