The imperfect hero

At 54, she has had numerous physical problems, including two back surgeries, knee surgery and in 2004, a stroke, which she has said was the result of not taking her blood pressure medication. In 1989, she became addicted to Percocet and Vicodin after back surgery. Her husband, who has always commuted between Washington and Phoenix, didn't notice. But her parents did, and in 1992 they confronted her. She relapsed in 1993 after a hysterectomy.

In 1994, she told reporters that she had been investigated by the Justice Department for stealing pills from the American Voluntary Medical Team, a now-defunct children's charity she'd founded. In exchange for not facing criminal charges, she agreed to a diversion program, underwent drug treatment and performed community service in a soup kitchen.

"I should have detected this early on," McCain told "Dateline NBC" in 1999, as he prepared for his first presidential race. "Maybe I was wrapped up too much in Washington and my ambitions to pay as much attention as I should have."

The McCains have four children together: Bridget, 17, who was adopted from Mother Teresa's orphanage; Jim, 20, who enlisted in the Marines and has served in Iraq; Jack, 22, a first classman at the U.S. Naval Academy; and Meghan, 23, who graduated last year from Columbia University in New York and writes a blog about her adventures on the campaign trail.

The Keating 5

McCain once said the worst thing that had ever happened to him, Vietnam included, was the so-called Keating 5 scandal. "The Vietnamese," he said, "didn't question my honor."

Among McCain's earliest benefactors in Arizona was Lincoln Savings and Loan chief Charles H. Keating Jr., who filled McCain's campaign coffers with more than $100,000 and hosted the McCains many times at his vacation home in the Bahamas.

Keating expected his largesse to be rewarded, and when federal regulators began looking into Lincoln's questionable lending practices and investments in the late 1980s, he turned to five senators whose coffers he'd lined: Alan Cranston of California, Donald W. Riegle Jr. of Michigan, John Glenn of Ohio and both Arizona senators, Dennis DeConcini and McCain. McCain attended two meetings with regulators at Keating's request. McCain's view was that he was seeking information on behalf of a constituent who was an important employer in his state. The regulators' view was that they were being pressured to act favorably toward Keating.