Destiny, Dreams, Faith And Fathers

THE POLITICAL storyteller envies the political reality of 2008. Compared with the gray mediocrities usually offered up by the Republican and Democratic parties for the presidency, John McCain and Barack Obama are true characters. The grizzled war hero who's been a fixture on the political landscape for a generation, the brilliant young street-organizer who comes out of nowhere to electrify the country -- these are archetypes that could populate the likes of "The Best Man," "Advise and Consent," "The Manchurian Candidate." In fact, in McCain's first race for the White House eight years ago, supporters of his opponent, George W. Bush, even suggested that he was a Hanoi Candidate, brainwashed during his years as a Vietnam prisoner of war.

Assuming a reader can muster up some dispassion, McCain's 1999 memoir, "Faith of My Fathers" (HarperPerennial: 350 pp., $14 paper) -- co-written, like all his books, with Mark Salter -- and Obama's 1995 book "Dreams From My Father" (Three Rivers Press: 458 pp., $14.95 paper) elicit admiration for both men, and when was the last election that was true?

An electoral contest invites contrasts, so most conspicuous is what McCain and Obama have in common. Both are touched, in different ways, by the shadows of the fathers who lend themselves to the memoirs' similarly paternal titles; strikingly, both begin with a shattering paternal death. Having survived ferocious combat in the Pacific, McCain's grandfather died within hours of returning home from World War II. Since McCain was about to turn 9, one can't help thinking such a monumental demise, so poetically timed, informed a boy's romantic vision of the world. He is haunted not only by his father but by the way the father was haunted by his own father: "I hesitate to say my father was insecure," McCain writes, before going on to say just that. "[His] ambition to meet the standard of his famous father might have collided with his appreciation for the implausibility of the accomplishment." In a family of admirals, the haunting of sons by fathers is passed down the chain of command like an order to commence firing.