John McCain's Memoir

I just finished John McCain's 1999 book, Faith of My Fathers, as I always try to read books by the major candidates. This book was written before he planned to run for president in 2008, clearly. While I have no doubt the Senator was honest in this book, his admitted bad behavior and obstinence in his early years was a bit scary. He managed to barely make it through the Naval Academy and then continued his push back as he became a U.S. Navy pilot and eventually began to fly missions in Viet Nam.

The book was interesting but a little repetitive. He is generous in his praise for others, especially his father and grandfather, and then later his fellow POWs. He is self-effacing and overly modest about the terrible trials he had to go through in the Hanoi Hilton and other enemy prisons. He often came off, to me at least, as the overly eager junior naval officer who was only trying to please his father and his senior officers. I know that this may not now translate to today's McCain. I know that I am different from who I was at 18 and even 25. But his inability to control his quickly rising gorge, even in the past few years, might be scary to some.

Like Obama's first book, this book was written before this campaign was not yet perfectly formed in his mind. I would like to read a newer and fresher book from McCain on his views of how to handle the myriad problems our country faces today. Obama penned his own books and did not have his thoughts interpreted and filtered and enhanced by a co-author. I would like to read the same from John McCain without 90% of the work done by Mark Salter (from McCain's own statement about how much of the books were really his).