Thanks for that. Nice.
This guy might be to blame as well.
Inventing John McCain
John McCain, maverick icon of American duty and patriotism, is as much a literary creation as a political one. Meet the author.
April 13, 2008
MERIDIAN, Miss. - John McCain came all the way to a Victorian opera house at this old Southern railroad junction to ponder his ancestors.
Not far from an airfield named for his grandfather, on a stage bedecked with black-and-white family photos, McCain reflected on the notions of honor and courage and duty passed down through generations as he confessed to having "been an imperfect servant of my country for many years."
With this look backwards in search of meaning, McCain was reveling in his greatest political asset. Perhaps more than any other national candidate in recent memory, McCain has relied on the promise of a transcendent character guaranteed by personal experience, the reason he has been able to convince voters - especially those who disagree with him on key issues - of his ability to rise above partisanship and privilege, artifice and ambition.
This is a political project, but also a literary one, initiated by Mark Salter, the Arizona senator's closest aide and one frequently described as his alter ego, who for nearly two decades has made telling McCain's stories his own life's work. As coauthor of a pair of memoirs and nearly every considered word out of McCain's mouth, Salter has transformed his boss into a character worthy of literature, enlivening his inner conflicts and drawing out his motivations. Salter has given the blunt McCain a new voice as a reflective narrator of his own actions - made evident in the "imperfect servant" line, in which our protagonist earns our trust by acknowledging his flaw.
McCain was first elected to Congress as a war hero beneath the slogan "a name Arizonans are talking about"; his background as a decorated former prisoner of war made him a celebrity candidate with an instant resume for higher office. But it was Salter who found in McCain's life journey something greater: the organizing principle for a distinctive public identity.
That has become central to McCain's message as he girds to face Barack Obama, another candidate who uses an unusual biographical journey to vouch for an exceptional character capable of defying the conventional bounds of politics. Salter is preparing for a general-election battle that could be as much a clash of personal mythologies as one of ideologies.
"He has run entirely on his persona being different," Salter said after Obama's Super Tuesday victories in February. "It's important that we puncture that myth."
https://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/04/13/inventing_john_mccain/