Prison Cells, Tourists And One-Liners

At just about midday on a busy street in Hanoi last week, a three-car convoy pulled up to the sidewalk that runs along Truc Bach Lake and disgorged a small group of Americans. Leading the pack was a tour guide with a head of white hair, a stiff gait and enormous Ray-Ban sunglasses. "Here it is, ladies and gentlemen!" John McCain announced as he paced over to the modest concrete monument that commemorates the day in October 1967 when a Vietnamese missile shot down his plane and he was pulled from the lake by an irate mob. And unless you spent the entire primary season on the phone trying to match wits with Regis, you know McCain endured the next 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war, subject to torture and prolonged isolation.

So one would think that returning to Hanoi would be an occasion for solemn reflection. But this was his eighth visit since the war, and as he inspected the monument, its facade cracked and stained by a vandal's splash of red paint, the Arizona Senator wasn't exactly overcome with emotion. "At least it's better than last time," he noted wryly, "when the grass had grown all around it and there was bird crap everywhere." He has passed his love for the well-timed wisecrack on to his son Jack, who at 14 was visiting Vietnam for the first time. Jack listened as his father explained what happened that day 32 years ago, how he had swooped down on central Hanoi and released his bombs over the city's power station just before the surface-to-air missile tore the right wing off his A4E-Skyhawk. But when Jack learned that his father's bombs had missed their target, he turned to him with a sly smile. "All that, and you didn't even hit it?" McCain laughed.

And yet, for all his nonchalance, returning to Vietnam for McCain is like dipping into his life-force. Saying John McCain could have succeeded as he has in politics without having been a POW in Vietnam is like saying George W. Bush would be the Republican nominee for President if his name were George W. Smith. It's not that it's impossible; it's just impossible to imagine.

When McCain reminisces, as he did outside the former POW prison where he was savagely forced to sign a war-crimes confession, his voice is tinged with the nostalgia others feel for their bright college years. "My cell was over there," he says. "That was the interrogation room. That's where the guards ate." As he speaks, Vietnamese pedestrians walk by and give him and his press entourage quizzical looks. Young boys try to sell him postcards. Though this is the week Vietnam celebrates the 25th anniversary of its victory, in a country where 53% of the population is under 25, the "American War" is a fading memory.

McCain's trip, however, was a reminder of the U.S. media's endless fascination with his personal story. It's testimony, too, to his style of giving total access to journalists and the unprecedented favorable press he receives in turn. Remarkably, nbc covered McCain's expenses and those of his wife and staff; more than half a dozen other news organizations tagged along on their own dime.

For the Hanoi government, McCain is not a source of infatuation, but he is a significant figure--and sometimes an irksome one. His outburst last week that "the wrong guys won" wasn't exactly diplomatic. Still, McCain was instrumental in pushing the U.S. to normalize relations with its former enemy. In Hanoi, he used his clout to argue for a free-trade agreement with the U.S. that has been stalled in recent months. And he attended a "repatriation ceremony"--the transfer to American custody of the recently discovered remains of U.S. servicemen. It is part of reconciliation, says McCain.

To get a sense of McCain abroad, imagine Mark McGwire traveling overseas, ignored by locals who know nothing of baseball but surrounded by adoring Americans. Wherever McCain goes, Americans shake his hand and tell him how inspired they were by his campaign. They are like Ken and Kim High, tourists from San Francisco who last week stopped by the prison turned museum known to POWs as the Hanoi Hilton. "We were talking about how John McCain had been held here and everything he went through," said Ken, "when all of sudden, we turned the corner and there he was."