In a tribute to Sen. John McCain penned before the war hero and longtime lawmaker’s death Saturday at 81, former campaign aide Mark McKinnon shared an inside look at McCain’s temperament under fire.
Noting in the Daily Beast piece that McCain had survived not only the shooting down of his plane over North Vietnam, and the five-year imprisonment and torture that famously followed, but other harrowing flight incidents while a Navy aviator. Among those: the time an errant U.S. missile hit his plane while on the deck of a naval carrier, forcing McCain to leap from the plane’s wing onto the deck as flames engulfed the ship, killing 134.
See: To McCain’s 106-year-old mother, the late senator was more scamp than maverick
During one turbulent campaign flight, McKinnon recalls in the piece, penned as a letter to McCain under the display type “Country first: You honored our deal, John McCain. I’ll honor your legacy,” the then–2008 presidential candidate noticed McKinnon growing visibly frightened.
To the aide, McCain, referencing his own background, offered a verbal balm:
‘McKinnon, don’t worry about it. If you’re flying with McCain, you’re not going to die in a plane.’
