Maverick man

Eight years after a messy showdown with the religious right, Sen. John McCain is building bridges to evangelicals and gaining traction in his campaign for the White House. “I was angry,” he said. “And I’m not angry anymore.” | Jamie Dean

Arizona Sen. John McCain wishes to see again one person from the past: a prison guard at the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" where McCain—then a pilot in the U.S. Navy—endured five-and-a-half years of imprisonment, deprivation, and torture as a POW during the Vietnam War.

But it's not revenge that causes McCain's voice to catch when he speaks of this jailer. Instead, it's reconciliation.

During a recent campaign appearance in Washington, D.C., the Republican presidential candidate quietly described how the Vietnamese guard intervened one evening when McCain's captors bound him with ropes and left him to suffer in a painful position for hours—a common form of torture for POWs in the camp.