The way Cindy McCain tells it, when her husband finally got around to asking his wife whether he should run for president in '08-"Of course, he asked me last''-she was ready for him with a considered response: Uh-uh. No. Having been through it before, she wasn't sure she could stand any more good times like the South Carolina primary of 2000, when a flood of "McCain has a black love child" phone calls and flyers proved there's no biographical fact that can't be turned into a political liability. (The smear referred to their then-eight-year-old daughter, Bridget, whom Cindy brought home as a baby from Mother Teresa's orphanage in Bangladesh.) If anything, a series of life-changing events since 2000 had only made the senator's wife more hesitant to re-up. In the two years before her husband decided to run again, Cindy had suffered a stroke that left her unable to speak clearly for several months and had also made the difficult decision to allow her younger son to enlist in the Marines-at 17, he still needed her permission. And, she adds, "I had just lost my mother too."
In all likelihood, no sane spouse ever answered the should-I-run question with "Great idea! Do you want to drag the dirty laundry out front, or shall I?" But Cindy McCain, retiring by nature, has never been fully at ease on the public stage. Little wonder, given that her formative experience in politics was arriving in Washington at age 28 with her new congressman husband only to find herself shut out by friends of the first Mrs. John McCain. These weren't just any old friends, either. Carol McCain had been taken under the wing of Nancy Reagan, who gave her a job in Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign and, later, in his White House. After one frosty year in Reagan's (and Carol's) Washington, Cindy moved back to Phoenix, in 1984, and ever since has been doing what she calls "this bicoastal thing," adding that John is "home only on weekends.''
So why is she on the hustings at all? Because she believes in her husband, of course, and because-as the daughter, wife, and mother of military men-she is a good soldier herself. She has often said that though John left the service long ago, she still thinks of herself as a Navy wife, raising four kids mostly on her own while her husband was deployed to Washington. When I run this view of the candidate's wife past her husband's best friend, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, he says, "You got it. This wouldn't be her first choice." (He also suggests that Cindy saw something of her father in John: "Her dad got shot down during World War II. Cindy must be attracted to guys who get shot down.'')
Now that she's signed on for another tour, she's marching through the campaign well defended, with her silk-lined armor and flawless hair and makeup a kind of protective shield. "Cindy dresses immaculately and looks like she could be on the cover of a magazine," Graham says, "so it's easy to stereotype her. But behind this very glamorous person is a very good person. She has a good heart and has gotten a thicker hide, but this doesn't come easy to her.''
Her press aide makes that clear enough by offering some unusual guidance before we sit down for an interview: Feel free to ask Mrs. McCain about her past addiction to pain pills, the aide tells me-everybody does that-but please don't upset her by mentioning a New York Times story linking her husband to a female lobbyist. (The story was deemed so unfair that it wound up helping the campaign, but five months later, it remains a sore spot with the candidate's wife.)
Physically, Cindy is much changed from 2000. She has grown out her ultrashort, spiky hairstyle. Although never heavy, she's sleeker, too; after losing 30 pounds, she wears size 0 jeans and complains of having trouble keeping weight on. She's also more skittish than I remember her being on the campaign bus during her husband's previous run, and she is extraordinarily guarded when we do talk, facing each other in two straight-backed chairs in the middle of an otherwise empty room in her husband's campaign office in Coronado, California: "There is no McCain temper; I've never seen it...He's as healthy as a horse and as young as one too...We never argue.'' Ever? "No, we do not argue.'' Even after she tells me her family spent the 4th of July weekend playing Wii Rock Band-"I grabbed the mic, but it was pretty pathetic''-and I ask what song she belted out, she stiffens at the question. "I'm not going to tell you,'' she says. Later it occurs to me that I've never been with her when her husband wasn't around; he is the one who always makes her laugh.
Her best friend, Phoenix real estate CEO Sharon Harper, explains that Cindy's "personality is really twofold; she's reserved and gentle but also strong and independent.'' On one hand, she is a cowgirl-literally, a former rodeo queen-who sleeps in tents on humanitarian missions, took up car racing after her stroke, and overcame her fear of flying by getting her pilot's license. But she's the rare cowgirl who stands in perfect fourth position after years of ballet and reflexively crosses her legs at the ankle.
At 54, Cindy sticks close to her husband on social occasions, even when the party is in her own home. In Phoenix, where she spent most of her adult life living across the street from her parents, she's known for being hard to know. Lindsey Graham mentions that "Cindy and I started bonding'' when her son Jimmy was serving in Iraq last year-in other words, almost a decade after Graham became a semipermanent fixture at the McCain cabin in Sedona.
From Reader's Digest
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