ORTH CONWAY, N.H. - Cindy McCain is a reluctant political spouse and, recently, a pretty good sport. She stood in for her husband, John, at a town hall meeting when a Senate vote sent him back to Washington. She bought an insulated winter coat for January in New Hampshire. And she went on national television to tell again of her past addiction to painkillers, which was bound to come up anyway in this presidential race.
But she drew the line at the tale of Marie, the Flame of Florida, the exotic nightclub dancer who, John McCain wrote in his new memoir, ''Faith of My Fathers,'' set his heart on fire when he was a hell-raising, rule-breaking Navy flyboy in the early 1960s.
''I didn't want our kids hearing about their dad and some Flame of Florida while we were driving in the car,'' said Mrs. McCain, the mother of four school-age children. ''They won't, because the book on tape is abridged.''
The audiotape editing of McCain's best-selling memoir may be the only thing that is abridged about the Arizona senator's unorthodox quest for the GOP presidential nomination. Weaving a history of Vietnam War valor with details of a rambunctious youth, McCain presents himself as a man of vigor and a political maverick, a man of achievement who has made his share of mistakes, a man of charm who is also famously impatient and hot-tempered, even with potential allies.
It is what his aides like to call ''the total candor campaign,' a strategy calibrated for the post-Clinton era.
''People are tired of politicians who weasel around and govern by the polls,'' McCain, a three-term senator, said while on a recent swing through New Hampshire, his 19th campaign visit to the first-primary state. Voters want to forget the Monica Lewinsky scandal, McCain said, and elect a ''principled, strong leader,'' even if it isn't somebody they always agree with or even admire in every way.
McCain may be on to something. New polls show him moving up to a solid second place in the GOP field and steadily gaining ground on Governor George W. Bush of Texas, the front-runner. Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, said McCain benefits from one of his survey's most important post-impeachment findings: Voters care much more about a candidate's reputation for honesty than about a candidate's personal issues.
''Right now, people say they don't care if a candidate smoked dope or took antidepressants,'' Kohut said.
''A candidate doesn't have to be squeaky clean as long as voters get a sense he will play it straight as president and do what he says he will do.''
Ned Baldwin, who runs Gold Leaf Frame and Gallery here, said McCain reminds him of President Truman. ''I don't like everything McCain says, but I respect him because he says what he thinks.''
McCain is straightforward, often to the point of bluntness. It is a trait that has burnished his public appeal but has also alienated many within his party.
He has a reputation in the Senate for shooting from the lip first and apologizing later. Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, whom McCain counts as one of his few friends in the Senate, said McCain ''had needlessly stepped on toes'' because he is passionate on issues and doesn't care if he is popular.
McCain's bluntness came out at a recent ''eggs and issues'' breakfast in North Conway, when he attacked colleagues in Congress who, he said, have been ''corrupted'' and ''kept in lifetime jobs'' by the influence of special-interest money. It came out again in Concord, when he disagreed with a questioner who, he said, had her facts wrong on the death penalty. It came out last week, when he got angry and accused Bush's campaign of planting a negative story about him in The New York Times highlighting the high-decibel temper McCain says he has under control.
But most vividly, it has come out in the way this presidential candidate has put his personal life and bad-boy past into print and on parade.
''If I'd thought seriously about it, I'm not sure I would have put Marie, Flame of Florida, in the book,'' McCain said with a grin, and a look that seemed to reflect vivid memories of the girlfriend who once shocked his refined Navy friends by cleaning her fingernails with a switchblade. McCain autographs dozens of copies of the book every day, and that story is in it.
By ''chronicling my imperfections,'' McCain may be trying to inoculate himself against personal-life revelations in the media that might distract or damage a presidential campaign. And by asserting that he would not be a ''credible, plausible'' candidate without full disclosure of his past, he is also setting himself apart from Bush, who has dodged the question of cocaine use and has been vague about youthful indiscretions.
McCain's openness about his scampish early days also distinguishes him from other presidential candidates - Al Gore, Gary Bauer, Steve Forbes, Orrin G. Hatch, Alan Keyes - who grew up more Boy Scout than bully and as adults display unfailing good manners and advertise their family values. The Oxford-educated Bill Bradley suggests in his memoir, ''Life on the Run,'' that he read more books than sowed wild oats as a professional basketball star (though he admits to having sowed some).
It's already part of the legend that McCain graduated close to last in his class at the Naval Academy because he was insubordinate and shirked his studies. He partied too much during pilot training and crashed three planes. He divorced his first wife, Carol, who waited five and a half years for him to return from a Hanoi prisoner-of-war camp, and married Cindy, who was wealthy, part of a prominent Arizona family, and half his age. He was one of five members investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee in 1990 for meeting with federal regulators on behalf of Charles Keating, a rich Phoenix developer and campaign contributor. The committee found no wrongdoing by McCain.
At a private dinner last year, he told a tasteless joke about Chelsea Clinton and Janet Reno that was reported in the media.
''I can't explain why I do things that are stupid, senseless, and cruel, but I know to apologize when I do it,'' McCain said.
Rich Bond, a longtime Republican activist, recently sent $1,000 to McCain's campaign, even though he is supporting Bush. ''John's is such a refreshing voice,'' Bond said. ''Here is a person who has admitted to having feet of clay, who had a less than stellar academic record, personal behavior that was less than stable, a failed marriage, and his political integrity questioned on the national stage,'' Bond said. ''Yet, each time he corrected the course, restored his self-esteem, and came out a better person.''
McCain says he has learned from his mistakes, and has grown with critical life experiences, not just his cruel and crippling captivity in North Vietnam, but also the Keating investigation, his wife's drug use, and the lonely, risky business of trying to gore Capitol Hill's sacred cows, including the tobacco industry and the campaign finance system.
''I'm an imperfect person, and I'm not proud of it. But even imperfect people can aspire to noble causes, to do the right thing,'' McCain said, adding that his father and grandfather, both Navy admirals and war heroes, ''weren't knights in shining armor, always slaying dragons, but they were committed to the cause of their country.''
The compelling family story of men at war is a fixture of McCain's campaign. When the candidate isn't referring directly to honor, courage, and duty as essential qualities in a president, his aides put it on display in the form of a faded photograph of McCain as a rugged, young naval aviator - square-jawed, thick-necked, handsome - blown up to poster size.
''John's a man's man. His whole life has been built around the macho rule of the military, and he's a macho guy,'' said Orson Swindle, who has been a close friend of McCain's since the two were POWs in Hanoi. ''How do you measure a man? Not by whether he could resist yielding under threat of torture and death, but whether he has been in the crucible and come back to fight again.''
McCain did come back from the war wanting to make up for lost time, and he still is impatient. Dashing into an L.L. Bean outlet store in Concord, McCain bought a sweater, a jacket, and two pairs of shoes in 10 minutes, and tried them on for size only when his wife insisted.
It's not much different in the Senate. Some Republican senators who have tried to work with him on his signature issue, campaign finance reform, describe the experience as frustrating and exasperating because, they say, McCain has no patience for details and won't heed suggestions or listen to dissent. Only four senators have endorsed his presidential bid so far.
''I admire his passion, but he is truly one of the most difficult people I have ever tried to work with,'' said a GOP senator who did not want to be quoted by name. ''If you don't agree with him, he will blast you.''
Paul Johnson, a former Democratic mayor of Phoenix, says he knows what it's like to cross McCain. ''Until you've seen his temper, you wouldn't believe it,'' said Johnson, who once got into a heated argument with McCain that nearly came to blows. ''McCain not only explodes; he holds a grudge and looks for vengeance.''
McCain admits he gets angry, but he says the temper that got him in trouble as a young man is in check. His opponents ''expect me to get mad, they expect me to get angry,'' McCain said. ''But I won't blow my top. It's just not going to happen.''
Some think it is only a matter of time before the candidate who gets bored giving canned speeches, thrives on candor, cajoles the media, and enjoys an occasional locker-room joke will again be sorry for something he said.
''This ain't the scripted Dole or Bush campaign, and John could really screw it up,'' Bond said. ''But that's the beauty of John McCain - he just lets it all hang out.''
