Mostly agreed, Tom with one caveat: Cindy McCain has stuck a shiv in Michelle Obama over the “really proud” comment; not just at the time, but quite recently, even after Laura Bush defended Michelle. If Mrs. McCain plans to continue making snide little character attacks on Mrs. Obama, then she in turn becomes fair game, in my opinion, for an examination of her own character.
As far as I’m concerned, the drug use I give a pass to; the stealing from her own charity not so much, since the way she went about it put a number of innocent people at risk of being accused of drug crimes. The screwing around with a married man and taking him away from his disabled and disfigured first wife, I find as reprehensible in her as in him.
You know, should could have gotten ear plugs to ignore the high-talking whining. Sure, they’re habit-forming, but I’ve never heard of anyone knocking over a Kwik-E-Mart to get their 'plugs.
I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about. All I’m doing is pointing out McCain’s hypocrisy in attacking (through surrogates) Michelle Obama. The fact that Cindy McCain is a thieving, homewrecking, plagiarizing junkie whore is of no importance to me, personally. It just shows what hypocrite McW is.
tomndebb, Yeah, I hadn’t noticed the date and by line, I just jumped in with my fatigue fueled rage. Salon doing what they did at the time makes more sense.
Bringing it all back now is stupid, and FTR - bogus has some pretty wide meanings out my way too.
I do. The choices that one makes about who to (closely) associate with says something about the person. And “First Lady” is an important position.
Nevertheless, I don’t consider this aspect of Cindy’s past to be particularly relevant to McCain’s fitness as a candidate. It was a long time ago, and she has rehabilitated herself. While I do consider her fully responsible for her actions, I also understand that addictions can drive people to do desperate and awful things. And to say that anyone would have to “lock up the silverware” when she’s around is both absurd and completely insulting to people who have overcome addictions.
I’m no fan of the McCains, but Cindy quit her habit cold turkey, not because she got caught stealing, but because her mother noticed her losing weight and looking sick. In my limited experience with Percoset, I can’t imagine going cold turkey off an addiction to that stuff without medical intervention. It was a year later that a fired employee of her non-profit called the DEA and reported the drugs that had gone missing in a retaliatory move.
This is just bullshit. She’s not running for president.
I"m going to disagree with you folks to a certain extent. While I don’t think Cindy McCain’s 14 year old drug habit is relevant, I do think that the character and political views of the president’s spouse are relevant. This spouse is the person the candidate has chosen to spend his or her life with, to have children with (if any), and presumably (not definitely) a major influence in his or her life. Obviously, some marriages exist more in name than in reality, but that certainly doesn’t appear to be true in the case of the Obamas, and I have not the faintest idea in the case of the McCains.
This shouldn’t give the candidates free rein to personally attack the spouses of their opponents on every and anything, but looking at their political and ideological views seems fair game to me. However, it’s ridiculous to take that back further than, say, five years. People’s views change over time. Their knowledge changes and their priorities change. So it’s ridiculous, for example, to hold a paper Michele Obama wrote in grad school some twenty years ago against her, but if she had published two years ago, I think that would be a reasonable thing to look at.
Well, yes and no. I don’t hold her recovery status against her–and would laud her for same depending on the circumstances of the lauding. I do give her credit for getting clean.
I do hold her adultery against her and McCain. They both flunk the Clinton test (could Bill get away with this in the media? no) in my book, which makes them fair game from this liberal, commie, pinko socialist. That sort of cheating doesn’t have a statute of limitations in my book–it argues a selfishness and a disregard for commitment that is rather jarring coming from the candidate of the “family values” party. No pass on that one. Charity work is expected at her level–she gets no “brownie points” for doing what wives of her social class do as part of their position.
( No pass for McCain on NOT defending his wife and daughter from the vicious smear campaign Bush ran against him a few election cycles back. And no pass for him sucking up to W, despite that smearing. But that’s all for another thread).
Is this *generally *true - IOW, since Clinton did not pass the Clinton test, it would have been legitimate to vote against him for that reason alone in 1992?
Keep it in perspective: Addicts can actually be very high-function, even in politics and government. Winston Churchill was a raging alkie and he still led the British Empire to victory in WWII. JFK was hooked on painkillers and still managed to finesse the Cuban Missile Crisis. Not saying it’s a good thing, or that a given leader wouldn’t be even more effective without the substance abuse, but does it have to be a deal-breaker?
People can use whatever criteria they want. But if GOPers were basing their vote on Clinton’s morality, then pull a 180 because their moral standards conflicted with their party-by-choice, then their hypocrisy, and not a candidate’s “morality”, becomes the issue.
I’ve known a number of addicts, some who would steal/whore for drugs, and some who wouldn’t. IME people who steal for drugs are already not-so-great folks anyway. YMMV, but I sure as shit never stole anything to support a habit, and I’ve had both habits and opportunity. Drugs have made me make some poor decisions, but never ones that compromised my principles.
In this particular case, I think we’ve got evidence for Cindy McC to be already not-so-great, not just some poor “victim” of a “sickness”. I don’t know the details of her affair with John when he was with his first wife, but I can’t really imagine any mitigating circumstances that would allow her to come out of that looking like anything but a piece of shit.
eleanorigby did not make that the basis for her objection. She mentioned the adultery specifically.
You don’t get to blame this on Republicans - the only person in this thread who is suggesting that adultery is a disqualifying factor is the socialist. So the only way your accusation of hypocrisy works is if it isn’t the way it is shaping up. IOW, if Dems want to claim that a candidate’s marriage problems do not affect his or her qualifications for office, then they don’t for McCain any more than they did for Clinton.
Same here. Having been there, I can’t manage much sympathy for someone who would steal from a charity to support her habit, especially when she had enough money to afford pills without stealing.
But, it’s her husband who is running for president, not her. I don’t plan to vote for him anyway, but something like this wouldn’t affect my decision if I had planned to.
I don’t think Cindy is very important . She is not an Elanor Roosevelt type who is likely to push her projects. What she did is indefensible . But not much impact on the campaign unless you attack Obamas wife. Then she becomes fair game and loses.
Her affair with McCain is relevant in that it shows he’s a weasel too. It takes two to fool around, and if John’s the kind of guy who would cheat on a wife what else might he cheat on?
