McCain's Promise: Aboard the Straight Talk Express with John McCain and a Whole Bunch of Actual Reporters, Thinking About Hope

by David Foster Wallace, Jacob Weisberg (Foreword by)

Is John McCain "For Real?"

That's the question David Foster Wallace set out to explore when he first climbed aboard Senator McCain's campaign caravan in February 2000. It was a moment when Mccain was increasingly perceived as a harbinger of change, the anticandidate whose goal was "to inspire young Americans to devote themselves to causes greater than their own self-interest." And many young Americans were beginning to take notice.

To get at "something riveting and unspinnable and true" about John Mccain, Wallace finds he must pierce the smoke screen of spin doctors and media manipulators. And he succeeds-in a characteristically potent blast of journalistic brio that not only captures the lunatic rough-and-tumble of a presidential campaign but also delivers a compelling inquiry into John McCain the senator, the POW, the campaign finance reformer, the candidate, the man.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, History, Journalism, Essays, Audiobook, Literature

124 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2000

About the author

David Foster Wallace was an acclaimed American writer known for his fiction, nonfiction, and critical essays that explored the complexities of consciousness, irony, and the human condition. Widely regarded as one of the most innovative literary voices of his generation, Wallace is perhaps best known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, which was listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005. His unfinished final novel, The Pale King, was published posthumously in 2011 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Born in Ithaca, New York, Wallace was raised in Illinois, where he excelled as both a student and a junior tennis player—a sport he later wrote about with sharp insight and humor. He earned degrees in English and philosophy from Amherst College, then completed an MFA in creative writing at the University of Arizona. His early academic work in logic and philosophy informed much of his writing, particularly in his blending of analytical depth with emotional complexity.
Wallace’s first novel, The Broom of the System (1987), established his reputation as a fresh literary talent. Over the next two decades, he published widely in prestigious journals and magazines, producing short stories, essays, and book reviews that earned him critical acclaim. His work was characterized by linguistic virtuosity, inventive structure, and a deep concern for moral and existential questions. In addition to fiction, he tackled topics ranging from tennis and state fairs to cruise ships, politics, and the ethics of food consumption.
Beyond his literary achievements, Wallace had a significant academic career, teaching literature and writing at Emerson College, Illinois State University, and Pomona College. He was known for his intense engagement with students and commitment to teaching.
Wallace struggled with depression and addiction for much of his adult life, and he was hospitalized multiple times. He died by suicide in 2008 at the age of 46. In the years since his death, his influence has continued to grow, inspiring scholars, conferences, and a dedicated readership. However, his legacy is complicated by posthumous revelations of abusive behavior, particularly during his relationship with writer Mary Karr, which has led to ongoing debate within literary and academic communities.
His distinctive voice—by turns cerebral, comic, and compassionate—remains a defining force in contemporary literature. Wallace once described fiction as a way of making readers feel "less alone inside," and it is that emotional resonance, alongside his formal daring, that continues to define his place in American letters.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

im not really sure why this is being published now, when it was written for the ghost of election past, but im not going to complain because i love the dfw, and now i can rate it. greg will never catch me!!!

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been a few years since I've read anything of Wallace's, but every time I do, I'm struck as if for the first time by the way he used language (which is not to be imitated, as my mercifully unpublished 2011-2012 attempt at a novel will attest). His prose opens up a world that you never could've seen on your own, and repeated readings always seem to yield something new. I've read this essay three times now, for example, but it was only this last time that I really appreciated Wallace's descriptions of South Carolina, one of the earliest primary states as well as one of my top five candidates for state I think about the least, from the McCain campaign's bus:

...the skies the color of low-grade steel...eighteen-wheelers and weird tall pickups are the buses' only company, and the pickups are rusted and all have gun-racks and right-wing bumper stickers; some of them tooth their horns in support...the highway is colorless and the sides of it looked chewed on, and there's litter, and the median strip is withered grass with a whole lot of different tire tracks and skidmarks striping the sod for dozens of miles, as if from the mother of all multivehicle pileups sometime in I-26's past. You can tell it must be spooky down here in the summer, all wet moss and bog-steam and dogs with visible ribs and everybody sweating through their hat. None of the media ever seem to look out the window. Everyone's used to being in motion all the time.

But reading an essay on McCain at the end of 2019 turned out to be relevant for a few reasons. One of the distortions of the Trump era, it seems to me, is that a lot of people have started to look back at guys like Bush Jr. and McCain (especially McCain, and especially since his death last year) with rose-colored glasses. It was refreshing to be reminded that Wallace doesn't do that, and in fact points out how superficial a lot of the media coverage of McCain actually was:

...it's possible to argue that a big reason why so many young Independents and Democrats are excited about McCain is that the campaign media focus so much attention on McCain's piss-and-vinegar candor and so little attention on the sometimes extremely scary right-wing stuff this candor drives him to say...

Wallace is very clear-eyed about what McCain believed, or at least what his political positions were:

The Rocky of Politics. The McCain Mutiny. The Real McCain. The Straight Talk Express. Internet fund-raiser. Media darling. Navy flier. Middle name Sidney. Son and grandson of admirals. And a serious hard-ass- a way-Right Republican senator from one of the most politically troglodytic states in the nation. A man who opposes Roe v Wade, gun control, and funding for PBS, who supports the death penalty and defense buildups and constitutional amendments outlawing flag-burning and making school prayer OK.

But on the other hand, one of my favorite parts of the essay is when Wallace sort of inhabits McCain as a character and invites the reader to imagine just how it might have felt to have been dragged out of a bomber plane, bayoneted in the groin, had wounds set without anesthesia, and held prisoner in Hanoi for four years...and at one point to have refused release because of a POW code that stated prisoners must be let go in the order they were captured. This is a passage that not only aligns with one of Wallace's career-long projects- trying to escape the limitations of the self and understand what it might be like to be another person- but Wallace also connects it to the broader political support for McCain (or what seemed like it might become broad support at the time- McCain dropped out of the 2000 Republican primary soon after Wallace wrote this essay), suggesting that the story makes it just a little harder to dismiss McCain's appeal to "sacrifice for something greater than ourselves" as the usual political spin.

Wallace identifies another source of McCain's popularity in his willingness to talk about things like campaign finance reform; and about the fact that special-interest $ runs Washington, and that this is the reason the healthcare system remains set up to profit only the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries (given his defection from his own party's attempt to repeal Obamacare shortly before he died, as well as his record, I have to hand it to McCain- he was principled about this issue). This in turn made me think of the actually broad popularity of both Trump and Bernie Sanders, two people with entirely different visions of the country and of how to deal with its problems, yet both with a message about institutional corruption. Maybe the U.S. has been ripe for this kind of message for a while. But it's the appearance of honesty that Wallace is interested in w/r/t McCain (an appearance that McCain obviously milked as much as he could- his campaign bus was called The Straight Talk Express for Christ's sake, uncannily- or maybe not so uncannily- mirrored by Joe Biden's current No Malarkey tour), and therein lies the essay's central ambiguity:

But then look at the photos of McCain's own face that night [that he won the NH primary]. He's the only one not smiling. Why? Can you guess? It's because now he might possibly win...now there's something to lose...now it gets complicated...on the news, the first ominous rumble of this new complication was McCain's bobbing and weaving about South Carolina's Confederate flag. That was a couple days ago. Now everybody's watching...the easy question, the one all the pencils and heads spend their time on, is whether he'll win. The other- the one posed by those photos' eyes- is hard to even put into words.

This is how I'd like to understand the title this essay is now published under (which I don't believe Wallace chose, by the way)- not as a saccharine endorsement of McCain's sincerity, but as an expression of ambiguity.

I remember finding this essay a little underwhelming the first couple of times I read it, because I felt that Wallace was ultimately splitting hairs, especially towards the end- of course McCain is trying to calculate his honesty for maximum political benefit. And that's the way it goes, Dave, I remember thinking...in both politics and life in general. But I had a different reaction this time, and realized that Wallace was trying to wake the reader up to a (maybe not entirely unjustified) cynicism about not just government but individual autonomy that is so deeply ingrained in some of us that it's hard to see. This in turn aligns with another career-long Wallace project- endeavoring to see the obvious, to see cliches and commonalities and what's all around us with fresh eyes.

Why did I respond more strongly this time around? On one hand, I've developed just such an aforementioned doubt that politics can be about anything more than self-interest, money and lust for power. But on the other hand, Bernie Sanders's campaign has made me aware of my own cynicism in a similar way to Wallace's essay, by reminding me of how much a part of me wants to believe in democracy, the value of personal engagement, and the future of the planet. It occurs to me that Bernie is a leader in the sense that Wallace defines it towards the end: "...a real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own."

If he were to win the election this November, by the way, and it's too early to speculate, he would be 79 on the day of his inauguration- most of his life is behind him, and it's doubtful that he would live to see the fruits of most of his efforts as president. That's true selflessness, and the kind of vision I suggest we need to counter Trump's, which is the polar opposite: "fuck it, I'll be dead then anyway, may as well get as much for myself as I can for as long as I can get away with it...and deep down you know that you're no better than this either, and it feels good to admit it, and that's why you'll vote for me." That's the contest I would like to see play out, anyway, although I'm worried we'll end up fielding nothing more inspiring than Joe Biden's vague, wistful nostalgia.

[Steven R. Kraaijeveld · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Salesman or leader or neither or both, the final paradox – the really tiny central one, way down deep inside all the other campaign puzzles' spinning boxes and squares that layer McCain – is that whether he's truly 'for real' now depends less on what is in his heart than on what might be in yours."

Although McCain has by now (2016) largely receded into history's shadows, the campaign trail of 2000 as recounted by DFW is still relevant. This is because DFW, as is his wont, asks the perennial questions that lie behind the shifting images of current – in this case political – events. Reflections on political cynicism versus idealism lie as much at the heart of his work, commissioned by Rolling Stone magazine, as the particular manifestations and vicissitudes of McCain's (ultimately unsuccessful) campaign trail.

I did not know about the specifics of McCain's capture in Vietnam; DFW rightly and rather poignantly draws attention to both the immense amount he must have suffered, and the significantly lesser amount he might have suffered had he accepted a release from the Hỏa Lò Prison instead of rejecting it for the sake of a POW code. The picture that emerges, overall, from DFW's account of his behind-the-scenes time with McCain's camp, is wonderfully complex and ambiguous – representative, you might say, of the entire business of politics and campaigning.

There was a rather long and dull and technical/quasi-technical middle section, which DFW acknowledges as showcasing the general tedium of great parts of the campaign trail. Apart from these sections, which almost tempted me into skimming, the essay beautifully maneuvers into and along the important issues not so much with regard to campaigning, but concerning the reader/voter/the Young Voter/the cynic/the wants-to-be-an-idealist in an age of Great Cynicism.

"If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don't bullshit yourself that you're not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote."

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting narrative, I think 2018 could learn a lot from 2000 McCain.

I also think DFW would have hated covering 2016. Hell, probably even 2008 and 2012.

[Joey Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

So fun reading David Foster Wallace’s take on (semi) modern American politics.

“It’s hard to get good answers to why most Young Voters are so uninterested in politics. This is probably because it’s next to impossible to get someone to think hard about why he’s not interested in something. The boredom itself preempts inquiry; the fact of the feeling’s enough. Surely one reason, though, is that politics is not cool. Or say rather that cool, interesting, alive people do not seem to be the ones who are drawn to the Political Process. Think back to the sort of kids in high school or college who were into running for student office: dweeby, overgroomed, obsequious to authority, ambitious in a sad way. Eager to play the Game. The kind of kids other kids would want to beat up if it didn’t seem so pointless and dull. And now consider some of 2000’s adult versions of these very same kids: Al Gore, best described by CNN sound tech Mark A. as “amazingly lifelike”; Steve Forbes with his wet forehead and loony giggle; G. Bush2’s patrician smirk and mangled cant; even Clinton himself with his big red fake-friendly face and “I feel your pain.” Men who aren’t enough like human beings even to dislike—what one feels when they loom into view is just an overwhelming lack of interest, the sort of deep disengagement that is so often a defense against pain. Against sadness. In fact, the likeliest reason why so many of us care so little about politics is that modern politicians make us sad, hurt us deep down in ways that are hard even to name, much less talk about. It’s way easier to roll your eyes and not give a shit. You probably don’t want to hear about all this, even.”

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

With the same brilliancy of his essays Consider The Lobster and Big Red Son, DFW provides another thorough lookout inside the Mcain2000. DFW is aware of the dullness of politics and the Indifference people have for it, yet he strays away from repetitiveness and pretentiousness of political writing and brings us an honest and new look to it.

[Joe Deegan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really good book, at the surface about John McCain's 2000 campaign for the Republican nomination, but also about the broader state of political campaigning. DFW initially wrote this as an article for Rolling Stone, but the original piece was way too long to print (three times too long), so they published an abridged version in the magazine and the full thing as this book.

The magazine article is really good, it takes about an hour, and is definitely worth a read - you can read it here https://www.rollingstone.com/politics....

DFW focuses on the state of American politics in 2000, but most of the discussion is on strategy, negativity, voter turnout, political journalism, and belief in the process. It's all very relevant even outside of millennial America. If you like the article or you like his stuff then this is worth reading, you can get it as an ebook under the title "Up, Simba!".
It's a good read, he's a good writer, you'll have a good time.

[Jose Torroja Ribera · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Foster Wallace sabe atraer tu atención y escribir con estilo e ingenio. La campaña de John McCain en las primarias del GOP en 2000 no parece el mejor tema para un libro, pero DFW lo hace interesante.

[John Wiswell · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 2000, John McCain was beloved to both major parties in the U.S. and couldn't get the nomination from either. It was possible that if he ran against both candidates that he'd win, but of course that didn't happen. David Foster Wallace was embedded with McCain's campaign, doomed to lose out to George W. Bush, and shrewdly observed how McCain made messages out of himself, how the staff tried to manipulate those messages, and how the country refused to see the candidate as a complex human being. Here is long-form journalism that shreds us for our addiction to seeing a candidate as just a hero, or just a salesman, or just a moralist or con-man. It's some of the boldest political writing I've ever read.

It actually benefits from being too short to play as memoir or biography. At its length, it avoids the gangly leap into final judgment about what McCain really was and instead played crucible for the complex person he could be, and all the things voters wanted him to be or were afraid he really was. Throughout is the staggering theme of people around the country refusing to believe McCain was a person, but rather a simplified idea, and his campaign playing into it because there's no other way to get elected. Even if you have no exposure to his politics, Wallace writes accessibly on how McCain challenged funding models for politics, taxes and toxicity of discourse, despite also taking you into how those messages could be both honest and manipulative.

Wallace savagely challenges simplified definitions of McCain. People who viewed him as heroic for his time as a POW (including staying in the prison an additional two years after he was permitted release to make sure other prisoners were not left behind) ignored his obvious reduction of his past into a commercial message for votes. Opponents who viewed him as not religious enough ignored his biographies, and those who found him too conservative ignored all his conflicts with Bush. And in every camp, the people who wanted to believe he might be honest about campaign finance reform and toxic discourse couldn’t because it sounded too good to be true, and because the intentions of a stranger are unknowable, and our culture of salesmanship has led us to distrust. One of the last sections of the essay addresses how the more you get to know someone like McCain, the more you need your cynicism and have to fear that same cynicism, because it blinds while it protects. And, as Wallace points out, a generation's disillusion with a political system was helping incumbents.

This was my first exposure to Wallace. His insistence on being more than critical about his subject, but critical about how people observed and reduced him. It's meaty and complex while sympathizing with the dangerous desire for simplicity. Read it, for God's sake read it, especially if you're the sort who judged McCain's entire character based on a sound byte and a photo of him playing video poker.

[E. C. Koch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Apart from J. Weisberg's intro. you're not getting anything here that you didn't get in the version printed in CtL; so it should be said right off the bat that you probably shouldn't buy this unless you just really need to read what Weisberg says about what Wallace says about McCain's now sixteen-year-old campaign or to complete a shrine or something. That said, this is a(nother) really great essay by DFW that hits on his major themes of sincerity and belief in a toxically aloof pomo culture that wants to come to grips with the status of the "anti-candidate" who looks like the most promising candidate because he behaves so unlike "real" candidates. Why does uncompromising honesty (in a political candidate or otherwise) necessitate the prefix "anti-"? Why are we so cynical about politics in the 21st century that we like candidates who claim to not be part of the establishment? So of course this is just as relevant today as it was when it was first published in 2000 or re-released in 2005 or re-re-released in 2008 since we're probably still just as cynical and in need of anti-candidates who commit "political suicide" by telling voters what they really think about the issues.

[Kristin Schuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this because I've been trying to get my nerve up to read Infinite Jest. I've actually even checked IJ out from the library once or twice, but been too intimidated to crack it open. So I looked up David Foster Wallace's books at the library and checked out the best reviewed DFW book available. Just so happened to be only 144 pages (I think IJ has over 1,000 pages.)

This book was a piece that started as a far-shorter Rolling Stone article published during John McCain's failed 2000 run at the Republican nomination, written after DFW was embedded with his campaign staff for a week. I love deep-dive articles like this must have been in its original form, and I really enjoyed the book version. I found myself very much wishing DFW had written this during the 2008 Palin fiasco instead (he actually committed suicide in September 2008 at height of Palin mania, if Wikipedia's dates are correct.) That would have been SOOOOO good.

I really liked DFW's writing style in this - smart, edgy, funny. Still scared about IJ. May try another shorter one next.

[Ken Heard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rolling Stone puts a reporter on the bus of what first is a marginal candidate for president who becomes the front runner and tells him to write what he sees. Sound familiar? The magazine did the same in 1971 when Hunter S. Thompson covered the George McGovern campaign, and Thompson did a far better, more insightful job.

That's not to say David Foster Wallace failed. He did okay with his observations of life on the road, with behind the looks at John McCain and other reporters, with the "Twelve Monkeys," and the campaign handlers ways of dealing with the Shrub (Bush). But I kept comparing this piece, which was originally a version in Rolling Stone, with Hunter's "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail," which is a masterpiece.

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book-length meditation on McCain2000, originally a much shorter Rolling Stone piece. Part think-piece, part investigative journalism, it's just Wallace doing his humanist/pomo thing. Nonetheless, an interesting/necessary perspective on McCain as an extraordinarily intelligent and honorable man (a great reading on the meaning of McCain's time in the Hanoi Hilton) saying, ultimately, some very scary shit. Also, a lot of good stuff on the mechanics of contemporary campaigns, much of which feels familiar, but it's nice to see somebody as talented as Wallace riffing about it on the record. A quick, penetrating, and *enjoyable* read for election season.

[Jake · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this hoping for something along the lines of Hunter Thompson's writings on the '72 campaign trail. This didn't quite measure up due to Wallace seeming to have very little interest in politics (a chapter is titled 'Who Cares' and another, 'Who Even Cares, Who Cares'). That made for some interesting observations on political media and fine writing on McCain's torture in Vietnam (stabbed in the nuts!!!!), but left out the soul.

[Kyle Butcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe I'm reading too far into it's implications with our current POTUS's anti-candidate -president status, but I could help but feel this book might've been an unknowing predictor of our political predicament.

Not really a book except for it was bound & I bought it on Amazon; not really like other DFW I've read except it both highlights the (almost) necessary response of PM cynicism while producing hope.

[Orrezz · Rating 3 out of 5]

מסה אחת מעולה על קמפיין הבחירות של ג'ון מקיין והשאר פחות. אולי כי לחלק הראשון יש אווירה ועומק של כתבת מוסף, עם ניסיון לסטות מהפוליטי כדי לדבר על החוויה של מסע בדרכים ועל הדמויות שמקיפות את האובייקט הפוליטי ששמו ג'ון מקיין. זאת, בעוד החלקים האחרים כמו נכתבו מנקודת מבטו של סטודנט באוניברסיטה, עם הרבה אינטלקט ומעט מאוד רגש, שלא לדבר על ההומור שפוסטר וואלאס מצטיין בו

[Jeff Cunningham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant political insights

Wallace cuts through every personality and every move that takes place on the campaign. He proves himself the most adept political observer while at the same time confesses he was never a journalist, just pretending (brilliantly) to be one.

[Oryx · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.31

[Oren · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a magazine article in long form.
Entertaining and insightful, a nice little dish from DFW's kitchen.

[Danny · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love DFW but this is one of the most boring topics he could have possibly written about. He was basically stuck on the back of a bus eating gruel and sleeping in bad hotel rooms for days on end, with nothing to do but observe the various behind-the-scenes cogs in the campaign machine and speculate about the real world impact of the various mundane developments. The stuff about the "tech"/"sound" guy culture on the trail was interesting, and there were some other odd characters that were kind of fun. But ultimately this short essay collection probably isn't worth your time unless you're a DFW completist.

[Will · Rating 1 out of 5]

Doesn't really stand up. His analysis -- which posits that politicians who present themselves as authentic might actually be doing so for the media narrative! -- feels quaint in 2019. I was hoping for some good DFW prose stylings but not much there either. Read any other DFW essays instead, or read "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72" for a better dissecting of the political circus.

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Electoral politics today are so shaped by social media that this account of the news media's relationship to US presidential campaigns is quaint yet defamiliarizing and revealing due to DFW's characteristic, deeply observational form. Definitely worth (re)visiting in 2021.

[Saskia · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first David Foster Wallace piece and it did not disappoint. I loved his insights as well as his questions and observations - can't wait to read his pieces about the cruise he went on.

[Brendan Bradford · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Foster Wallace at his detached best.

[Ben Dubielak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wallace is simply a fucking genius.

[Ben Timberlake]

First ebook I ever read, as “Up, Simba” in a proprietary Adobe format.

[Shlomi Pasternak · Rating 4 out of 5]

אין ולא יהיה כמותו. כתיבה מושחזת ואותנטית.

[Clarke Bolt · Rating 5 out of 5]

DFW makes everything interesting/thought-provoking.

What’s the difference between hypocrisy and paradox? Try to stay awake.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find it very interesting to read this kind of writing, political, years after the fact.

[Michel Justen · Rating 5 out of 5]

so good! Great commentary on modern generations’ conditioned cynicism alongside vivid picture of “the campaign trail.”

I’m really glad David Foster Wallace wrote nonfiction, too.