McCain: 'Bare-knuckled fighter' won't take no for answer

— -- John McCain had been home from a Vietnam prison less than three years when he was assigned to command the Navy's Replacement Air Group 174 in Jacksonville. The way he went about the job is similar to the way he's running his campaign and reacting to events on Wall Street 32 years later.

The unit of about 1,000 people was having trouble meeting its targets for training pilots, so McCain convened top managers and asked how to improve.

They said "Skipper, we're already doing all that can be done," Washington attorney Carl Smith says. "That was utterly unacceptable to John McCain. He basically fired several of those senior people. If they weren't going to deliver the results he wanted, he replaced them."

Smith, then 27 and a lieutenant, was one of two people McCain installed in posts meant for more senior officers. "He believed in letting capable people do the jobs regardless of their rank" or age, says Ross Fischer, another squadron member who now runs an air charter firm.

The McCain of today recently called for the firing of Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox, a former GOP congressman, and chose an untested running mate in Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, 44. He's easily recognizable as the boss Fischer describes from 1976: "He did not suffer fools. People who couldn't do the job … didn't last long."

When McCain left, Smith says, "we had achieved our pilot training rate. We had sky-high morale and record levels of re-enlistment. We had a perfect safety record." But six months later, morale and re-enlistments were back to average, training lagged, and there was a fatal accident.

"There are great leaders who inspire great performances," Smith says. "He certainly did."

No Miss Congeniality

Relying heavily on his personality and history, McCain has led two presidential bids to unexpected success. As an insurgent in 2000, he gave favorite George W. Bush a stiff challenge.

This time around, McCain's campaign ran out of money in July 2007. He fired much of his staff, shrank the focus from national to New Hampshire and toughed his way to victory.

Mark McKinnon, a media consultant to McCain in the primaries, says the problem was not McCain's management skills but his support for a bill that would have let many illegal immigrants become citizens. "It was unpopular with the (conservative GOP) base, money dried up, and the campaign went into a tailspin," McKinnon says. "He saw the problems, and he fixed them."

McCain has a prickly operating style and a temper he says he tries to control but sometimes unleashes to make a point. He says frequently that he will never win a Miss Congeniality contest.

McCain's showdowns with Senate colleagues are legendary. Former Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey, a Vietnam veteran and Democrat, worked with McCain on a panel trying to account for Vietnam POWs and MIAs. A fight erupted over a POW accused of collaborating with the enemy.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, believed he was unfairly treated and should be included in the group's report. McCain believed the POW was a traitor and insisted he be left out. An angry McCain prevailed. "He was more determined. He's a bare-knuckled fighter," says Kerrey, who supports fellow Democrat Barack Obama but admires both men.

Grassley told The Boston Globe he and McCain didn't talk for two years. Kerrey recalls an even longer estrangement after he opposed, and McCain supported, a constitutional ban on flag burning: "My recollection is he didn't speak to me for three years."

Strong, long-term ties

McCain often brings up his work with Senate Democrats. Republicans, meanwhile, have had to swallow McCain's push for the immigration bill; his tirades against the federal funding they win for state and district projects; his participation in a "gang of 14" that arranged a compromise on Bush's conservative judicial nominees; and his sponsorship of a campaign-finance law that limits political spending.

"He and I fought for four years over campaign-finance reform," former Senate GOP leader Trent Lott says. It was close to "mortal combat," he says, but "we always left every battle where we could talk the next time."

Lott and others say McCain has strong, long-term personal relationships able to weather ups and downs. The POW years are also a factor. "You forgive a lot of things when you realize what he's done and you haven't done," Lott says.

Several McCain allies say he has changed since his loss to Bush. Pollster Bill McInturff, in an interview before the campaign cut off access to advisers, said McCain is calmer and more patient: "He's worked hard to make himself ready to be president, and I believe that he is ready."

Lott agrees but also says that as president, McCain would be "unpredictable. It'll be a wild ride."

McCain's campaign has been full of twists, among them his handling of the financial crisis. Besides saying he'd fire Cox, McCain has reversed himself on whether he'd attend the first debate, suspend his campaign and approved a government rescue of American International Group.

Last week, McCain took credit for bringing House Republicans "to the table" and improving the rescue bill. But Obama calls him "erratic" and some conservatives have been sharply critical. Columnist George Will slammed McCain for "vehemence" rather than "coherence" and said he may be unsuited to be president.

"He gets on some people's nerves because he's so aggressive," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said on MSNBC after McCain parachuted into the delicate negotiations. His view? "Typical John McCain. Typical leadership."