Looking back after the Bush II and Obama administrations, it might be hard to imagine why there would be something promising about McCain or why he would be the subject of a fascinating campaign book. Over the past twelve years, McCain has calcified into a strictly partisan politician. At the time the book was written, McCain was more of the maverick that he claimed to be in the 2008 election. In 2000, McCain was the less-polished, more sincere alternative to the establish-picked George W. Bush.
This brief book (originally this was a piece for Rolling Stone, that was severely cut to fit the magazine) follows McCain in South Carolina after his surprise win in the New Hampshire primaries. Because Wallace was writing for Rolling Stone, Wallace was not granted any access to the candidate. The book is like Roger & Me in a sense, that you never get to see the subject of the piece up close. Wallace ends up spending a lot of his time with the camera crews of the various news organizations. The title of the magazine piece was "Up Simba", which is what one of the camera men grunts each time he lifts his video camera. The camera men offer a unique perspective to the campaign. Wallace discusses some of the more absurd aspects of a political campaign such as: "the scrum", the surrounding of the candidate by TV camera men as the candidate leaves a venue and heads to the bus; or where do the huge American flags come from and what happens to them after the rallies. This a unique piece of political reporting and if you'd like an outsider's point of view on campaigns, I would highly recommend this book. ( )

So I think McCain is a right-wing slime bucket with the charisma of old chewing-gum, and David Foster Wallace thinks there's a lot more to him, much of it really good. One of the marks of a good political essay, for me, is showing an aspect of a person or a process that I have firm views on and re-jigging those views; Wallace does this really well, in the same way that he made me think better of tennis-players in a previous essay. Wallace is a seriously good essayist in the New Journalism Rolling Stone school, and his death is a significant loss. I shall certainly look out for his novels. ( )