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Opinion: Meghan McCain’s new book introduces Dad to the kids

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Our colleague Seema Mehta, traveling with the John McCain campaign, reports that in the midst of a slow week on the trail, the traveling press got a slight diversion with a sneak peak of Meghan McCain‘s children’s book, ‘My Dad, John McCain.’ The illustrated book, aimed at readers ages 5 to 10, will sell for $16.99 and is scheduled to hit stores Sept. 2 -- coinciding with her father accepting the Republican presidential nomination. Of course, regular Ticket readers already knew about the book.

‘There are a few things you need to know about my dad, and one of them is that he would make a great president,’ writes McCain, who also blogs about her father’s campaign. ‘But to know what makes him great, you have to hear his story first.’

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The book chronicles the McCain family’s military history, her father’s school days, when he played football and got poor grades, his time in the Naval Academy and how he was shot down over a lake during the Vietnam War and taken prisoner.

The prisoners of war were treated poorly, Ms. McCain writes, and her father once found a chicken foot in his lunch. The book also recounts how he declined to take advantage of his father’s position as a U.S. admiral, and refused an offer by the Viet Cong to release him -- a story McCain also routinely tells on the stump.

After recounting her father’s (second) marriage to her mother, his Congressional career, the failed 2000 primary campaign and the near-implosion of his current campaign in 2007, the book ends with McCain accepting the GOP nomination at the convention in St. Paul, Minn.

One has to assume she’s hoping to write a sequel: ‘My Dad, The White House Years.’

-- Scott Martelle

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