THE LUCKIEST MAN
Life With John McCain
by Mark Salter
One of John McCain’s key staffers turns in an affecting memoir.
“Fifth from the bottom of my class, and the Republican nominee for president. Unbelievable.” So said McCain, who, though long held captive in a North Vietnamese prison and in pain from the injuries he endured there, often remarked that he was the luckiest man in the world. He did so, Salter suggests, out of a sense of genuine gratitude, but he could be prickly and contrarian, too. Though wealthy, he was tight with a dollar unless he wasn’t; though cordial, he could blister an opponent. “He didn’t think his reputation—or anyone’s reputation, for that matter—should be so delicate a thing that it couldn’t admit to failings, rough edges, and contradictions,” writes Salter, who served as co-author for seven of McCain’s books. One of McCain’s ornery edges was a refusal to be corralled into party lines: He often crossed the aisle to work with Democrats. He also wrestled the fringiest of the right-wingers in the Arizona GOP to the ground until his nemesis, Donald Trump, arrived on the scene, legitimizing the nuttiest elements and occasioning a primary wrangle. McCain prevailed, though he died of brain cancer not long after defying Trump’s demand to overturn the Affordable Care Act. Salter gives a highly readable, blow-by-blow account of such signal moments as the selection of Sarah Palin as McCain’s running mate in 2008. The author explains that she was chosen because she represented an outsider to contrast establishment figures in the race and because “she was a woman in an election where a good number of women voters were disappointed by Hillary Clinton’s defeat for the Democratic nomination.” She was also a nightmare, though McCain stuck loyally to her. Not so to Trump, who frequently and loutishly denigrated McCain.One of the best fly-on-the-wall political memoirs in recent memory. Highly recommended.