John McCain: The contrarian and rebel

So when McCain takes the stage at the Republican National Convention this week, he will find himself in a familiar role — the headstrong rebel seeking an uneasy truce with the very people he has long exasperated.

“I’m convinced this is primarily genetic,” said Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “It is simply in McCain’s nature to be contrarian. Some people are built that way. McCain is a rebel at heart, and he looks askance at both established authority and received wisdom.”

Sabato added: “This is an attractive quality to many Americans. Others wonder how someone serves as president effectively when he conceives of himself as an outsider.”

McCain’s own campaign manager, Rick Davis, described his boss as “the biggest irritant” to the current administration since President Bush took office nearly eight years ago. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal notes that McCain has broken with Republicans on everything from immigration to global warming.

“Time after time, he stood up to his party, stood up to his president,” Jindal marveled. “I’ve not always agreed with his positions, but I respect the fact that he stood on what he thought was right for his country, not for his party.”

McCain’s rebelliousness began a full seven decades ago, when he began throwing ferocious temper tantrums before the tender age of 2.

“When I got angry, I held my breath until I blacked out,” McCain wrote in his memoir “Faith of My Fathers.” “At the smallest provocation, I would go off in a mad frenzy, and then, suddenly, crash to the floor unconscious.”

McCain began directing his anger at other children as he grew older, starting fights that prompted teachers to discipline the young

hellion. At age 15, McCain was sent to Episcopal High, an elite boarding school in Alexandria, where he remembers “frequently sneaking off campus at night to catch a bus for downtown Washington, and the bars and burlesque houses on Ninth Street.”

All the while, McCain resented his family’s expectation that he should follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, both four-star admirals who had graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy.

McCain regarded the school as “a place I belonged at but dreaded.”

Resigned to his fate, McCain reported to the academy in 1954 and “embarked on four-year course of insubordination and rebellion.” He and a few other self-described “rebels against the established order” formed the “Bad Bunch” club that prowled Annapolis, Md., in search of women, booze and fistfights.

“I was an arrogant, undisciplined, insolent midshipman,” McCain admits with characteristic self-criticism that sometimes borders on the compulsive. “In short, I acted like a jerk.”

McCain graduated fifth from the bottom of his class at the academy, concluding: “I hated the place, and, in fairness, the place wasn’t all that fond of me, either.”

McCain’s new status as a commissioned naval officer did little to curb his contrarianism.

“I spent my years as a junior officer in the same profligate manner I had spent my Academy years,” he lamented in “Faith.” “I did not enjoy the reputation of a serious pilot or an up-and-coming junior officer.”

At least his job as a fighter jock allowed him some sense of individuality in an otherwise conformist military bureaucracy. But the adrenaline rush of piloting war planes ended abruptly when McCain was shot down over Vietnam and imprisoned for more than five years, including two in solitary confinement.

McCain was tortured into signing a trumped-up confession, a “failure” for which he rebukes himself to this day. On the other hand, he refused an offer of early release because fellow captives had been held longer.

“My refusal of early release taught me to trust my own judgment,” McCain reflected. “Both my confession and my resistance helped me achieve a balance in my life, a balance between my own individualism and more important things.”

Looking back on his naval career, McCain could now appreciate the merits of military conformity.

“The United States Naval Academy, an institution I both resented and admired, tried to bend my resilience to a cause greater than self-interest,” he explained. “I resisted its exertions, fearing its effect on my individuality. But as a prisoner of war, I learned that a shared purpose did not claim my identity. On the contrary, it enlarged my sense of myself.”

Although McCain tried to carry that larger sense of self into his subsequent political career, he never completely shed his congenital contrarianism. As a member of the House and then the Senate, he found himself chafing against the conventions of those mannerly institutions. A common Capitol Hill joke holds that every member of Congress has a note of apology from McCain.

Just as he had rebelled against Episcopal High School, the Naval Academy and every other conformist institution in his life, McCain has rebelled against his own party. He broke with the GOP on taxes, torture, judges and campaign finance. At times his conservative apostasies seemed more reflexive than reasoned, fortifying McCain’s reputation as a chippy, gut player.

“There’s been never a bigger maverick in this town than John McCain,” Davis said. “He sided with Democrats when he thought they were doing the right thing for the country.”

McCain, who at 72 would be the oldest first-term president, likes to compare himself with Theodore Roosevelt, who at 42 was the youngest.

“There are similarities,” Sabato said. “TR was a reformer at heart, as is McCain, and he had boundless energy, which McCain possesses despite his age. TR wanted to project American power wherever he could; so does McCain, believing in a large international role for the U.S.”

But there are also differences.

Roosevelt was “more of a pure progressive with a large dose of populism thrown in,” Sabato said. And “TR was less of a McCain contrarian.”

Bill Sammon, until recently senior White House correspondent for The Examiner, is deputy managing editor of the Fox News Washington bureau.