Today I review Free Ride: John McCain and the Media, by Media Matters guys David "Blinded by the Right" Brock and Paul "Being Right Is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn from Conservative Success" Waldman. Opening graf:

For those of us who have been writing critically about John McCain over the years, keeping tabs on the 2008 presidential campaign through the media is a bit like getting your war news via Saddam Hussein's old information minister: The street names may be right, but the big picture looks funny.

This paragraph of Alan Bock's kind review of my book jumped out at me:

It is hardly uncommon for a man of personal charm also to be personally pugnacious, and McCain's temper is legendary. We at the [Orang County] Register experienced it in an editorial board meeting some years ago when the senator blew his stack over some issue so minor we have forgotten what it was. Matt Welch illustrates with a number of examples that McCain is most likely to explode when a criticism can be taken as a personal affront (which he does more readily than most) and, most significantly, contains a strong element of truth. He also shows that from an early age McCain was frequently looking for a fight, eager to show he was a tough guy.

Here's my open letter to the nation's ed boards from January.

Excerpt:

[T]his book excoriates John McCain as a calculating flip-flopper and the media for mythologizing him as a straight shooter. Welch, assistant editor of the Los Angeles Times' editorial pages, compares McCain's "ritual self-criticism" to Alcoholics Anonymous's 12-step program: First, he admits his flaws, then he sublimates them to a greater cause, and finally he takes that cause to the people. The book contains entertaining tales of equivocation aboard the Straight Talk Express, as when McCain was asked this year whether contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV and he answered: "You've stumped me.... Let me find out.... I have to find out what my position was." But in the end, this unflattering portrait turns out to be surprisingly flattering.

Over at Politico, Jeremy Lott writes up the book and asks me a few questions. Excerpt:

The 12-step interpretation of McCain may seem like a stretch, but Welch offers circumstantial evidence to make it entirely plausible. McCain often uses buzzwords that are familiar to Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step program members, including warning people against “selfishness” and the real, telling clanker, “egotism.”

In his books and speeches, McCain is a “serial pre-emptive confessor of his sins,” said Welch. Aggressive public confession is the beginning of all 12-step movements. (As in “Hi, my name is John McCain, and I’m running for president.”)

McCain has “learned the value of saying, ‘Oh, I’m a bad person, I’ve made mistakes, I’m flawed.’ It’s part of his charm, and it’s done wonders for his career,” Welch said.

The Arizona senator had to learn that trick somewhere. Both McCain’s late father and his second wife, Cindy, were frequenters of 12-step programs — AA and Narcotics Anonymous, respectively.

This should be troubling, said Welch, because McCain’s new 12-step rhetoric coincided with changes in his views of foreign and domestic policy.

McCain had been a cautious realist on foreign policy whose military service and status as a Vietnam prisoner of war lent him real heft. His default positions on economic and social issues were in keeping with his family’s Republicanism and Arizona’s conservatism.

The new 12-step McCain became an advocate of invading countries for looking at us funny. He supported going into Iraq during the 2000 primaries, was the chief advocate for the troop surge in Iraq and is itching for a fight with Iran.

A newish mini-review, from Atlantic blogger Matthew Yglesias:

At any rate, in the event that a McCain surge does materialize, the antidote is Matt Welch's new book McCain: The Myth of a Maverick, a comprehensive dissection of the man who for a long time held the title of America's most overrated politician and who still in many circles is viewed as something of a sympathetic, tragic figure.

In the book, Matt builds upon some earlier writing of his on McCain through the revolutionary (given the subject matter) method of actually examining McCain record and views than the more traditional approach of wishful thinking and ideological projection. In essence, it's the story of a man who succeeded in turning his own life around through embracing hard-line American nationalism and then decided to adopt this as a governing philosophy before becoming a media darling in a way that left him simultaneously overexposed and underanalyzed.