The Impeachment Hearing Room

One Who Would Be, Or Is President or First Lady Surrenders A Degree

Of Privacy.

And So It Is That Cindy McCain’s Drug Abuse And John McCain’s Health and Age Cannot Simply be swept under the rug.

Cindy McCain's 'dirty little secrets' aired - Oct 18, 2008

Cindy McCain, 54, is the chairwoman of Hensley & Company, Arizona's foremost beer distribution company worth estimated tens of millions of dollars.

In a confession to Newsweek magazine she admitted drug use in the wake of the Keating scandal that rocked Washington in the late 1980s, in which she was the sole Senate spouse to be implicated.

"The pills made me feel euphoric and free,'' she wrote in an essay.

McCain lawyer asks why New York Times has not looked for Obama's drug dealer

By Lynn Sweet on October 18, 2008 9:10 AM

WASHINGTON--The McCain campaign unleashed a furious attack on the New York Times for digging into the background of Cindy McCain--as her attorney asserted the paper is not looking deeply at Barack and Michelle Obama.

Her attorney wrote a stinging letter to the managing editor of the New York Times about how the piece was prepared--claiming a reporter contacted a teen on her Face Book page to get some leads.

In the letter released by the McCain campaign, attorney John Dowd notes that Cindy McCain's battles with drugs and the management of her charitable life have been long reported and then he wonders why the paper has not plowed more new ground with Barack and Michelle Obama.

"It is worth noting that you have not employed your investigative assets looking into Michelle Obama. You have not tried to find Barack Obama's drug dealer that he wrote about in his book, Dreams of My Father," Dowd wrote.

"Nor have you interviewed his poor relatives in Kenya and determined why Barack Obama has not rescued them. Thus, there is a terrific lack of balance here.

"I suggest to you that none of these subjects on either side are worthy of the energy and resources of The New York Times. They are cruel hit pieces designed to injure people that only the worst rag would investigate and publish. I know you and your colleagues are always preaching about raising the level of civil discourse in our political campaigns. I think taking some your own medicine is in order here."

Click below for the entire letter

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/18/us/politics/18cindy.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Cindy McCain was new to Washington and not yet 30 when she arrived at a luncheon for
Congressional spouses to discover a problem with her name tag.

It read “Carol McCain.” That was the well-liked wife John McCain had left to marry Cindy, to the disapproval of many in Washington.

Fearing that the slight was intentional, she slinked to a half-empty table that never filled. “No one wanted to sit at her table,“ said Barbara Ross, a friend who was not surprised when Mrs. McCain announced a few months later that she was moving back to Arizona. “It was like high school.”

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 him, sometimes with an approving smile, sometimes looking strained.

From the start, Mrs. McCain’s marriage has been defined by her husband’s ambitions, and despite her sometimes punishing ride in political life, she does whatever she must to help fulfill them. As his poll numbers have slid recently, her devotion has seemed only to grow. When the McCain campaign recently stepped up attacks on Senator Barack Obama, Mrs. McCain joined in with startling intensity.

The day after the second presidential debate, which did not turn around Mr. McCain’s standing in the polls, she interrupted a Fox News interview he was doing to testify to his virtues. At this late date, Mrs. McCain is starting to headline her own rallies, starting in Pennsylvania on Saturday.

“She would walk on broken glass barefoot if it required her to do so in this campaign,” said Matt Salmon, a former Arizona congressman who knows the couple.

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 initially seemed like an ideal political partner, giving Mr. McCain a home state, money and contacts that jump-started his career.

But as the years passed, she 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 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.

Those close to Mrs. McCain say she aspires to be like another blonde, glamorous figure married to an older man: Diana, the Princess of Wales

Mrs. McCain sought out the same mine-clearing organization that the princess supported, joining its board and traveling to minefields, just as her role model had. Mrs. McCain recently told British reporters that as first lady, she would take her cues from Diana, throwing herself into international philanthropy.

First, though, the McCains must win. Mrs. McCain has traveled by her husband’s side on the campaign trail and helped reorganize the campaign after it floundered in 2007. When The New York Times reported last winter that Mr. McCain’s staffers had urged him to stay away from a female lobbyist during his first presidential run, Mrs. McCain stood by her husband at a news conference and defended his honor.

Politics have always brought the McCains together: as she remarked during his failed 2000 presidential run, campaigns are when the two spend the most time with each other.

“Just when I think we’re complete opposites, it turns out we’re not, that we’ve had a common goal — first the children and now this,” she told Harper’s Bazaar last year.

Washington Experiences

Some of Mr. McCain’s Washington friends say they have barely met Mrs. McCain, while fellow mothers at their children’s schools say they have little sense of her husband. The two often relax in separate places: Mr. McCain prefers the family’s ranch in the Arizona desert, while Mrs. McCain’s refuge is a high-rise condominium on the Pacific. (Her husband is “not a beach person,” she recently told Vogue.)

From the beginning, John and Cindy McCain had two entirely different experiences of Washington. He was the most popular member of the freshman Congressional class of 1983, with the most heroic background, the most uproarious jokes and, from his days as the Senate’s Navy liaison, the highest-level contacts. “John was clearly the star from the first day,” said Steve Bartlett, a former congressman from Texas.

Mrs. McCain was 28, nearly two decades younger than her husband and just five years older than his eldest-son. “Cindy was a little bit star struck by John’s fame and the strength of his personality,” said Diana Dunn, who socialized with the couple. Ms. Dunn, the former wife of William S. Cohen, the former Maine senator and defense secretary, recalls the new Mrs. McCain as gracious but timid, unschooled in Washington conversation, and worried about fitting in.

Carol McCain was still a presence on the social scene, working in the Reagan White House and as an events planner. Everyone knew her story: she had stood by her husband during his captivity in North Vietnam, never passing word of a debilitating car accident, only to discover, a few years after their reunion that he was leaving her for a younger, richer woman.

Rejected by the clubby Congressional wives, Cindy McCain tried to befriend her husband’s aides.

“She seemed lonely,” said Lisa Boepple, a former chief of staff. But “she was John’s wife, so we didn’t really want to hang around with her.” 2 | 3 | Next Page

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24518850-401,00.html

Cindy McCain, 54, is the chairwoman of Hensley & Company, Arizona's foremost beer distribution company worth estimated tens of millions of dollars.

In a confession to Newsweek magazine she admitted drug use in the wake of the Keating scandal that rocked Washington in the late 1980s, in which she was the sole Senate spouse to be implicated.

"The pills made me feel euphoric and free,'' she wrote in an essay.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article4968992.ece

John McCain under fire as hostile media focus on ‘lonely’ Cindy and cancer

http://news.theage.com.au/world/us-campaign-heats-up-with-2-weeks-to-go-20081019-53r4.html

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/18/mccain-camp-fires-ny-times-story/

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The Facts Aren’t A Smear; They Are The Facts…The Truth!