Grand Old Book Party

If you're just gearing up for the GOP convention, here's a rundown of the best literature on John McCain and the future of the Republican Party.

McCain himself has written several autobiographical works with Mark Salter over the years, which explains why we don't see that many other McCain biographies. But they do exist. Some are even worth reading. For juicy anecdotes about young McCain, see Robert Timberg's "The Nightingale's Song," published in 1995 but since chopped and repackaged as "John McCain: An American Odyssey." (Read the original; it's got Jim Webb.) Demerits, Brazilian model girlfriends, run-ins with the cops -- McCain was not, as Rudy Giuliani might say, an altar boy. At the Naval Academy, he dressed sloppily. "What do you think your grandfather would say?" an officer once asked him. "Frankly, Commander, I don't think he'd give a rat's ass," came the reply. Timberg, a vet himself, clearly adores the man.

And he's not the only one, according to "Free Ride: John McCain and the Media," by David Brock and Paul Waldman. The Media Matters duo set out to indict the MSM for its too-friendly coverage of McCain, but their work often reads like an unintentional ode to the senator's media savvy. They're not wrong, though. Squarely in Camp McCain is Elizabeth Drew's well-intentioned snorer "Citizen McCain," chronicling the senator's campaign-finance crusade. Paul Alexander's "Man of the People: The Maverick Life and Career of John McCain" should likewise be sold with pom-poms.

But McCain skepticism is alive and well. Take Matt Welch's "McCain: The Myth of a Maverick," a meticulous upending of the candidate's public identity. Oddly enough, it mirrors McCain's latest line of attack against Obama, only painting McCain as the lightweight celebrity snob. Welch argues that McCain "elevates his own self-interest over what's good for the country."

The authenticity conundrum also gets heavy treatment in a slim volume by David Foster Wallace, "McCain's Promise: Aboard the Straight Talk Express With John McCain and a Whole Bunch of Actual Reporters, Thinking About Hope." Elements of McCain's campaign, Wallace writes, "indicate that some very shrewd, clever marketers are trying to market this candidate's rejection of shrewd, clever marketing." Wallace would know: The article first appeared in Rolling Stone in 2000, then as a download-only e-book, then in a collection of Wallace's work and finally as its own paperback.

Wallace also has the best account of the most famous episode of McCain's life -- his capture by the North Vietnamese, his torture, his refusal of release "with all his basic primal human self-interest howling at him." Wallace retells the story with the pathos of someone relating it for the first time, unlike McCain himself, whose personal accounts, starting with a 1973 article in U.S. News & World Report, have tended toward the laconic. Wallace reminds the reader just how selfless -- not to mention plain freaking crazy, by any pragmatic measure -- McCain's actions were.

If you like your campaign propaganda undistilled, check out Michael Goldfarb's on-message blog, the McCain Report (www.johnmccain.com/McCainReport/). McCain's YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/user/JohnMcCaindotcom) has all the speeches and ads you'll ever need. And if you want to see how much (or how little) has changed, watch this ad from McCain's 1982 congressional campaign (http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stump/archive/2008/08/22/mccain-campaign-video-exhumed.aspx).

In "Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream," Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam predict that the GOP's future depends on its ability to win "Sam's Club voters" -- working-class, non-college-educated Americans. Their unorthodox prescription: government investment (yikes!) that fosters independence and upward mobility (phew!).

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, meanwhile, has proposed nine steps of "real change" that the party must implement in order to avoid "real disaster." An anti-Obama campaign isn't enough; the GOP must repeal the gas tax, open the national petroleum reserve, declare a year-long earmark moratorium and make English the official national language, among other policy tweaks.

Neither plan has much to do with McCain, who is too anomalous to represent the party's past and too old to represent its future. But with the GOP struggling nationwide, that might actually help him.

jcbeam@gmail.com

Christopher Beam is a Slate political reporter.