Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir; by John McCain with Mark Salter; Random House, 349 pages; $25.Sen John McCain of Arizona, an outspoken maverick, is a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000. He is also well-known as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, leading political satirist Mark Russell to say recently in Salt Lake City that the U.S. Senate has been a very different experience for McCain -- "In Vietnam, he was only shot down once."
Although McCain could be suspected of doing what most other presidential candidates do -- publish self-serving campaign biographies -- this book hardly fits the mold. Already high on the New York Times' Best Seller list, "Faith of My Fathers" blends nicely with Tom Brokaw's astonishingly popular book about World War II soldiers, "The Greatest Generation." McCain, with the help of his administrative assistant, has told the fascinating story of his wartime exploits and connected them with great facility to those of his father and grandfather, both naval officers before him.
McCain makes no political statement at all. He simply tells his story in a down-to-earth, interesting , self-effacing style. It was not his intention to create an image of himself as a noble hero of war, even though one of the most common things people in public life lie about is their military service. Instead, McCain paints all three McCains "with warts and all," conspicuously downplaying his own contribution.
Early on, he paints a common thread in his family, declaring that all three McCains were lousy students at the naval academy. Even worse, the younger McCain was a discipline problem, "a hell-raiser, a pain in the neck." He admits to having graduated fifth from the bottom of his class, partly because of his "crude individualism."
"Demerits were handed out for every infraction, large and small, of school regulations, and I piled them up. I was chronically late for class. I kept my room in a near permanent state of disorder and filth. I mocked the dress code by wearing a ratty old jacket and tie with a pair of infrequently laundered Levi's. And I despised and resisted the caste system that first-year students were obliged to endure with good humor."
In Brazil with the service, McCain tells about a short-term exciting romance with a Brazilian fashion model, making him the envy of his friends, an experience he remembers fondly, even "embellished with age." He spent his free hours at bars and beach parties, generally "misusing his good health and youth."
In Florida, he dated an attractive but flamboyant girl he met at Trader John's, bringing her to naval parties where she was painfully out of place with Navy wives. One evening, McCain remembers, she reached into her purse for "a switchblade, popped open the blade, and with a look of complete indifference, began to clean her fingernails." The other women were alarmed. "A short time later, recognizing that our presence had perhaps subdued the party, I thanked our hosts for their hospitality, bid good-bye to the others, and took my worldly, lovely Flame of Florida to dinner."
He also declares that he received better treatment as a POW than his compatriots because the Vietnamese discovered he was the son of a highly placed admiral. When offered the opportunity for release before his fellows, he declined and spent another five years in captivity. With the political campaign recently dominated by the failure of the Republican front-runner, George W. Bush, to provide any details of his own alleged "hell-raising" youth, McCain's forthright approach is refreshing.
This makes perfect sense, of course, since McCain has become nationally known for saying exactly what he thinks, both as a senator and as a presidential candidate. But it puts his book in a decidedly different category from all the other books written so far this campaign season. Not only is it interesting, it's inspiring.
When he was shot down in Vietnam, McCain broke a leg and both arms, an untreated condition that would haunt him during his years in captivity.
McCain convincingly explains how important it was for a POW to be able to communicate with his fellow prisoners, even if done by tapping on walls of cells.
He showers compliments on two fellow prisoners, Air Force majors George "Bud" Day and Norris Overly, who, according to McCain, literally saved his life. They talked to him and nurtured him and taught him the importance of communication. He tells of playing memory games to keep his mind nimble while in solitary confinement.
"The sound of the human voice," he says, in an especially inspiring passage, "unappreciated in an open society's noisy clutter of spoken words, was an emblem of humanity to a man held at length in solitary confinement, an elegant and poignant affirmation that we possessed a divine spark that our enemies could not extinguish."