Faith of his fathers
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/08/faith-of-his-fathers-2.php
Scott Johnson
Aug. 25 2018
Despite whatever political disagreements I had with Senator McCain over the years, I am deeply saddened by the news of his death today at the age of 81 from the aggressive form of brain cancer with which he has been contending over the past year. I found the occasions on which I spent time in his company to be a personal highlight. He was an American original. The New York Times has posted an obituary here. We extend prayers on behalf of him and his family.
In 2008 when Senator McCain was about to become the Republican nominee for president, I reread McCain’s Faith of My Fathers (written with Mark Salter). The book is subtitled “A family memoir,” but – read in light of Andrew Ferguson’s Weekly Standard article on books by the leading presidential candidates – we could see that it was a campaign book. Originally published in 1999, the book arrived just in time to promote McCain’s 2000 presidential candidacy. Although the book is indeed a family memoir, the heart of the book is devoted to McCain’s experience as a prisoner of war. I thought I might revisit my observations about the book tonight.
McCain generally avoided public discussion of his own prisoner-of-war experience before writing Faith of My Fathers. In chapter 7 of the 1995 book The Nightingale’s Song, for example, Robert Timberg explored McCain’s experience during the five-and-a-half years he spent as a prisoner of war. Timberg relegated comments about his research to the source notes in the small print at the end of the book:
(Snip)
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And to those of you who have nothing good to say about John McCain, I have this to say to you
YOUR MAMA!
Make sure you watch his funeral so you can hear Obama give the eulogy McCain asked him to give. The family has probably got it already written for him to recite. He’s probably been practicing it in front of the mirror for a while now...maybe even taken some selfies of himself while doing it.