McCain, too, is a memoirist.

We keep talking about "Dreams From My Father." What about "Faith of My Fathers"?

His 1999 memoir, “Faith of My Fathers,” for the first time put his prison camp ordeal at the center of his public persona. In its pages, he recalled the experience as much more than a trial: a turning point from glory-seeking flyboy to responsible patriot, the final resolution of a rebellion against his father’s expectations, and the origin of a drive “to serve a cause” larger than himself....

[Co-author Mark] Salter, taking a little literary license, assembled from Mr. McCain’s recollections a neat narrative that he had never before articulated. It became a best seller, a television movie and the first of five successful McCain-Salter volumes. And on the eve of Mr. McCain’s 2000 Republican primary run, its story line reshaped his political identity. In interviews and speeches, Mr. McCain has increasingly described his life in the book’s language and themes, and never more so than during his current campaign, which has turned back to the story of “Faith of My Fathers” for everything from its first television commercial to his speech at the Republican convention.

Politics was imitating art, said Stephen Wayne, a political scientist at Georgetown who has studied Mr. McCain’s career and memoir. “It is almost as if McCain had described himself as a literary character,” Professor Wayne said, “and then he tried to be that person in real life.”

Lots more at the link, especially about McCain's interest in literary characters, like the hero of “Of Human Bondage” (whose "final realization could fit almost as well near the conclusion of Mr. McCain’s memoir: 'It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories'") and Marlon Brando ("Friends say Mr. McCain likes to imitate Brando erupting in rage: 'You scum-sucking pig!'")

AND: Strange -- isn't it? -- that both candidates wrote a memoir with the word "father/s" in the title. Is there something about a struggle to come to terms with his father that drives a man to the top position? If only Mitt Romney's dad had given him more trouble!