In the beginning there was The Story. It had danger, tension, nationalism, a hero, a moral and an outcome. It has also held out the possibility of a tantalising sequel, the notion that John McCain might ride The Story all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
But the trajectory to the US Presidency is neither linear nor simple, and besides, others with stories have failed to translate mythic war-hero pasts into present electoral victories.
Now, in the wake of an upset in the New Hampshire primary, voters are looking more closely at John McCain, the Republican Party senator from Arizona. Everyone is learning about The Story, and it has ignited voter interest in a way that has not been seen in American politics for decades.
McCain is a very different man from other combat veterans who have run for president, in part because the story of his Vietnam experience still resonates with meaning and is still very much a part of the man Americans are getting to know today.
It was Christmas Eve in 1968. North Vietnamese prison guards at the infamous Hanoi Hilton ushered 50 American prisoners-of-war from their cells to a church service that was going to be filmed.
McCain had been in solitary confinement for nine months. He began talking with his fellow prisoners. A guard shouted at him, "No talking!"
"F . . . you!" McCain replied. "This isn't Christmas. This is a propaganda show." With that, McCain was returned to his cell. His captors resumed beating him.
The story of McCain's 5 1/2 years as a prisoner is compelling enough. On October 26th, 1967, Lieut Cdr McCain began his 23rd bombing mission over Vietnam, his mission the destruction of a power plant in central Hanoi.
A surface-to-air missile hit his plane, shearing off the right wing, and he ejected into a lake. Both of his arms and one leg were broken. An angry mob gathered and beat him, and he was delivered to the Hanoi Hilton, where he endured beatings and torture, including a stint strung up by ropes tied to his broken arms. Denied medical attention, McCain was near death, but was saved by two fellow prisoners. Today he still cannot raise his arms above his head.
But it is the story of one incident during his capture that many feel defines McCain the man, as well as Senator McCain, the politician who is campaigning on themes of honour and honesty. The US Military Code of Conduct contends that prisoners must be released in the order in which they were captured. McCain's captors soon learned that he was the son and grandson of two decorated navy admirals. s capture, his father Admiral Jack McCain was named commander of all US forces in the Pacific.
Sensing a propaganda coup, the North Vietnamese offered him early release. Despite the urging to accept by fellow prisoners concerned about his health, McCain refused unless other prisoners serving longer were also released. That refusal earned him two years of solitary confinement.
The same sense of honour that would compel a man to endure additional torture remains with McCain today. Many say it is the reason he is running for president, that it is the reason he is fierce in his desire to remove special interests and big money from their central role in American elections.
But it takes more than a good, even heroic, story to connect with voters. It is the fact that McCain, though underfunded and out-organised by the front-runner, George W. Bush, has managed to beat Bush in New Hampshire and is threatening to upset the pundit predictions that is catching fire.
McCain was born in a naval hospital in the Panama Canal Zone on August 29th, 1936. Like his father and grandfather, he joined the navy and began a military career. Like them also, he was not a particularly good student and was known as a rascal. He volunteered for duty in Vietnam at the height of the war.
After his release as a POW, McCain went through a difficult period, a period that by his own admission involved womanising and the end of his first marriage. Yet his first wife remains a loyal supporter today.
He moved to Washington and took a job as the navy's liaison to the Senate. When he met Cindy Hensely, the daughter of a wealthy Arizona businessman 18 years his junior, he moved to Phoenix and went to work for her father. They married in 1980.
When a congressional seat opened up in Phoenix, McCain ran and won. By 1986, when the legendary maverick conservative, Barry Goldwater, announced his retirement, McCain was ready for the Senate. It is interesting to note that by 1998, his third term in the Senate, he was re-elected in Arizona with 70 per cent of the vote. He won 65 per cent of the women's vote, 55 per cent of the Hispanic vote, and even 40 per cent of the Democratic vote.
Today McCain says he wants to be president, but that he will be just fine if he is not. He has built a respectable record of legislation in the Senate. He seems more comfortable on the campaign trail, surrounded nearly 20 hours a day by people asking him questions, than any other candidate. His marriage is solid, to the point where he jokes that he and Cindy will be divorcing soon on the ground that he has discovered "she doesn't love me as much as I do".