Senator John McCain, the Vietnam war hero turned senator and presidential candidate, has died aged 81. Mr McCain died on Saturday surrounded by his family, a short statement released by his office said.
He was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour in July 2017 and had been undergoing medical treatment.
His family had announced that Mr McCain, who left Washington in December, had decided to stop treatment on Friday.
Mr McCain’s daughter Meghan said the task of her lifetime would now be “to live up to his example, his expectations, and his love.
“The days and years to come will not be the same without my dad – but they will be good days, filled with life and love, because of the example he lived for us,” she wrote in a statement shared on Twitter.
The six-term senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee was diagnosed after doctors discovered his tumour during surgery to remove a blood clot from above his left eye last July.
His family said he would lie in state in Phoenix, Arizona, and in Washington DC before a funeral at the Washington National Cathedral and his burial in Annapolis, Maryland.
McCain fought hard to the very end
John McCain was born on the eve of World War II, at the dawn of the “American Century” – a time when the US was at the peak of its political, military and cultural power. He dies at what could be considered that age’s twilight, as the nation turns inward and contemplates walls, literal and metaphorical, to insulate itself from the rest of this world.
The life of the senator from Arizona marked the arc of this journey.
He suffered, as the nation suffered, from the morass of Vietnam.
As a young politician he was tempted by the lure of power and money, caught up in an influence-peddling scandal that nearly cost him his career.
In his first run for president in 2000, he capitalised on an anti-establishment sentiment and longing for authenticity that would later come to crest with Donald Trump’s election. In 2008, he won the Republican nomination, only to see his hopes dashed by the phenomenon that was Barack Obama and a crumbling US economy.
Sarah Palin, who was Mr McCain’s running mate during his 2008 bid for president, said the world had lost “an American original”, sharing a picture of herself with the man she called her friend.
Former vice-president, long-time friend and political opponent Joe Biden said Mr McCain’s “impact on America hasn’t ended”.
“John McCain’s life is proof that some truths are timeless,” he said in a statement. “Character. Courage. Integrity.
“A life lived embodying those truths casts a long, long shadow. John McCain will cast a long shadow.”
