If Sarah Palin had never come along, the McCain campaign's greatest contribution to pop-culture would surely have been McCainBlogette, starring the Arizona senator's 23-year-old, blonde, beer-swilling, John Kerry-voting daughter Meghan. Which isn't to say the young McCain is jealous or anything. Meghan recently pronounced the Republican vice-presidential nominee "really chill" on Larry King Live.

McCainBlogette is primarily a photo blog, garnished with Meghan's political commentary ("My father nothing short of ROCKED Wednesday night's debate."), captions and favourite music playlists (grouped under titles such as "Crazy, Sexy Country"). This June 12, in a post titled "Republican", readers learned of her trip to an Arizona elections office in Phoenix to change her party affiliation for part one of a unique gift.

Meghan explained to fans that though she had been "registered as an Independent since I was 18 years old" after some "careful thought and consideration", she decided to take the plunge and re-register "as a Republican … as a symbol of my commitment to my dad and to represent the faith I have in his ability to be an effective leader for our country." She added: "Happy Father's Day, Dad!"

The entry shows Meghan at the State Capitol Executive Tower building with her mother Cindy, filling out the change-of-party form, chatting it up with the Arizona secretary of state and calling our attention to an "awesome PEZ dispenser collection" in one of the photos.

Part two of that present to her father, announced on the same day as her come-to-Eisenhower moment, has just been released by Simon & Schuster. My Dad, John McCain is a children's book in the same minimalist vein as Meghan's blog. Now, her brief story garnishes heavily crosshatched colour drawings by illustrator Dan Andreasen.

The book begins: "There are a few things you need to know about my dad, and one of them is that he would make a great president." Meghan gives the young target audience a brief bio of her father that eschews any controversies and sticks to what's important. The subject was a bit of a rebel in school, you see, a brave pilot and then a resident of the Hanoi Hilton for five and a half years, where "My dad and the other prisoners were treated badly … and the food was really bad - he once found a chicken foot in his lunch."

Meghan also includes a potted civics lesson for first-graders: "If you want to be president, first you have to be nominated by a political party. Then you run in the general election against the other candidates. My dad's a Republican, so he wanted the Republican party to choose him." She gives a special shout-out to the voters of New Hampshire for making that possible.

What Meghan McCain fails to include is any convincing reason why senator McCain would make a great president other than that he is a "great man". She explains that he was a war hero who refused special treatment in Vietnam, reminds people that he's a "maverick" who'll "say what he really thinks" and professes unlimited faith in his patriotism: "My father loves this country more than anyone I know."

And, that's it. It would be too much to expect a children's book to explain the Republican nominee's tax or healthcare policies but My Dad, John McCain doesn't provide any hint whatsoever to where Meghan's dad would lead the country.

Perhaps that's not the point of this book. It's not as if anyone is expecting her story to get out the elementary school vote for the Republicans. One way to read it is as nothing more than an expression of a daughter's undying admiration for her dear old dad. In that way, it's touching.

But another way to read it is a diagnosis of everything that's wrong with the McCain candidacy. His handlers have tried to make this a campaign about the Arizona senator's outsized biography. It's not enough.