Cindy McCain: A Quiet Strength

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McCain: 'It's Not True'

"CBS News RAW": GOP Sen. John McCain denies wrongdoing in response to a New York Times article suggesting he had an inappropriate relationship with a female lobbyist.

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The question came around to Cindy McCain.

"For me, it's just the opposite now," McCain said.

In 2000, she explained, "I found myself much more open and much more willing to expose or to -- whatever -- to kind of lay it on the line." This time around, McCain said, she was drawing the boundaries closer. She was learning to say no.

"For me, there comes a time you just have to stop because otherwise I can't protect my children or my home life," she said.

The McCains have four children. He was married when they met -- though separated, according to some accounts -- and she was much younger, 24 to his 42. They were at a party in Hawaii. She was a special-ed teacher, a former rodeo queen and the daughter of a wealthy beer distributor. He was "this awfully nice-looking Navy captain in dress whites" who "was kind of chasing me around the table," she recalled in an interview with Harper's Bazaar. He'd been through 5 1/2 years in captivity in Vietnam, though she didn't know it then. She didn't even know how old he was. They both lied about their ages.

After McCain's addiction became public in the mid-'90s, she revealed that her husband hadn't known for years.

"I should have just told him I had a back problem," she told the New York Times last year. "He never knew it. I wanted to be the perfect woman in those days."

From afar, she still looks perfect, and from afar is how we mostly see her, beaming by her husband's side, all jewel-toned clothing and icy blue eyes.

But beneath that quiet exterior, beneath that reserve, it must be . . . well, surely there are perks to being the candidate's wife. But it also must be hell.

"I keep a long list, you know, I have a grudge list," McCain said at the spouses' forum. Then she spoke of her husband. "He's taught me to leave my grudge list behind and give forgiveness."