Former US presidential aspirant Senator John McCain passes away after succumbing to brain cancer

FORMER US presidential aspirant and Republican Party chieftain who represented Arizona in Congress for 60 years Senator John McCain has passed away the age of 81 following a long-running battle with brain cancer.

This morning, his office announced his demise and tributes have been pouring in from all across America and from across the world. President Barack Obama, who ran and won the US presidency against Senator McCain in 2008, led the outpouring of condolences and tributes to the veteran.

A spokesman for Senator McCain said: “Senator John Sidney McCain III died at 4.28 pm on August 25, 2018. With the senator when he passed were his wife Cindy and their family. We are all in his debt."

President Obama added: “John McCain and I were members of different generations, came from completely different backgrounds and competed at the highest level of politics. However, we shared, for all our differences, a fidelity to something higher, the ideals for which generations of Americans and immigrants alike have fought, marched and sacrificed.”

Former US vice president Al Gore, said: “I always admired and respected John from the opposite side of the aisle because he thrived under pressure and would work to find common ground, no matter how hard.”

Senator McCain represented Arizona since 1982, first in the House of Representatives for two terms and then at the senate for more than three decades, since 1986, during which he twice sought the presidency. He ran for president in 2000, losing the Republican nomination to President George W. Bush, and in 2008, he ran again, this time winning his party’s nomination but he lost the general election to President Obama.

During his lifetime, Senator McCain was widely celebrated as a prisoner of war after his plane was shot down over Hanoi in 1967. A few months earlier, then a US Navy pilot, he had survived a deadly fire on the USS Forrestal, an aircraft carrier.

He was the son and grandson of navy admirals and was held for more than five years in a Hanoi prison, where he was tortured and often deprived of sleep and food. When he was offered early release by his captors, he refused to go home before the other prisoners of war.

In the upper chamber of Congress, Senator McCain established himself as a leading voice on national security and foreign policy, particularly in his capacity as chairman of the powerful Armed Services Committee. He also cultivated a reputation as an independent willing to work with Democrats on immigration and campaign finance.

Senator McCain was also a fierce critic of Russia and a strong proponent of an aggressive US role against the Islamic State extremist group. In July 2017, Senator McCain was diagnosed with a tumour called a glioblastoma, which is an aggressive type of brain cancer but returned to the Senate after his diagnosis and cast a pivotal vote against a Republican bill to undo the Affordable Care Act – Obamacare.

Since December, he never returned to the Senate as he underwent treatment in Arizona, where he kept a low profile, issuing written statements on major news developments but offering the public few glimpses of his condition. Senator McCain collaborated with a long-time adviser, Mark Salter, on a memoir The Restless Wave, that was released in May.

He is survived by his mother Roberta, his wife, Cindy, two sons and a daughter from a first marriage named Douglas, Andrew and Sidney. He had four children from his second marriage named Meghan McCain, Jimmy McCain, Jack McCain and Bridget McCain, a brother Joseph McCain, a sister Jean McCain Morgan and five grandchildren.