'Hard Call' from McCain runs soft

EIGHT years ago, in a presidential campaign far, far away, Republican candidate John McCain released his first book, the rightly acclaimed early-years autobiography "Faith of My Fathers." Written with the help of aide Mark Salter, "Faith" was a delightfully profane redemption tale of how an underachieving, hard-living Navy brat was broken, then made stronger, during his captivity in Vietnam. If there were any political considerations on display -- aside from the obvious benefit of reinforcing McCain's heroism -- they required a microscope to detect.

Much has transpired since then, including three more McCain-Salter co-productions, and a long-simmering campaign to capture what he never did win in 2000. "Worth the Fighting For" (2002) detailed his life after Vietnam, through the lens of his maverick first run at the presidency. "Why Courage Matters" (2004) searched for the secret to bravery in a post-9/11 world; "Character Is Destiny" (2005) was an uncharacteristically pious "Profiles in Courage," coinciding with McCain's strategic fence-mending exercise with the religious right; and now comes "Hard Call," another paean to the deeds of Great Men, timed exquisitely for the fall campaign season.

If history is any guide, McCain will spend the next few months gobbling up free book-tour media in venues such as "Larry King Live" and "Hardball," talking about turning points in the careers of such leaders as Ronald Reagan, Harry Truman and Abraham Lincoln. Any resemblance to the Arizona senator's own "hard calls" on campaign finance reform, immigration and the Iraq war will be purely intentional. Readers are wholly justified in scanning the book for contemporary politics before delving into its 20 historical profiles.

What inquiring minds want to know most in 2007 about McCain and difficult decisions of historic import is: What does he think in hindsight about going to war in Iraq over weapons that turned out to be nonexistent, and what hard call should the U.S. make in Iraq today? The few Iraq comments within, much like the rest of the book, reveal a man oddly incurious, or at least unwilling to show his hand, about the hardest presidential call of them all.