John Sidney McCain was born on American territory in the Panama Canal Zone. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1958 and became a pilot. During the Vietnam War, McCain was a prisoner of war (POW) from 1967 to 1973. He retired from the navy in 1981 and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona the next year. In 1986, he was elected to the Senate, following the retirement of conservative icon Barry Goldwater (1909-1998). McCain quickly established a reputation as a maverick who voted on principle rather than following the party line. He was a staunch supporter of the military and a moderate on social issues.

McCain ran for the Republican nomination for the presidency in 2000. He won the New Hampshire primary, but lost in the more conservative Southern primaries to George W. Bush. He then withdrew from the race and subsequently campaigned on behalf of Bush. McCain supported a range of national security initiatives and missions after the September 11 terrorist attacks, including Operation Enduring Freedom, the Patriot Act, and the 2003 Iraq War. Meanwhile, in 2002 McCain joined with Democratic senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin to sponsor a broad bipartisan campaign finance reform initiative (the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2003, commonly known as the McCain-Feingold Act). The senator also played a major role in the 2004 formation of the "Gang of Fourteen," a moderate group of seven Republican and seven Democratic senators who agreed to compromise on Bush's judicial appointments.

During the 2004 presidential election, Democratic candidate John F. Kerry approached McCain about serving as his vice presidential candidate. McCain declined and instead campaigned vigorously on behalf of Bush.

McCain's time as a POW led him to oppose the Bush administration's policies toward detainees in the war on terror. The administration opposed constraints on the treatment of detainees, interrogation methods, and length of detention. McCain helped craft a compromise in 2005 that prohibited cruel or degrading treatment of detainees but also retroactively protected U.S. military and intelligence from prosecution or civil suit for past involvement in interrogations. The law, the Detainee Treatment Act (commonly known as the McCain Detainee Amendment), requires interrogations to be held in compliance with existing military regulations. The next year, McCain arranged another deal over detainee rights and the use of military tribunals in prosecuting unlawful combatants. McCain argued that unless the United States adopted more humane policies toward detainees, American POWs were more likely to face torture and mistreatment.

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