The Politics of Divorce

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 12, 2008 10:16 AM

In a week in which John McCain and Barack Obama have gone at each other over tax policy, health care and Iraq, the buzz in the blogosphere concerns a very different subject.

Her name is Carol McCain.

Anyone who has followed the Arizona senator's career knows that he did not behave well with his first wife. He readily admits it, blaming himself for the breakup of the marriage and not disputing that he was starting an affair with Cindy while still married. He has never tried to duck responsibility for what happened.

But 95 percent of the country probably knows nothing about this. Should it be fair game?

My own sense is that voters are far more concerned about the war and the housing market than what McCain did in his personal life more than 30 years ago. It smells like Swift-boating. But a British paper, as I mentioned earlier this week, has put the episode in play.

The ugly part for McCain is that Carol waited for him during his 5 1/2 years of captivity, then was injured in a car accident, after which he began courting the current Mrs. McCain. The fortunate part is that his first wife has never bad-mouthed him or tried to hurt him with the divorce. And McCain has never run as a family-values conservative. So maybe this will blow over quickly.

The piece in London's Daily Mail did include this harsh quote from Ross Perot, who paid Carol's medical bills: "McCain is the classic opportunist. He's always reaching for attention and glory. 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."

TalkLeft's Jeralyn Merritt recounts the tale and asks:

"So, water under the bridge? Or will the thought of a man who leaves the disfigured wife who raised his kids for a younger, rich woman be a turn-off for women voters?"

At the blog Cogitamus, Nick Beaudrot notes that one GOP candidate didn't get a pass on such matters:

"If you think a candidate's behavior in his or her personal life bears relevance to his merits as a presidential candidate, McCain's dalliances with other women and near gold-digging appear fundamentally disqualifying, roughly on par with anything Rudy Giuliani did to his spouses."

Carpetbagger's Steve Benen sees a potential double standard:

"If Clinton's personal history was a matter of tremendous national significance as a candidate and as a president, then it's not unreasonable to wonder why McCain isn't subjected to the same scrutiny. I'd prefer both issues are off the table, but I'm hard pressed to imagine why only Democratic presidential candidates' personal lives are of interest in the context of a national campaign."

On the right, Townhall's Matt Lewis offers a little compassionate conservatism:

"Some McCain supporters take solace in the fact that McCain and his ex-wife are still friends. My take is that it's unrealistic to assume someone could come back from years of torture as a POW, and resume normal domestic tranquility -- even with the person who stuck with them through the whole mess . . .Personally, this story seems like a bit of a hit job."

Speaking of personal stuff, Time reports on a new Obama strategy:

"The Obama campaign has built what might best be described as a Web-based rumor clearinghouse, located at fightthesmears.com, in which it hopes all the shady stories about Obama's faith, his family and his rumored connections with controversial figures can go to die.

"Obama is enlisting his millions of supporters to help him hunt down and quash these stories, just as those supporters helped him turn his insurgent campaign into a history-making juggernaut."

The first of 10,000 general-election polls is out:

"Democrat Barack Obama begins his presidential race against Republican John McCain with a lead in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, but not so great an edge as might be expected given the gale-force political headwinds against Sen. McCain's party.

"Sen. Obama leads Sen. McCain by 47% to 41%, a spread that is twice the edge he had in the previous poll in late April, and outside the poll's 3.1-percentage-point margin of error . . .

"Sen. Obama continues to do poorly among white male voters, according to the poll. More ominous is his weakness among white women, particularly suburbanites, who generally are open to Democratic candidates and whose votes could be decisive.

"Some good news for the presumed Democratic nominee: Despite suggestions during the Democratic primary contests that many Hispanics and Hillary Clinton supporters wouldn't support him, the poll shows both groups overwhelmingly do." (He's up 62-28 among Hispanics.)

So much for the endless punditry on how Hillary Clinton's voters would bail on him.

Well, it turns out that Obama should have "vetted the vetters" after all. He tried to strike a no-big-deal tone at a news conference Tuesday, but he underestimated the fallout. While it took a few days, that WSJ piece on favorable mortgages for the leader of Obama's VP search has knocked him out of the box:

"Senator Barack Obama, moving to quell a growing furor, accepted the resignation of the head of his vice presidential search team, James A. Johnson, on Wednesday after days of questions about Mr. Johnson's tenure as head of Fannie Mae and other business associations," says the NYT.

"The resignation of Mr. Johnson, a consummate Washington Democratic insider, highlights the challenge Mr. Obama faces living up to his goal of not surrounding himself with people with ties to special interests."

Michelle Malkin has been in high dudgeon about this:

"Struck with an apparent case of restless mouth syndrome, Obama first indignantly rejected the notion that he should pick his veep pickers more carefully: 'Well, look, the, the, I mean--first of all I am not vetting my VP search committee for their mortgages.'

"Translation: I will remain willfully blind to the conflicts of interest created by own mortgage industry-bashing rhetoric.

"Next, Obama leaned on his 'Washington games' crutch and attempted to distance himself from the appointees that he has assigned the most important and intimate of tasks: 'You're going to have to direct -- it becomes sort of a -- this is a game that can be played -- everybody, who is tangentially related to our campaign, I think, is going to have a whole host of relationships. I would have to hire the vetter to vet the vetters.'

" 'Tangential?' He appointed them to search for his second in command. 'Tangential' is the cleaning lady in his Sioux Falls campaign office.

"Finally, channeling Bill Clinton's 'is-is' parsing, Obama attempted to argue that his veep selection committee members don't really 'work' for him."

Liberals, meanwhile, are pouncing on McCain's "Today" show comment yesterday. John Aravosis leads the way at Americablog:

"MATT LAUER: Do you now have a better estimate of when American forces can come home from Iraq?

"JOHN MCCAIN: No, but that's not too important.

"First off, the man is an idiot. He's made these comments before, a lot. Remember how the Republicans kept saying that McCain's '100 years' comment about Iraq was out of context? Now that there's a pattern, it's a lot harder to discount. McCain has no desire to ever withdraw from Iraq. And he keeps claiming that that's okay -- the only issue we should be concerned about is 'casualties,' otherwise we can stay in Iraq forever. Really? You mean the $100+ billion a year we're spending/wasting on Iraq means nothing to Mr. McCain, the guy who claims that wasteful government spending is his signature issue? And the impact on our war readiness, the fact that our troops are now not ready to fight another war, should it arise, because they're getting so tired out in Iraq and Afghanistan, McCain is now saying that this is no longer a problem or consideration -- we can just keep them fighting forever, at no cost?"

The HuffPost says the WSJ piece didn't prove much of anything.

Some very different views of Barack are emerging on the right. Some, like the Weekly Standard's Noemie Emery, say the MSM are canonizing Obama:

"First it was Chris Matthews getting a thrill up his leg when he thought of Barack Obama; then it was Newsweek giving Obama a free pass on everything; now it is Mark Halperin over at Time warning that the Charisma Machine is going to roll right over McCain in November, with the media's hand on the wheel. How old McCain looks! How decrepit he is! How sick everyone (especially the press) is of everyone but Obama! How stunning he is! How inspiring he is! How 'valuable' he makes people feel, telling them THEY are the ones they are waiting for. How 'powerful' it will be when he debates John McCain on security issues, and comes out the better. How 'forcefully' Obama will 'move to the center as a mainstream, optimistic candidate,' celebrating both America's greatness, and 'change.' (And how great will it be when he ducks into the phone booth, and out comes . . . never mind.)

"Anything can happen, in the Belmont Stakes and in politics, and perhaps Halperin is right in saying McCain underestimates Obama's pizzazz, and the desire of the press to promote it. But it is also possible he overestimates both Obama, and the power of journalists, himself among them. Love is blind, or at least short-sighted, and there are some warning signs he has missed:

"The enthusiasm Obama arouses is surely amazing, but it is also contained and confined. In fact, it doesn't even move most of the Democrats . . .

"McCain does look old, and this is a problem. On the other hand, he looks like a rock, or an oak tree, while Obama looks more like a reed or a sapling, if not like a twig. He looks attractive, but not too substantial, not someone to look to in trouble. McCain looks as if he could stand up through a hurricane, while Obama might waft away on the wind. He would be better than McCain as an underwear model, but do we really need this in a president?"

On the other hand, in the New Republic, Bruce Bartlett, a conservative author who broke with President Bush, writes of others similarly situated:

"But it was hardly inevitable that this revolt would translate into enthusiasm for the Democratic standard-bearer. After all, you could see similar signs of unhappiness four years ago, and none of that translated into mass defections to the John Kerry camp. And, despite Ann Coulter's vow to campaign for Hillary Clinton over John McCain, the old bête noir of the right would have never attracted many conservatives. That's what makes the rise of the Obamacons such an interesting development. Conservatives of almost all ideological flavors (even, gasp, some supply-siders) have been drawn to Obama--out of a genuine affection and a belief that he may actually better embody movement ideals than McCain.

"There have been a few celebrated cases of conservatives endorsing Obama, like the blogger Andrew Sullivan and the legal scholar Douglas Kmiec. But you probably have not have heard of many of the Obamacons--and neither has the Obama campaign. When I checked with it to ask for a list of prominent conservative supporters, the campaign seemed genuinely unaware that such supporters even existed. But those of us on the right who pay attention to think tanks, blogs, and little magazines have watched Obama compile a coterie drawn from the movement's most stalwart and impressive thinkers. It's a group that will no doubt grow even larger in the coming months."

George Will sees a dim outlook for McCain:

"Because of his cultivated persona as a 'maverick' Republican, many--perhaps most--voters do not know he is pro-life. When the fact that he is becomes well publicized, and Democrats will make sure it is, Clinton's female supporters will stop sulking in their tents and will rally round Obama."

I think that is a sleeper issue as well.

"Something that millions of Americans think they know about Obama--that he is a Muslim--is injurious. When they are disabused of this idea, he will rise. McCain might think Obama cannot rise high enough to win because he, McCain, can get the support of white, blue-collar, culturally conservative Democrats who decisively preferred Clinton to Obama in the primaries.

"But there are fewer of these 'Reagan Democrats' than there were when that category was identified 28 years ago . . . War-weary Americans are preoccupied with domestic discontents, but McCain sounds at best perfunctory when talking about things other than those that really interest him, things that fly or explode--the sinews of national security."

Continuing our series on slamming potential veeps, Politico's David Mark says Jim Webb practically disqualifies himself through his "affinity for the cause of the Confederacy."

"Webb is no mere student of the Civil War era. He's an author, too, and he's left a trail of writings and statements about one of the rawest and most sensitive topics in American history.

"He has suggested many times that while the Confederacy is a symbol to many of the racist legacy of slavery and segregation, for others it simply reflects Southern pride. In a June 1990 speech in front of the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, posted on his personal website, he lauded the rebels' 'gallantry,' which he said 'is still misunderstood by most Americans.'

"Webb, a descendant of Confederate officers, also voiced sympathy for the notion of state sovereignty as it was understood in the early 1860s, and seemed to suggest that states were justified in trying to secede."

Jonathan Capehart targets Sam Nunn, he of the don't-ask-don't-tell compromise:

"If Obama taps Nunn, he could end up adding gay men and lesbians to the list of disgruntled Democrats. They might not vote for McCain, but they might very well stay home."

The new McCain blog gets a thumbs-up from Newsweek:

"Obama's blog is about as interesting as a Club Med brochure . . .

"The McCain Report, on the other hand, is actually readable. Written by new hire Michael Goldfarb (formerly a blogger at the Weekly Standard), the Report wouldn't seem out of place on any number of smart, substantive conservative websites; it just happens to be an official production. Since launching the blog on Friday, Goldfarb has advanced an interesting (if debatable) argument about how increased taxes won't lead to increased government revenue; characterized Obama's early opposition to the Iraq war as a matter of political convenience rather than bold leadership; and reminded readers that Obama wasn't always opposed to the Bear Stearns bailout. He's even tried a little--gasp!--humor.

"In an item titled 'Take a Chance on McCain,' Goldfarb informed 'disaffected Hillary supporters' that 'John McCain is a huge ABBA fan,' then posted a vintage YouTube clip of the catchy Swedish quartet . . . Needless to say, this is more self-mockery than the earnest Obama bloggers have mustered up in 17 months online."