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Among the most painful defeats were his dad's, not his. He has often told the story of the day in 1964 when his father lost a Senate bid and Yale chaplain William Sloane Coffin told the young freshman that "your father lost to a better man." Twenty-eight years later, Bush's father lost again, to an Arkansas Governor the family considered a lesser man. "W" told a longtime aide that his father had asked him to secretly reconnoiter his 1992 campaign and determine if it had anything to worry about. "W" did just that and reported back. "He assured his dad that it was good enough to win," said the confidant. When the old man lost, the son had to live with the guidance he'd given--and the spectacle of the presidency that followed.
If the Bushes, even more than most aggrieved Republicans, watched Clinton in office and dreamed of toppling him someday, none of them imagined that "W" would be the one to do it. It seemed much more logical to think it would be the more polished second son Jeb who would follow the old man into politics. When both boys ran for statewide office in 1994, the family's chips were on Jeb in Florida, not George in Texas, to win. So when the reverse happened, "W" had pulled off the most outrageous stunt of all.
In the introduction to Faith Of My Fathers, McCain bares the tattoo on his soul: "They were my first heroes," he writes of his father and grandfather, "and earning their respect has been the most lasting ambition of my life." As he tells their story, you wonder what kind of burden they represent, and what kind of gift. Sure, his father chain-smoked and drank too much, and his grandfather was a cusser, but both walk on water across the pages. His inheritance is both sword and shield: McCain too has his flaws, but he admits to them without fear because like his fathers before him, he did his service and, against all odds, came back a hero.
McCain's grandfather John S. ("Slew") McCain was the World War II commander of a legendary task force under Admiral William Halsey. When he would pass through the U.S. during the war, McCain's mother would wake up the kids in the middle of the night and sit them on the sofa so she could take pictures of them with their famous grandfather. He died of a sudden heart attack five days after he stood on the deck of the battleship Missouri to watch the Japanese surrender. The obituary ran on the front page of the New York Times; President Truman sent condolences.
How could McCain's father Jack, who followed his father to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., and into the service as a submariner, possibly live up to the stories of Admiral McCain routing the Japanese at the Battle of Leyte Gulf? By rising through the ranks to take command of the entire Pacific Fleet, with 85 million sq. mi. as his domain. Young John was not at his father's change-of-command ceremony, but he writes that "I have always believed that for that one moment, my father, so hard driven by his oppressive desire to honor his father's name, looked on his career with tranquillity and satisfaction." He had, in official standing at least, surpassed his dad.