The motto “always faithful” doesn’t exactly fit Senator McCain according to this blistering profile of him in the Daily Mail. It goes into some detail about the woman McCain left in favor of his mistress-turned-wife, millionaire beauty queen, Cindy McCain.
Prior to Cindy, John was married to Carol, herself “a famous beauty and a successful swimwear model when they married in 1965.” But, while he was being tortured in Viet Nam, she was in a terrible car wreck that required 23 surgeries and left her in a painful physical condition. Ross Perot — yes, that Ross Perot paid for her surgeries. Perot’s judgment is harsh:
‘McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory,’ he said.
‘After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history.’
When it became clear that McCain, son of military royalty, was not going to become an admiral like his father and grandfather; he went into politics. And Cindy was his golden ticket.
Odd how the personal and emotional really make a difference about one’s view of a political candidate. This abandoned wife story gets my blood up every time I read about it, and yet, in practical terms, it probably makes less difference in evaluating a McCain Presidency than his policies do. For me, I suppose McCain’s abandoned wife is a lot like Rev. Wright is to a lot of right-wingers with respect to Obama. Of course, I feel like I’m right and they’re wrong because, to me, how one treats one’s spouse reflects more strongly on a person than the ranting and ravings of one’s preacher.
It’s okay. He’s a Republican.
Oh yeah, and a “maverick.”
‘The best way to judge a man’s character is how he treats his wife’..This is a proverb widely repeated in France,although I don’t know if it’s French origin.
‘The best way to judge a woman ‘,the saying continues,’is how she dresses in public’.But both may be referring to cultures in centuries past.The woman’s judgment, for sure, seems a little thin by today’s standards.
John would lose and Cindy would win by the above judgments.
This one is way, way too privately personal to be a public basis for character judgment. They were separated by extraordinary circumstances, both severely injured — both of them very changed by their experiences when they reunited.
Besides that, something like half of the married couples in the U.S. get divorced. That’s a lot of people who ought not get too sanctimonious about somebody else’s character as a spouse.
A much more solid and appropriately public basis is George Bush’s maligning John McCain’s family. In another time, nothing less than a duel at dawn would be in order. Instead, McCain said Bush ought to be ashamed; Bush said hey it’s just politics; and they wrapped it all up with a great big multimedia hug.
That public display says the same thing about McCain’s character without dragging his first wife into his career mud.
I’m not going to judge McCain too harshly for leaving his wife. As one of the commenters notes, both of their circumstances changed, and many people have divorced in less extenuating circumstances. Still, considering that so much of McCain’s appeal is personality-based, I think this is worthwhile information for the public to have. I base that not so much on the fact that he left his first wife, but that the foundation of his political career is based upon an adulterous relationship with a rich young beer heiress from Arizona. That affair allowed him to become very wealthy, to gain access to the power-brokers of Arizona, and allowed him to buy an amicable divorce. Perhaps McCain would have had a political career otherwise: he had been the Navy’s Senate liason and was pretty connected in his own right–but his political rise wouldn’t have come so quickly and wouldn’t have happened in Arizona. I don’t know if it should be dispositive, but as long as the Rs are deriding Obama as a corrupt Chicago machine politician, I think the tawdry beginnings of McCain’s political career are fair game.
Doug, it is odd your view on McCain, judging his ability on how he treated his wife. Did you say that the attention drawn to Clinton was what caused you to switch your voting from(R) to (D)?
The more I learn about McCain and Obama, through, the more I’m leaning Obama.
Clinton’s cheating, I should have said.
I give people a pass on divorces in the ’70s.
Marriage as an institution changed pretty radically from the ’60s to the ’80s. Lots of people went from marriages of convienience (she cooks and cleans and takes care of the kids great, but I can’t stand her) to looking for something quite different (true love or whatever).
I’m pretty sure that’s what happened with McCain.
And, you know, Cindy is a babe. A rich babe. You aren’t going to find many guys who are going to fault him for that.
There but for the grace of god go I.
I’m with Pete. There is simply no way for anyone outside of a particular relationship to understand it fully (or, even, frequently, for the participants themselves to understand it fully).
The attention didn’t matter too much to me. The impeachment mattered a lot.
BIG bucks – Beauty – Arizona. La-de-da! A U.S. Senator!!!!! (at the bottom of his class and it still shows)
“At’s family values.” LOL
I think he believes marriage should only be between a man and some women.