Jeez! This CINDY MCCAIN Profile from the NYT is BRUTAL

liberalpragmatist

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Fri Oct-17-08 09:37 PM
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Jeez! This CINDY MCCAIN Profile from the NYT is BRUTAL

You can bet that the McCain campaign is not going to like this profile of Cindy McCain. The piece practically calls her depressed and unloved and hints their marriage is weak.

> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/18/us/politics/18cindy.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

Cindy McCain, the wife of the Republican presidential nominee, has spent the last year pursuing a return to Washington: �a harsh town� that does not suit her, she has said.

Nor does campaigning, friends say. She has done relatively few solo events, grants interviews reluctantly� she declined to speak for this article � and in introducing her husband at events, she offers few of the heartwarming anecdotes that are the stock in trade of the political spouse. When she finishes, she stands silently behind Mr. McCain, sometimes with an approving smile, sometimes looking strained.

<snip>

Mrs. McCain, 54, describes herself as her husband�s best friend, though for the last two decades they have mostly lived apart, she in Arizona, he in Washington. She seemed like an ideal political partner initially, giving Mr. McCain a home state, money and contacts that jump-started his career. But as the years passed, Mrs. McCain also became a liability at times. She played a role in the Keating Five savings-and-loan scandal, and just as her husband was rehabilitating his reputation, she was caught stealing drugs from her nonprofit organization to feed her addiction to painkillers. She has a vast fortune that sets the McCains apart from most other Americans, a problem in a presidential race that hinges on economic anxieties. She can be imprecise: she has repeatedly called herself an only child, for instance, even though she has two half-siblings, and has provided varying details about a 1994 mercy mission to Rwanda.

<snip>

Recently, Mrs. McCain has called the separations painful, volunteering that she endured several miscarriages alone. She spent subsequent pregnancies mostly confined to home, Ms. Ross said, sitting in a favorite stuffed chair, watching videos from a huge library. But she rarely complained. �Her attitude was as a good soldier,� Mr. Gullet said.

<snip>

Observers of that campaign and the current one say she seems different this time � more guarded, more tense, superthin. She rarely campaigns away from her husband�s side, and yet their interactions on the trail often appear brief and formal. During the rolling primary-season seminars that Mr. McCain held in the back of his bus, Mrs. McCain sat up front. Once in a while, she joined him, sitting very straight, smiling and saying little. Physically, she seems fragile: she suffers from migraines, hobbled around on crutches last year after a knee injury and recently wore a wrist brace because of a handshaking injury.

I'm reminded of McCain's Rolling Stone profile, which cited this diary entry from a staffer:
[br />

Tom Gosinski, a young Republican, kept a detailed journal while working as director of government affairs for the charity. "I am working for a very sad, lonely woman whose marriage of convenience to a U.S. senator has driven her to . . . cover feelings of despair with drugs," he wrote in 1992.