Of all the recent candidates for the American presidency, none is as elusive as John McCain. On one level he is of course a known quantity. His life story we know in part by heart. And since making his first serious run for the presidency in 2000, his face and figure have been familiar. But what exactly would he do if he ever won the White House, and how exactly would he lead? This remains curiously unclear. Our image of him and those to whom he is closest remains vague – and the man himself is a collection of contradictions.

About Hillary Clinton we know more than we need to. She has been center stage for fifteen years, so she, her husband, and their daughter, along with her close advisers, constitute recurring characters. Similarly, Barack Obama, in order to go from unknown to known in short order, introduced us immediately to his impressive wife, Michelle, who, in turn, became almost as visible and voluble a public presence as Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod. McCain, in contrast, has been downright withholding. So far his wife Cindy has said nearly nothing, at least not out loud. So far his various children of various ages have been, with 23-year old daughter Meghan the single exception, all but hidden from public view. And so far his close advisers have played it close to the vest, preferring to keep their own counsel rather than to speak up and out on a regular basis.

McCain’s private persona is no more accessible. If anything, for all his talk about “straight talk,” McCain obscures more than he clarifies, leaving it to us to deconstruct his disposition, decipher his policy preferences, and decode his leadership style. He is said to have a temper – he himself reports that as a child, at least, it was “outsized.” However, his presentation of self is anything but impetuous and irascible. The timbre of his voice is unfailingly soft, even gentle, and his choice of words is equally disarming or, depending on your point of view, disingenuous. “My friends,” he intones, to friend and foe alike.

Throughout his life McCain has prided himself on being a maverick, on bucking authority and defying conventional wisdom. It is a trait that has generally stood him in good stead. But voting for a maverick for president is another matter entirely. Voting for a maverick for president could be construed as voting for an unknown quantity.

John McCain is a Republican – and indeed on some of the most important issues of the day he has been a reliable Republican. Particularly with regard to the war in Iraq, McCain has all along sided with the Bush administration, even when doing so became politically unpopular. But on some of the other most important and contentious issues of the day McCain has been anything but a regular Party man.

In fact, he has been downright contrary, opting on occasion to partner with the opposition rather than with members of his own party. Moreover, in some of his boldest, if failed, bipartisan efforts, he teamed up with fellow senators who were among the most liberal Democrats in the country. McCain worked with Wisconsin’s Russ Feingold to sponsor the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. He collaborated with Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts on immigration legislation that would have legalized and eventually granted citizenship to between 12 and 20 million illegal aliens. And he joined with Al Gore’s choice for vice president, Connecticut’s Joseph Lieberman, to craft, ahead of its time, the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act.

Nor is McCain necessarily consistent. Unlike George W. Bush, who sticks to his guns no matter what, McCain can be persuaded to tack, to change course as the occasion seems to suggest. Only recently he shifted on the housing crisis, warning in March against broad government intervention, but, in April, turning on the government’s dime, he suggested that “deserving homeowners” who faced foreclosure should get a helping hand.

John McCain is not only proud of his reputation for unpredictability; he may be said even to promote it, both as an individual and as an ideologue. But we, American voters, have our own interests. High on the list is to know more about him, especially his precise policy preferences, domestic and foreign, than we do now. To insist on less is to do ourselves a disservice.