FLORENCE, S.C. — When Cindy McCain read her son Jack the riot act for waiting until the last minute to write a social-studies essay, she did it on a cell phone to Phoenix — with reporters in earshot.
There’s not much choice since being married to
surging GOP 2000 hopeful John McCain is like starring in “The Truman Show” — all day in a fishbowl aboard the Straight Talk Express, the campaign bus.
“I’m having to do it in front of people. I’m getting used to that. I have to do that. I have to discipline the children,” she says, joking that she gets tips on the four McCain kids — Meghan, 15, Jack, 13, Jimmy, 11, and Bridget, 8 — from photographers who sit across the aisle on the bus.
She assumed she’d hate the fishbowl — perhaps because of her 1993 media nightmare after she had to publicly admit a painkiller addiction. But, she says, “I have loved every minute.”
Mrs. McCain, 45, knows she’s always on stage — she wears knits to stay neat — and that people need to stare at “the package” and ask if she has ambitions like Hillary Clinton. (“No. I don’t see myself running for anything.”)
But she hit the roof when reporters grilled her right-to-life husband about what he’d do if Meghan got pregnant and wanted an abortion. Or what if Meghan got pregnant from rape or incest.
“I think my husband and I are fair game but I think our children should be left out of this,” she says.
And so she has no complaint if she’s quizzed about an addiction to prescription painkillers, which landed her in the headlines in 1993 when she was accused of stealing drugs from a medical charity she founded.
It began in part, she says, because of the stress of being a political wife.
“It’s probably no different than anyone who has a life that’s stressful, no matter where you are, whether you’re in front of the cameras or not,” she says.
“In my particular situation, I had suffered my two spinal surgeries and did so during the Keating Five issue [an influence-peddling scandal that hit her hus-
band] … As strong as I thought I was, I couldn’t withstand it.”
Her addiction lasted three years — and she says her husband never suspected. She stopped only when her parents tearfully confronted her and asked what was wrong and how they could help.
“Of course I knew what was wrong with me. I knew darn well what was wrong with me. At that moment, when my father, with tears in his eyes, said, ‘I don’t know what it is but I want to help you,’ I stopped cold turkey,” without going into rehab, she recounts.
But it didn’t end there. A year and a half later she had to tell her husband because the U.S. attorney’s office accused her of stealing painkillers. (The case was settled with a pledge of rehab and community service.)
“The addiction was the most serious problem but telling people and admitting you made this terrible mistake, that you were capable of something like that, is just the most devastating thing possible,” she says.
“And the last person I wanted to let down was my husband. He was very supportive …
“What happened to me in Arizona when I did go public was every addict’s worst nightmare,
“They plastered me on the front page of every paper in the state … It’s every addict’s worst nightmare to be ridiculed publicly for what you did when you’re still trying to recover from it.”
There was speculation that her husband might not run for president for fear that she’d be made a target again but she says no.
“Between John and me, that was never discussed … The hardest thing for me was going into recovery, so I wasn’t afraid of the scrutiny,” she says.
She doesn’t portray herself as a victim of some kind of vast conspiracy aimed at embarrassing her.
Her biggest worry was how the drug problem would affect her kids, but she says, “They’re fine with it. Their mother made a mistake and I’ve talked to them about making mistakes. It made me a better parent.
“I’m much more aware of drugs and the problems and how dangerous it is.”
Cindy McCain — a stunning woman with ash gray-blond hair and green-blue eyes — met her husband when she was just 24, a special-education teacher of severely disabled kids, on spring break in Hawaii with her parents.
She’s 18 years younger than her husband — it’s his second marriage and he makes no secret of his past carousing — and he jokes about the age difference in every speech.
Her folks, who own a big Anheuser-Busch distributorship, got invited to a reception for a group of visiting senators and the dashing John McCain was the group’s naval escort.
It was, she says, love at first sight but she knew nothing at all about his past as a Vietnam POW hero.
If Cindy McCain gets to the White House — and sometimes the new intensity in the crowds gives her the fleeting thought that she might be first lady but “I catch myself” — her prime role will be as wife and mother.
“I would not be a part of policy in any way. I’m not without my own opinions but those are private.”
Even the youngsters — who stay in Phoenix with Christy, their nanny of seven years, and Mrs. McCain’s parents — are getting excited instead of embarrassed by all the fuss.
“They’re asking me questions like, ‘Could we order pizza if we lived in the White House? Would we have our own rooms or our own phone lines?’ None of these questions can I answer,” she says.
She would love someday to go back to being a special-education teacher — “you take big steps for a long time and finally make a little progress and it’s wonderful” — but only “in my next life.”
But there is one cause that’s close to her heart — adoption — since the McCains’ youngest daughter, Bridget, was born in Bangladesh and brought back by Cindy McCain while on a medical relief mission.
A friend had asked her to look up Mother Teresa’s orphanage and the nuns asked her to take 10-week-old Bridget to the United States for medical treatment for a severe cleft palate.
On the plane home she lost her heart to tiny Bridget.
The McCains’ three older kids welcomed the new baby — “they thought it was great. Kids treat a little baby, it’s almost like a toy. Now she’s just a normal sibling … She’s doing great.”
Bridget’s cleft palate is 80 percent repaired and there’s another major surgery — a bone transplant from her hip — this summer.
If the McCains move into the White House, it’ll be the first young family since the Kennedys. And the family includes a whole menagerie.
There are four cats; two mini-Doberman pinschers; a springer spaniel; a turtle; a hamster; a mouse; an iguana; two snakes; a rabbit; three birds; and a gecko.