PhillySpeak.com

Presidential nominee McCain may have been in politics too long. He has too long a record and too short a memory. McCain/Bush, Rove, and Chancy are hoping you too have a short memory.

Unfamiliar with the internet, he seems not to realize his own past actions and words come back to haunt him.

If you are a woman or care about women’s issues, I beg your indulgence and plead this case.

In a recent interview when asked what he regretted most in his life he replied, “My failed first marriage.”

What is it he regrets?

McCain’s first wife, Carol, was a famous beauty and a successful swimwear model when they married in 1965. Carol was the woman who faithfully stayed at home looking after their three children and waited anxiously for news. Her husband was captured by the enemy and was retained in a prison camp. Carol stood by her man.

It is a pity, her character and good looks were not as good as her driving skills. 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 the 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. So while she was in a prison of pain, becoming a hero from a life changing accident. John, having been captured, was struggling as a prisoner of war.

But when John McCain came home from Vietnam, Carol, the swimwear model and mother of McCains three children had gained a lot of weight and bore little resemblance to her old self.

John, being the man he is. John, being the hero he is. John, having the experience and strength of character in a time of crisis, made the decision to cheat on Carol and his children.

He was 41.

According to the constitution you have to be 35 to become president.

How many women did he try out before he found the one he would choose over Carol is anybody’s guess. His generous first wife, “My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens…it just does.”

H. Ross Perot, a billionaire Texas businessman, future presidential candidate and advocate of prisoners of war, paid for her medical care while John was a prisoner of war.

When he got home, through Ross Perot, John McCain met Ronald Reagan, then Governor of California. 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 a friend and biographer of McCain.

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. ( I’m sorry to interject. Does this mean all men at around age 40 can screw around on their family? I must have missed that in my own vows of marriage. And at what age do wives and mothers get their mid-life crisis, screwing around time?)

He was also fiercely ambitious. In 1979 – while still married to Carol – he met Cindy at a cocktail party in Hawaii.

(Oh! I again must interject. Hawaii, where Barack, when vacationing with his family, not chasing a skirt, not chasing a blonde bimbo, but was called an ‘elitist’. And, McCain was at a ‘Cocktail Party’…. probably, off to the side of the room, drink in hand, snickering and casting snide aspersions at the younger men in the room, in an attempt to entertain the 25 year old blonde heiress.)

Over the next six months he pursued her, flying around the country to see her. Then he began to push to end his marriage. Cindy, was a former rodeo beauty queen, and the daughter of a millionaire.

McCain was screwing Cindy while married to Carol.

Did Cindy know about Carol and their children during these six months? She was only 25 so perhaps she was too young to consider the other woman and his children.

Carol and her children were devastated. ‘It was a complete surprise,’ says Nancy Reynolds, a former Reagan aide.

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, age 25, and beautiful and very wealthy. At that point McCain, age 41, 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.”

McCain was then earning little more than $25,000 a year as a naval officer, while his new father-in-law, Jim Hensley, was a multi-millionaire who had impeccable political connections.

But Ross Perot, who paid her medical bills all those years ago, now believes that both Carol McCain and the American people have been taken in by a man who is unusually slick and cruel –even by the standards of modern politics.

‘McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory,’ Perot said.

‘After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history.’

What is it John McCain regrets when he says, “I regret the failure of my first marriage” and gets tears in his eyes.

What would you regret if he becomes president?

John McCain for women.

Thanks to Sharon Churcher who originally put much of this story together, but which I switched up some and added to.