Maybe Michiko Kakutani is just "making things up" or reporting erroneously on the book she has just read, but this passage is striking for the level of scientific knowledge John McCain believed was needed for a potential president of the United States:
Elsewhere in this volume she talks about creationism, saying she “didn’t believe in the theory that human beings thinking, loving beings originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea” or from “monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.”
So we have a national candidate whose views on natural selection, perhaps the most important theory in recent scientific history, reveal that the reality she lives in is not related in any serious way to the world she actually inhabits. Good going, Senator McCain.