Ahh...but you have forgotten about McCain's crippled 1st wife

Read all of this if you want to know about the REAL McCain.....





John McCain's First Wife Issues: Will Women Voters Turn Away?
By Jeralyn, Section Elections 2008
Posted on Mon Jun 09, 2008 at 10:48:30 AM EST
Tags: John McCain, 2008 (all tags) Share This:      
First wife issues are nothing new. Lots of politicians have them. But John McCain, who will face some trouble from a segment of voters over his current wife Cindy's past prescription drug troubles, cannot be pleased today to see his first wife and mother of his three oldest children in the news.

Surprisingly, Carol McCain is defending him, even though he left her after his return from Vietnam and re-emergence as a war hero. Carol charitably says he was having a sort of "midlife crisis." Many others say it was because she had been horribly disfigured in a car accident and gained a lot of weight. [More...]


Now for the goodies. Laying the backstory:

McCain likes to illustrate his moral fibre by referring to his five years as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam. And to demonstrate his commitment to family values, the 71-year-old former US Navy pilot pays warm tribute to his beautiful blonde wife, Cindy, with whom he has four children.

But there is another Mrs McCain who casts a ghostly shadow over the Senator’s presidential campaign. She is seldom seen and rarely written about, despite being mother to McCain’s three eldest children.

The meat:

She was the woman McCain dreamed of during his long incarceration and torture in Vietnam’s infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’ prison and the woman who faithfully stayed at home looking after the children and waiting anxiously for news.

But when McCain returned to America in 1973 to a fanfare of publicity and a handshake from Richard Nixon, he discovered his wife had been disfigured in a terrible car crash three years earlier. Her car had skidded on icy roads into a telegraph pole on Christmas Eve, 1969. Her pelvis and one arm were shattered by the impact and she suffered massive internal injuries.

When Carol was discharged from hospital after six months of life-saving surgery, the prognosis was bleak. In order to save her legs, surgeons had been forced to cut away huge sections of shattered bone, taking with it her tall, willowy figure. She was confined to a wheelchair and was forced to use a catheter.

Through sheer hard work, Carol learned to walk again. But when John McCain came home from Vietnam, she had gained a lot of weight and bore little resemblance to her old self. Today, she stands at just 5ft4in and still walks awkwardly, with a pronounced limp. Her body is held together by screws and metal plates and, at 70, her face is worn by wrinkles that speak of decades of silent suffering.

McCain divorced Carol in 1980 and married Cindy one month later. Carol's version:

My accident is well recorded. I had 23 operations, I am five inches shorter than I used to be and I was in hospital for six months. It was just awful, but it wasn’t the reason for my divorce. ‘My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens...it just does.’

Others are less charitable:

Some of McCain’s acquaintances ... portray the politician as a self-centred womaniser who effectively abandoned his crippled wife to ‘play the field’. They accuse him of finally settling on Cindy, a former rodeo beauty queen, for financial reasons.

....friends say privately he was ‘appalled’ by the change in her appearance. At first, though, he was kind, assuring her: ‘I don’t look so good myself. It’s fine.’

....A sympathetic Nancy Reagan took Carol under her wing.

But already the McCains’ marriage had begun to fray. ‘John started carousing and running around with women,’ said Robert Timberg. McCain has acknowledged that he had girlfriends during this time, without going into details. Some friends blame his dissatisfaction with Carol, but others give some credence to her theory of a mid-life crisis.

McCain (and Cindy) have taken good care of Carol:

Friends confirm she has remained friends with McCain and backed him in all his campaigns. ‘He was very generous to her in the divorce but of course he could afford to be, since he was marrying Cindy,’ one observed.

It may be enough for Carol, who indeed is supporting McCain's campaign this year as she has his past campaigns. It's not enough for this man:

Ted Sampley, who fought with US Special Forces in Vietnam and is now a leading campaigner for veterans’ rights, said: ‘I have been following John McCain’s career for nearly 20 years. I know him personally. There is something wrong with this guy and let me tell you what it is – deceit.

‘When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left behind, he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him knew it. ‘Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and beautiful and very wealthy. At that point McCain just dumped Carol for something he thought was better.

‘This is a guy who makes such a big deal about his character. He has no character. He is a fake. If there was any character in that first marriage, it all belonged to Carol.’

Keep in mind this is a UK paper, which views the presidential race rather theatrically:

While Obama will surely press his credentials as the embodiment of the American dream – a handsome, charismatic young black man who was raised on food stamps by a single mother and who represents his country’s future – McCain will present himself as a selfless, principled war hero whose campaign represents not so much a battle for the presidency of the United States, but a crusade to rescue the nation’s tarnished reputation.

So, water under the bridge? Or will the thought of a man who leaves the disfigured wife who raised his kids for a younger, rich woman be a turn-off for women voters?

Bet she'd have Limbaugh over for 'Tea' a lot

We ran across a story written in 1994, a full 14 years ago, detailing the Cindy McCain "almost" drug-theft scandal which the McCains managed to weasel their way out of.

These days Cindy McCain is the picture of the glowing, supportive spouse of a politician running for President. It was a different picture back then, at least in private, as the McCain's managed to turn the tale of Cindy's scheme for stealing narcotics using the doctors who worked in the charity she ran, into one of "redemption".

At the time, journalists were willing to play along, the "tearful" confession, the claims of attempting to battle her addiction by seeking treatment, which turned out to be untrue.

   GOP presidential candidate John McCain's wife Cindy took to the airwaves last week, recounting for Jane Pauley (on "Dateline") and Diane Sawyer (on "Good Morning America") the tale of her onetime addiction to Percocet and Vicodin, and the fact that she stole the drugs from her own nonprofit medical relief organization.

   It was a brave and obviously painful thing to do.

   It was also vintage McCain media manipulation. Source - Salon

The Phoenix New Times wrote an extensive piece covering the McCain's machinations to keep Cindy out of jail and out of the harsh public eye. After all, how would the the public feel about a woman who stole narcotics to feed her habit using the very doctors who worked for her charity? They also attempted to have the unintentional whistle-blower, Tom Gosinski, charged with extortion.

And it worked, to a "T".

From the John McCain website:

   As an advocate for children's health care needs, Cindy founded and ran the American Voluntary Medical Team (AVMT) from 1988 to 1995. AVMT provided emergency medical and surgical care to impoverished children throughout the world. Cindy led 55 medical missions to third world and war-torn countries during AVMT's seven years of existence. On one of those missions, Mother Teresa convinced Cindy to take two babies in need of medical attention to the United States. One of those babies is now their adopted daughter, 15 year old Bridget McCain.

A friend of Cindy's, Tom was hired in September of 1991 as director of government and international affairs. Tom says that by the summer of 1992 he and other employees thought Cindy's behavior to be so erratic that "she was addicted to the prescription narcotics Percocet and Vicodin. They believed she was obtaining these drugs illegally in the names of her employees and the public charity she founded."

Tom kept a journal of those days, days where he took Cindy and the kids on trips and taught one of her children to swim, days where Cindy's behavior was the talk of the office.

   July 20, 1992: Well, this morning I received a call from Francis Fote, a doctor who traveled to El Salvador with AVMT. Fote called to inform me that he had visited with Cindy on Friday regarding the use of his DEA number. He asked that I tell Cindy his number could only be used in the state of New York as that is where he is licensed. I do not know what Cindy is up to but it appears as though she is trying to use several doctors' DEA #'s so that she can acquire drugs for personal use. Kathy Walker has stated several times in the past that this has been going on for quite some time and that the DEA has questioned large acquisitions of drugs such as percocet. We know that 300 percocet have been missing from AVMT's inventory and that Cindy says they are locked up at her home. I really don't know what is going on but I certainly hope that Cindy does not get herself or AVMT in trouble. I also hope that if it is necessary, Cindy is able to get help before she does herself harm. . . .

By October Tom wrote that Cindy's parents, the wealthy Budweiser distributors, Jim and Smitty Hensley, had confronted Cindy about her drug abuse.

   I understand that she told the Hensleys her addiction was rooted in her unhappiness--her marriage--and that she took the pills to mask her depression. The Hensleys told Cindy they knew she had a problem because of her severe mood swings and her change in character. They also said her meanness towards others was not excusable and must stop. . . .

A few days later Tom said that Cindy called him and told him something quite interesting, that she had contacted the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) herself, "and asked that an investigation be conducted to 'investigate allegations made against her.' She said a 'bogus' phone call had been received which made wild accusations about her and that she believed the phone call was 'political.' Cindy also said she had called the supposed originator of the call and that the individual denied ever making the call. . . ."

Cindy fired Tom in January 0f '93 citing a lack of funds to continue his position.

Because of Cindy's pattern of stealing the DEA numbers of the physicians who worked for her charity and using them to forge prescriptions under other unsuspecting person's names, Tom decided to find out if he had been one of Cindy's useful victims.

After he contacted the DEA he found that Cindy had indeed used his name twice on prescriptions in order to obtain narcotics for her own use. It was when he decided to file a wrongful termination lawsuit against AVMT that the full weight of the McCain's wrath and their attorney, John Dowd, fell upon him. Ironically it was Dowd who inadvertently exposed Cindy's drug use by going after Tom, claiming Tom's civil suit was "extortion".

   In a "confidential" April 28 letter to Romley, Dowd blurted, "We believe that Mr. Gosinski is aware that in the past Cindy had an addiction to prescription painkillers. . . . Given Cindy's public position, exposure of this sensitive matter would harm her reputation, career, the operation of AVMT, and subject her to contempt and ridicule."

Re: What a real first lady would be like (cut & paste)

I'm always amused at the scrutiny a potential first lady gets.  I've also never understood it.  The wife isn't running for president.  I don't care if she's a saint or a drug dealer.

Personal opinion, of course.  Many people often explain how she's a close advisor; indicates the candidate's judgment; blah blah blah.  I, personally, just don't care about the president's spouse and I never have.  And when you think of it, I'll bet 99% of the married contributors to this and other discussions on this board don't listen to their wives either (when it comes to hobbying).