It turns out anonymity has a short shelf life, at least when it comes to satirical novels.

Time magazine is reporting that the anonymous author of O: A Presidential Novel, published Tuesday by Simon & Schuster, is Mark Salter. Time writer Mark Halperin cites anonymous (of course) sources; Salter and the book's editor, Jonathan Karp, have declined to comment.

Salter has been a speechwriter and staffer for Sen. John McCain for more than 20 years and has collaborated with McCain on five nonfiction books.

Publicity for O hinted that its author was an Obama White House insider, coyly describing him as someone who had "been in the room with Barack Obama." Instead Anonymous turns out to be a guy with a fairly large ax to grind -- Salter was one of the main architects of McCain's "maverick" image, which, in the wake of his loss to Obama in the 2008 presidential election, McCain has been going to some pains to dismantle.  

Unlike Joe Klein's anonymously released 2006 presidential satire Primary Colors, O has received less than glowing reviews. I read a few passages and found the prose fairly clunky and not particularly witty -- although there's some, um, energy in the description of a character called "the Barracuda" who bears some resemblance to McCain's running mate: "flaunting that whole lusty librarian thing, sweet and savory, mother and predator, alluring and dangerous.” 

Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times described O in her review as "a thoroughly lackadaisical performance — trite, implausible and decidedly unfunny." Salter may be wishing he could have stayed anonymous.