Jack McCain was in the midst of a professional ascendancy that had depended on his ability to make people happy and get them what they wanted.

As the Navy's head of legislative affairs, he was developing a reputation as an indefatigable advocate in the Washington labyrinth of cocktail parties, late-night Capitol dealmaking sessions and congressional committee hearings.

An impressed Jim Holloway, then the executive assistant for a vice admiral and later a four-star admiral and CNO himself, watched as McCain, his trademark cigar resting between his index finger and thumb, regularly lectured lawmakers on the importance of global sea power.

"He was a very effective orator with a unique style," Holloway said. "... Every now and then, he'd pause right in the middle of a point he was making and take a long drag on (his) cigar to increase the drama. Legislators and other groups loved it."

Away from the Capitol, McCain simply kept working. Thanks to his wife, his home became another venue in which to lobby at all hours with powerful men who liked to drink and drink some more. "Jack made sure to have a second brandy ready after dinner for a congressman there who was being difficult," Holloway said.

By the mid-1960s, the rising McCain was commanding the Navy's amphibious forces in the Atlantic. Among his superiors was Adm. Tom Moorer, who in 1965 directed McCain to look after a diplomat in the strife-torn Dominican Republic during a U.S. military invasion there.

Ellsworth Bunker, the American ambassador to the Organization of American States, had been dispatched by President Johnson to make peace between rival Dominican factions, and Moorer wanted McCain to keep Bunker safe and provide him with whatever he needed.

"Well, Jack McCain being Jack McCain, the next thing I knew he was having breakfast with Mr. Bunker every morning," Moorer told the Naval Institute.

By the time he became commander in chief of the Atlantic fleet in 1966, some of his naval colleagues referred sardonically to McCain as "Mister Sea Power," a reference to his stump speech about the importance of U.S. naval power.

Jack was still called Junior by colleagues, but only out of habit now. He had escaped the shadow of Slew, demonstrating a savvy with politicians and the military brass that his father had never tried to acquire. He was a McCain for a new era.

ELDER MCCAIN MOVES UP

In the late 1960s, still looking for a final promotion, McCain tried boosting the potency of his speech about sea power. He turned for assistance to his public affairs aide, naval Capt. Herbert Hetu, who thought McCain was becoming frazzled under the pressure of trying to impress superiors and keep climbing.

McCain "was a consummate politician," Hetu told the Naval Institute in a 1996 interview for the Oral History program. "It was during this period when tensions were running high that he pretty much accused me of being — I don't know if spy is the right word — but reporting back to Washington. Toward the end, he became so driven. I mean, he was on the phone more than ever back to connections and people, and talking with congressmen."

And sometimes Jack McCain fell back on his old vices, according to Hetu, who told the Naval Institute: "The admiral didn't drink but occasionally. When he did, he couldn't handle it. McCain couldn't drink. I should just say (that) in his defense, because he drank like he did everything else. If he had a drink, he'd chug-a-lug it."

Only a year after leaving for London to take over the Atlantic fleet, McCain suddenly became a contender for a job he'd long coveted: the commander in chief of the Pacific forces, CINCPAC, who is based on O'ahu. The commander oversaw all the military branches in the Pacific, and more than a million sailors, soldiers and Air Force personnel.

The new CINCPAC would be intimately involved in dealing with Vietnam, where war was raging. McCain's old friend Moorer, by then the chief of naval operations and on his way to becoming the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recommended McCain to White House aides.

There was a snag: Word came back that McCain had no support within the White House. Rather than recommend a new candidate, Moorer made a point of attending a White House diplomatic event where he knew Bunker would be in the company of President Johnson. Spotting Moorer, Johnson asked him, "Do you think McCain should be CINCPAC?"

Moorer said yes, and suggested that Johnson pose the same question to Bunker, who was standing nearby.

Johnson strolled over to the ambassador. Jack McCain's old breakfast partner did not disappoint. "Bunker was very high on McCain," Moorer said. "Johnson went right upstairs and walked in the press room and announced McCain's appointment."

The next morning, according to Hetu, McCain was "dancing around" his London office. Three decades earlier, Slew McCain had pushed him toward "command," and, at last, Junior had met and exceeded his father's challenge. "He was relaxed as I'd ever seen him," Hetu said. "Finally, that monkey was off his back."

Years later, John McCain would write of the special day: "I have always believed that for that one moment, my father, so hard driven by his often oppressive desire to honor his father's name, looked on his career with tranquility and satisfaction."

But that could not stop some colleagues from sniping at Jack McCain in the years that followed.

A few prominent Navy officers viewed the four-star admiral as an ambitious "politician" who had climbed by embracing the political orthodoxy of the times, currying the favor of superiors and offending no high-ranking governmental official.

In writing "Faith of My Fathers," John McCain offered his own view of his father's leadership: "My father was not a political admiral — a term of derision accorded to successful officers whose records lacked combat experiences comparable to those of the war fighters who disapproved of them."

It was a sensitive point for McCain, though his father's critics never had asserted a paucity of combat experience, but merely that Jack McCain's climb was hastened by his political skills. McCain went on: "He was, as his father had been, a man of strong views who spoke his mind bluntly."

Nearly every military official who assessed Jack McCain's career agreed on the wiry man's two great strengths: selling and inspiring. He demonstrated his deftest touch in the company of the powerful, particularly as he came to understand what they wanted.

In 1970, as CINCPAC, McCain delivered a briefing for Nixon as Chuck Larson, the president's naval aide and John McCain's longtime friend, looked on.

"Admiral McCain was politically astute and also very careful," Larson said. "He worried about using profanity with Nixon, with the result that, very uncharacteristically, he gave Nixon a quite stilted briefing. I doubt it had the impact that Admiral McCain had hoped. But the admiral learned from it; he studied situations and people.

"The next time he briefed Nixon, he was just himself — he knew, I think, that he had Nixon with him. He was banging on his paper with his unlit cigar and using some profanity. ... Henry Kissinger later said to me, 'We have to be careful about having McCain around the president too much, because he fires up the president.' "

Larson added, "Admiral McCain had his own kind of charisma, earthy, blunt. But whatever else anyone could ever have said about Admiral McCain, he was able to influence and lead."

And that's what counted most, Jack McCain always told people.

Admirers pointed out that he had defied others' paltry expectations of him. It was a fact that inspired his eldest son as well. Barely having made it out the Naval Academy but buoyed by his successful father's and grandfather's tenacity, John McCain began chasing a command worthy of their legacy, entering flight training in Pensacola in late 1958.

No sooner had he arrived in Florida, however, than he seem to be falling into his old habits, failing to excel in the judgment of superiors, who, just as at the academy, thought he should be paying more attention to his work.

JOHN 'A BIT DIFFICULT'

In Pensacola, as a new ensign, John McCain had begun his flight instruction at Saufley Field under Woodward "Woody" Clum, an ensign himself and only a few months older than McCain. Clum was also instructing McCain's classmate George Myers, who had graduated in the top 10 percent at the academy.

Myers swiftly impressed Clum as impeccably prepared, having read his assigned manuals and memorized the essentials of when in a training flight to be at a particular altitude, so as not to endanger other planes.

But McCain sometimes frustrated the instructor. "John was a wee bit difficult," Clum said. "John's maturity came later. I said to him, 'You got to study the procedures more, apply yourself to the books more.' It could be a problem if someone was at the wrong altitude or wasn't fully acquainted with procedures. I said to him, 'You're smart and you have guts. ... You need to get more serious here.' "

McCain roomed with Chuck Larson, the Class of 1958 star at the Naval Academy and his former Bad Bunch comrade with whom he'd set up a poker table in his room, the start to many late-night games and trips into town.

Progressing nicely in flight school and living large after hours, Larson was thoroughly happy in Pensacola. But he noticed his buddy already chafing under the old grind of regimentation.

One night, while out on liberty, they ran into a young naval flight instructor who was in the company of some women. The instructor gave them an order that a disdainful McCain viewed as a transparent effort by the officer to show off.

As Larson described it, McCain's temper flared and he presented the instructor with an order of his own, followed by an ultimatum: " 'This is not flight training now, pal; this is liberty. And we're both ensigns, so knock it off. If you continue with this, I'll ask you to step outside and prove yourself.' "

Larson said that older officers, troubled by McCain's attitude and appearance, rebuked him for what they regarded as his failure to match the example of his revered grandfather. His hair askew, his clothes wrinkled, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, the young McCain who showed up at the officers' club cut a sullen, rebellious figure.

McCain had a much better time away from the officer's club. Often he went into town and drank at a popular bar and strip club called Trader John's, where he began dating a stripper named Marie, who was known as "The Flame of Florida."

On other nights, he went to the dog track, played poker and cruised with Larson around Pensacola in his new Corvette or Larson's new Austin Healey, making the rounds of bars. When closing hour arrived and the mood struck them, Larson said, he and McCain drove across the state line into Alabama, where their partying resumed.

McCain's fun compensated for his desultory performance in the air, where he had been judged at best an average pilot. He would not be slotted for the elite air units, like the fighter jocks.

A few months later, gone from Pensacola and having entered a new stage of their flight training in Corpus Christi, Texas, McCain and Larson spent many of their free hours playing craps and roulette at nearby clubs.

McCain was paying no more attention to his manuals at his new base than he had in Pensacola, but in Corpus Christi, while other trainees applied themselves to their aviation studies, Larson noticed McCain reading thick, unfamiliar-looking books for hours at a time, several days straight.

Larson discovered McCain was reading books recommended by his father: the multivolume collection of Edward Gibbon's "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."

Impressed, Larson was also a touch saddened. This was the inquisitive side of his friend that few people knew, particularly superiors, who were preoccupied by the image of the wisecracking, sometimes insolent flyboy and partier — in part because McCain so aggressively pushed the persona.

"I watched him in Corpus Christi and I knew that John wasn't trying to be an intellectual in reading those books — that just wasn't John," Larson said. "It was that he and his father felt that to be any good as an officer, you needed a global perspective that came from an understanding of history, that there were military and political lessons that came from being well-read in important history.

"... That was the part of John no one could see in a place like Corpus Christi or anywhere else then. ... He just had an image he couldn't get away from."

It didn't help McCain's reputation in Texas that, just as in Pensacola, he wasn't thriving during his training. Working on his landings one day, he felt his engine die and, within seconds, was plummeting into the Corpus Christi Bay. Momentarily knocked out when his plane struck the water, he regained consciousness just in time to escape from the cockpit and be rescued.

It wouldn't be his last mishap while on air duty. After completing flight training and being deployed to the Mediterranean, he was flying over southern Spain one day when he decided to have some fun. He dropped very low, engaged in "daredevil clowning," as he later described it.

Unable to see power lines ahead, he knocked them down, cutting off electricity to homes in the area and creating "a small international incident," he later wrote.

He seemed to be going nowhere. Among his peers, he became known as a charming underachiever.

During the early 1960s, stationed in Norfolk, Va., while serving on the carriers Intrepid and Enterprise, he lived in a beach house with a few other pilots who shared his zest for after-hours life. Dubbed "The House on 37th Street" by Navy partygoers, McCain's Virginia Beach pad, as he later wrote, "enjoyed a reputation for hosting the most raucous and longest beach parties of any squadron in the Navy."

His career seemed to be stuck, McCain told people. Like others from his academy class, he had risen to the rank of lieutenant commander, but he wasn't receiving the high-profile assignments of other grads, particularly his class stars.

In 1964, he found reason for excitement. Returning to Pensacola for a short stint before heading on assignment to Mississippi, he struck up a relationship with a visiting woman he had known at Annapolis, where she had dated one of his midshipman classmates, Al Swanson, a football and basketball star.

Dark-haired Carol Shepp was beautiful, tall, slim and a part-time swimsuit model before marrying Swanson, with whom she had two sons. In June 1964, she got a divorce and that same year was dating the 27-year-old McCain. They wed in July 1965, in her native Pennsylvania, and McCain soon adopted her two children.

Late in 1965, McCain encountered another near-disaster when his engine quit while he was flying from Philadelphia to Norfolk after an Army-Navy football game. He ejected and safely landed on a beach as the plane crashed into trees.

Soon he returned to Meridian, Miss., where he was receiving positive evaluations as a flight instructor at a Navy field named after his grandfather. But he did not help himself by adding to his image as a cocky upstart.

One day, irritated because he could not land as quickly as he wanted at McCain Field, he quipped: "Let me land, or I'll take my field and go home." The remark earned him a reprimand from his commanding officer.

He had never gotten out from under the shadow of Slew and his father, or the weight of his own subpar reputation, he told friends. He was deeply concerned about shaming his family.

"I worried that my deserved reputation for foolishness would make command of a squadron or a carrier, the pinnacle of a young pilot's aspiration, too grand an ambition for an obstreperous admiral's son, and my failure to reach command would dishonor me and my family," he later wrote.

"The best way to raise my profile as an aviator, perhaps the only way, was to achieve a creditable combat record. Nearly all the men in my family had made their reputations at war."

DOUBTS ABOUT CAREER

Shortly after the September 1966 birth of his first child, a daughter named Sidney, McCain left for Jacksonville, Fla., to join a squadron scheduled to deploy to Vietnam. During the following year, he at last became a combat pilot, flying bombing missions over North Vietnam.

He had already completed five missions when, in July 1967, while sitting in his cockpit on the carrier Forrestal, a missile accidentally was launched from another aircraft on the Forrestal and struck McCain's A-4E Skyhawk attack jet.

McCain escaped his burning aircraft by climbing out of the cockpit and scurrying down the jet's nose, until he jumped to temporary safety. But in the next minute, the fire ignited a bomb beneath the plane. The ensuing conflagration killed 134 sailors. McCain had shrapnel buried in his chest and thighs.

Back home, recovering from his wounds in the Jacksonville area, he pondered his future, which looked bleaker than ever to him. About four weeks after the Forrestal disaster, he poured out his worries to Larson. " 'I'm really wondering if I should stay in the Navy,' " McCain said, as Larson recalled.

Larson realized that his friend had become haunted by all the stories about the Bad Bunch, the over-the-wall escapades, his towering demerits, his insolent wisecracks, the late wild nights in Pensacola and Corpus Christi — rebel McCain on the loose.

" 'I want to be a serious officer, and I'm having problems getting people to take me seriously,' " McCain told Larson.

He had no one to blame — no obvious foe such as Hunt against whom he could train his fury. His problems now were invisible and as numerous as there were higher-ranking naval officers privately bad-mouthing him. He felt himself running out of time, felt the family's shame pressing closer. McCain couldn't see any realistic hope. Perhaps he needed a new career. " 'I may have to leave,' " he told Larson.

Larson tried to encourage his friend. "You're going back into combat, and you will prove yourself," he told McCain.

McCain was unconvinced. Although he probably could have received several more months to recover from his wounds, he volunteered to return quickly to the war. By Sept. 30, 1967, he was aboard the carrier USS Oriskany, off the shores of Vietnam, taking his place in an attack squadron.

Less than four weeks later, on Oct. 26, while flying over Hanoi on his 23rd bombing mission, a surface-to-air missile blew off the right wing of his plane. He floated toward a lake in a parachute, his pursuit of command terminated for the indefinite future.

His 5 1/2 years as a POW had begun, his prospects for measuring up to his family's legacy appearing dimmer than ever. He began contemplating an alternative future for himself, one in which his rebel persona would prove to be his most formidable asset.