John McCain is one of the most familiar figures in American politics, a figure with great appeal to many. However, his concrete governing philosophy and actual track record have been left unexamined. Matt Welch's new book McCain: The Myth of a Maverick gives a flesh-and-bones political portrait of a man onto whom people project their own ideological fantasies. It is the first realistic assessment of what a John McCain presidency might look like.
Welch lays out the root cause of the senator's worldview: his personal transformation from underachieving youth to war hawk, in which he used the "higher power" of American nationalism to save his life and soul- Cato Institute
Bio
John Samples
John Samples directs Cato's Center for Representative Government, which studies campaign finance regulation, delegation of legislative authority, term limits, and the political culture of limited government and the civic virtues necessary for liberty.
He is an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University. Prior to joining Cato, Samples served eight years as director of Georgetown University Press, and before that, as vice president of the Twentieth Century Fund. He has published scholarly articles in Society, History of Political Thought, and Telos.
Samples has also been featured in mainstream publications like USA Today, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. He has appeared on NPR, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC. Samples received his Ph.D. in political science from Rutgers University.
Lance Tarrance Jr.
Lance Tarrance, Jr. is a leading Republican American pollster and political strategist who has conducted hundreds of public opinion studies for national corporations, foundations, elected leaders of the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives and state governments. He recently served as a Senior Strategist for Senator John McCain's Straight Talk America political action committee.
Matt Welch
Matt Welch is editor in chief of Reason magazine.
From 2006 to 2007, Welch served as assistant editorial pages editor at the Los Angeles Times, shaping and writing editorials, and overseeing the section's web operations.
From 2002 to 2006, Welch worked at Reason as an associate editor and media columnist. From 2002 to 2004, he also wrote a regular "Letter from California" column for Canada's National Post newspaper and contributed to the Online Journalism Review; WorkingForChange.com (for whom he covered Ralph Nader's 2000 presidential campaign); and the now-defunct Los Angeles tech/biz magazine Zone News.
Welch's work has appeared in The Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review, Los Angeles Daily News, Orange County Register, LA Weekly, ESPN.com, Salon.com, Wired, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Daily Star of Beirut, and dozens of other publications.
Before 1998, Welch lived for eight years in Central Europe, where he co-founded the region's first post-communist English-language newspaper, Prognosis, worked as UPI's Slovakia correspondent and managed the Budapest Business Journal.
He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife Emmanuelle.
(born Aug. 29, 1936, Panama Canal Zone) Politician who served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1983–87) and the U.S. Senate (1987– ). McCain graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1958. A navy pilot during the Vietnam War, he was shot down over Hanoi in 1967 and captured by the North Vietnamese. He was held as a prisoner of war until 1973. In 1982 he was elected to the Congress of the United States; he served first as a representative from Arizona and then as a senator from that state. Though a member of the Republican Party, he has taken independent stances on many issues and is known particularly for his support of campaign finance reform. After an unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, he won his party's nomination in 2008. However, he was defeated in the election by Barack Obama of the Democratic Party.
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