The Real McCain  Wallace is occasionally mistaken for a pomo
ironist, generally by people who have not actually read one of
his books or can't get past the casino glitter of his prose
style. In fact, he's as serious a moralist as, say, Tom Wolfe;
he's just interested in finding moral gravity in unexpected
places. Which means he's got a pretty serious crush on McCain's
public persona—the candidate's war heroism counts for a lot with
Wallace, because it gives his campaign-trail boilerplate about
truth and sacrifice actual weight. But Wallace also makes the
crucial distinction between admiring the pitch (and the
seriousness and honesty it represents, or appears to represent)
and what McCain is actually selling, which he dispatches with a
swift blow to the sternum: "That John S. McCain III opposed
making Martin Luther King's birthday a holiday in AZ, or that he
thinks clear-cut logging is good for America, or that he feels
our present gun laws are not clinically insane—this stuff counts
for nothing with these Tow