I think you might have something here. I don't know how anyone could endure what he did as a POW (God bless him) and not have some residule effects.
That reminds me of another, former, Senator. I believe it was Jeremiah Denton (I could be wrong). He too was a POW in Vietnam who ran and was elected in 1981 as a solid conservative Republican. Yet he voted like a liberal. In frustration, one of his fellow Republicans yelled at him: "What did they (the Democrats) do to you that the Vietcong couldn't?"
Jeremiah served only one term as the people replaced him with a Democrat (Shelby).