But with a father being very senior in the navy, and the war hero thing, he was destined for politics. He would have been a useful friend to have. The crashing thing isn't a big deal. Few astronauts ever actually put hands on the controls. Maccain would have been a perfectly adequate payload specialist.
The crashing thing was not the point - it was that McCain tended to fail at just about everything he did. I'd agree he'd be far more likely than average to end up in politics, but there's 0 chance he'd ever have been accepted as a working astronaut. Seriously, just look at the CV's of astronauts who aren't there because of DEI. They are the best of the best who excel, to an absurd degree, in just about everything that they do.
