Death looming, John McCain Battles Brain Tumor and Reminisces

Several news sources are reporting that Sen. John McCain, 81 has died of a Glioblastoma at age 81. The US Senator and former US Presidential candidate has not been seen publicly in several weeks. He announced last year that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor.

But as of May 6, 2018 McCain was alive and meeting with friends and supporters as he fights what is no doubt a losing battle.

The New York Times says he has met with former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden, and urged him not to walk away from politics.

No one is saying goodbye, not explicitly. The son and grandson of admirals, Mr. McCain "doesn't like overt sentimentality," as his friend the former chief of staff Grant Woods put it. But his visitors are telling him they love him, how much he has meant to them - and together they are taking care of unfinished business.

The Republican senator encouraged the former Democratic vice president to "not walk away" from politics, as Mr. Biden put it before refusing to discuss a possible 2020 presidential run. Mr. McCain is using a new book and documentary to reveal his regret about not selecting former Senator Joseph I. Lieberman as his running mate in 2008. His intimates have informed the White House that their current plan for his funeral is for Vice President Mike Pence to attend the service to be held in Washington's National Cathedral but not President Trump, with whom Mr. McCain has had a rocky relationship.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/us/politics/john-mccain-arizona.html

John Sidney McCain III is an American politician serving as the senior United States Senator from Arizona since 1987. He was the Republican nominee for President of the United States in the 2008 election, which he lost to Barack Obama.

McCain was born in 1936 in what was then the US controlled Panama Canal Zone.

McCain graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1958 and followed his father and grandfather-both four-star admirals-into the United States Navy. He became a naval aviator and flew ground-attack aircraft from aircraft carriers. During the Vietnam War, he was almost killed in the 1967 USS Forrestal fire. While McCain was on a bombing mission over Hanoi in October 1967, he was shot down, seriously injured, and captured by the North Vietnamese. He was a prisoner of war until 1973. McCain experienced episodes of torture and refused an out-of-sequence early repatriation offer. The wounds that he sustained during war have left him with lifelong physical disabilities. He retired from the Navy as a captain in 1981 and moved to Arizona, where he entered politics. In 1982, McCain was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served two terms. He was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986 and easily won re-election five times, most recently in 2016.

While generally adhering to conservative principles, McCain at times has had a media reputation as a "maverick" for his willingness to disagree with his party on certain issues. After being investigated and largely exonerated in a political influence scandal of the 1980s as a member of the Keating Five, he made campaign finance reform one of his signature concerns, which eventually resulted in passage of the McCain–Feingold Act in 2002. He is also known for his work in the 1990s to restore diplomatic relations with Vietnam, and for his belief that the Iraq War should have been fought to a successful conclusion. McCain has chaired the Senate Commerce Committee, and he opposed pork barrel spending. He was a member of the bi-partisan group known as the Gang of 14 who played a key role in alleviating a crisis over judicial nominations.

McCain entered the race for the Republican nomination for President in 2000, but he lost a heated primary season contest to Governor George W. Bush of Texas. He secured the nomination in 2008 after coming back from early reversals, but was defeated by Democratic nominee Barack Obama in the general election, losing by a 365–173 electoral college margin. He subsequently adopted more orthodox conservative stances and attitudes and largely opposed actions of the Obama administration, especially in regard to foreign policy matters. By 2013, however, he had become a key figure in the Senate for negotiating deals on certain issues in an otherwise partisan environment. In 2015, McCain became chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. In July 2017, he was diagnosed with brain cancer; since the diagnosis he has taken a reduced role in the Senate.