Fortunate Daughter

On the blog last month, after the New York Times reported on her dad's connection to a female lobbyist, McCain posted an entry called "Lucky Girl," in which she mused -- without ever mentioning the article -- that politics could be "dirty and cruel," and that she was grateful to have such "wonderful" parents and such "absolutely epic" friends.

The family of a prominent senator with presidential aspirations does not have the luxury of privacy. It's all in the public domain: There's sprightly, 96-year-old Roberta McCain, who not too long ago told C-SPAN that the Republican base was just going to have to hold "their nose" and vote for her son. There's the senator, 71, who famously spent 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. There's Cindy, 53, John McCain's second wife, who was addicted to prescription painkillers for several years when Meghan was a child, and who in 2004 suffered a stroke. There's Meghan's brother, Jack, in the Naval Academy, and her other brother, Jimmy, a Marine who has served in Iraq. There's her little sister, Bridget, whom the McCains adopted from Bangladesh as an infant, and who was, in Dad's 2000 presidential race, the object of a smear campaign insinuating that she was the product of an illicit union.

And here's Meghan, deflecting attention from all that by narrating only the happiest stories from the campaign trail, poking a finger in the eye of anyone who expected more seriousness and poise from the daughter of the presumptive Republican nominee -- or at least, less liberal use of the word "like."

"My mom is amazing," McCain says. "Like, especially in the beginning when we were getting a lot of negative response, she was just like, 'You know, there's gonna be haters, like, what you're doing is fantastic and me and your father love it.'"

The Web site is not affiliated with or funded by the McCain campaign, according to Meghan and a campaign spokeswoman. McCain says she didn't want to have to cede "creative control" to her dad's staff.

So how does she pay for it?

"We don't talk about it," McCain says firmly. " 'Cause, like, once I answer one question it leads to 50 others."

But, because she is the candidate's daughter, her press requests are routed through the campaign and, at one point, Brooke Buchanan, the McCain campaign's traveling spokeswoman, comes into the room to keep an eye on the interview.

"Hey, girls," Buchanan says. She perches on the arm of Bae's chair.

"Did you change your hair?" one of the blogettes asks her.

"I did," Buchanan says. "I actually just dried it."

"You look really pretty," someone says.