In A Recent Memoir, Senator John McCain Rests His Case

Anyone who has followed the saga of Sen. John McCain or ever reacted with emotion to his words or actions will recognize the man speaking in this farwell volume.

The Restless Wave is a plain-spoken and often painful personal accounting; a résumé of a contentious career and a defense of controversial political decisions. It may inspire or enrage. But it is less an effort to provoke such conflicting responses than a paean to McCain's idea of America.

McCain wants to celebrate the America he knew — or perhaps only imagined — in the full flower of its global pre-eminence. Call it heritage or call it myth, it is a concept of America that McCain clearly feels he personifies, and one he senses is passing even as he reaches the end of his own life.

This is a man who should have leave to speak his mind. He has served more than 30 years in the U.S. Senate, after serving almost as long in the U.S. Navy. He suffered more than five years in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp, ran twice for president as a Republican, once as his party's nominee. Through it all, he has been stubbornly individual, at times cantankerous and even exasperating to friend and foe alike, relishing his political persona as "The Maverick."

At its best, the prose in The Restless Wave has some of the terse effectiveness we associate with the 20th century writer Ernest Hemingway. And on his final page, McCain returns to the model of the Hemingway character he calls his hero, Robert Jordan of For Whom the Bell Tolls. That novel ends with Jordan lying wounded on open ground, armed to fight one last battle that he knows will end with his death. "The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for," Jordan says to himself, "and I hate very much to leave it."

To this, McCain adds his own response: "And I do too. I hate to leave it. But I don't have a complaint. Not one. It's been quite a ride. ... I made a small place for myself in the story of America and the history of my times."