McCain’s Promise, Back Bay Books, Publisher

It’s election season. The season of cider, cynicism and leaves falling faster than hair from the balding pates of middle-aged white men. The book stores are celebrating with special tables set aside piled high with red-white-and-blue bound books. Madeleine Albright is here, close to the entrance, and so are McCain and his ghostwriter, Obama (and his nation-detractors), Michael Moore, all the typical names with their wordy cellophane or freezer-packed political arguments. Politicians beg to be judged by their cover–the sincerity of their attentive faces, the creases (well worn from hard thought, rest assured) in their brows, their colored suits and calculating ties.

Among the posed shots and stern smiles of political treatise after political treatise (including the Words of Hope and Inspiration Barack Obama calendar), there are two things about McCain’s Promise that should strike the errant browser, indifferently judging each politician by their portraitesque poise and the mechanical angle of their thin smile, straight face or mild frown.

First, what exactly is this promise and why does it lie, by private campaign bus, at the distant end of a Manhattan avenue bisecting Times Square?

And the second thing to note is the glaring red name that bulges off the patriotic space set aside for subtitles at the bottom of the page. Consider this note: an active moment of silence, a few sentences of thoughtful tribute, to the writer whose name is now being peddled by market forces.

Times Square used to be full of porn theaters and prostitutes, but based on the legible marquee for Mary Poppins, I suspect this is not the fabled promise. The Yankees? Doubtful from a maverick. Perhaps this was a tool to elbow Giuliani out of the running, to show McCain as the rough-and-tumble citizen of Times Square that we all know him to be.

Still, it’s a curious cover for an unusually slim volume, one that’s eight years out of date and available, I might add, for free.

Who stands to profit from this cover? What are they hiding beneath? It’s at least a little telling that an essay written in 1999 and 2000 maintains currency to date. Perhaps the only ‘bracingly insightful’ take away from this out-of-the-way inclusion is the similarity between book covers and voter fraud.