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Cindy McCain was once touring a Vietnamese hospital when she experienced a
moment of shocked recognition: the wife of John McCain suddenly realised she
was standing in the very room where her husband had been held by the
Vietcong, after being shot down during a bombing mission over Hanoi in 1967.
“It was a little bit overwhelming,” she said yesterday. “That was quite a
point in time for me.”
Mrs McCain, 54, who may be the next Republican First Lady come November, has
two causes in her life: John McCain's political career and her humanitarian
work. That moment, standing in a hospital room where her husband had once
lain captive, with broken arms and a broken leg, brought the two together.
“That,” she said, with an understated Arizona twang, “was a very unique
experience.”
Passing through London en route to the US after her own humanitarian mission
to Vietnam, Mrs McCain spoke to The Times about the strains and pleasures of
being on the campaign trail, her struggle with illness, and the charity work
she has performed for the past 20 years, notably with the Halo Trust, the
anti-landmine charity of which Diana, Princess of Wales, was also patron.
For Cindy McCain, reconciling domestic life, the demands of politics and her
humanitarian interests has been a precarious balancing act, all performed
atop one of the more remarkable political marriages. “I won't lie to you and
say that I always enjoy the campaigning, but when the days get a little long
and I get a little frustrated, I remind myself that I have a ringside seat
on American history,” she said.
At times in her husband's political ascent she has attracted highly damaging
headlines, yet surveys seem to suggest that she is the sort of First Lady
many Americans want. Where Michelle Obama is seen by some as bossy and
over-opinionated, Mrs McCain has consistently appeared the dutiful,
home-making (if trouble-prone) wife, more interested in good works than
politics. In some ways, she is a throwback to a Nancy Reagan-style of First
Ladydom, far closer to Laura Bush in temperament than Hillary Clinton. In an
age when the role of candidates' wives is more vital than ever before, the
polar contrast between the independent, tough-taking Democrat wife, and her
more demure and careful rival on the Republican side, may prove pivotal
In her elegance and reticence, Cindy McCain is again reminiscent of Nancy, but
there is also something intense and guarded, a determination to say the
right thing, and avoid a political explosion: “Campaigning is a little like
working for the Halo Trust,” she says pointedly. “They are both full of
landmines.”
After long experience, she can spot a political landmine from a distance. Is
John McCain too old, at 71, to be president? “Oh my gosh, no. He wears me
out. You should meet his 96-year-old mother, she would wear you out also.”
On Zimbabwe: “We want democracy. The right to free elections. The
fundamental freedoms we all enjoy.” On the presidential election: “The
American people are going to get a clear choice.” On her husband: “His
experience, his life story, his knowledge of how the world works.” If there
is a hint here about Barack Obama's relative inexperience, it is of the most
subtle kind.
She had harsh words for the Burmese junta, an uncontroversial target, blaming
the regime for the humanitarian aid failing to get through following the
cyclone. “The Burmese were and are difficult to work with, and consequently
children have died.”
Only once did the polite control seem to slip very slightly, and that was on
the subject of Michelle Obama, her opposite number on the Democratic side. A
few weeks ago, Cindy McCain made a sharp reference to Michelle Obama's
controversial remark that she was “really proud” of America for the first
time.
“I am very proud of my country,” Cindy McCain said. “I don't know about you,
if you heard those words earlier. I am very proud of my country.” When asked
yesterday whether she had ever encountered the wife of the Democratic
contender in person, she was wary, but crisp: “I've met her once.”
“Did you like her?”
“She was fine. It was a ten-second meeting.”
Cindy McCain would never say it, but she leaves the impression that ten
seconds was long enough.
When she met McCain, at a cocktail party in Hawaii in 1979, they were also
cautious of how much to reveal. McCain said he was 38 (he was 42); Cindy
Hensley said she was 27 (she was 24). McCain was a Vietnam War hero, who had
spent 5 ½ years as a prisoner of war, under torture and often in solitary
confinement (though she did not know that at the time). He was also married,
to a wife who had been badly injured in a car accident while he was
imprisoned: they would soon divorce. Cindy Hensley was a former rodeo beauty
queen from Arizona, the only child of fabulously wealthy parents, with a
social conscience and a gold Mercedes Benz.
This might not seem an ideal recipe, but 28 years later the marriage has
survived more heartache than a country-and-western song: multiple
miscarriages, her addiction to painkillers and a stroke that left her unable
to walk. Now they are plunged, for the second time, into what may well be
the most stressful experience in the world: running for President.
Since her husband won the Republican nomination, she has come under fire on
numerous fronts. For months she refused to release her tax accounts, before
finally acknowledging earnings of $6 million on her last return, income from
running the family brewing firm and a personal fortune estimated at $100
million. Her hair and clothes have been criticised by fashion arbiters and
she was even raked over the coals for describing “family” recipes that
turned out to have been lifted from the internet by one of her staff. Cindy
McCain has been through the mill. But the woman seated in a suite at the
Four Seasons Hotel in Park Lane is as poised and posed as a Stepford Wife:
the dress is spotted and summery, the mascara loaded, the make-up flawless
and the eyes almost alarmingly blue. She has just stepped off a 13-hour
flight from Singapore, after a fortnight visiting hospitals and orphanages
in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand; not a hair is out of place.
Her tribute to the late Princess is as flawlessly tailored as the outfit: “I
am very honoured that I serve on a board she was with ...she was a great
inspiration to me and to the British people as well. She was a remarkable
person and had a loving heart.”
Of the four finalists in the presidential race (and, make no mistake, the
wives are candidates too) Cindy McCain has been the least visible. True, she
is often there at her husband's side, coiffed and supportive, but also
distant: a manner that some find aloof, but which her friends insist is
evidence of a determination to protect what remains of her privacy.
“Campaigning is very disruptive of the family,” she said. “I am trying to keep
the home life as normal as possible and go about supporting my husband the
best way possible.”
No one knows better the disruption that media scrutiny can bring. For Cindy
McCain the low point came in 1994, when she became addicted to painkillers
after back surgery, and resorted to stealing the drugs from her own medical
charity. When the story broke, it “nearly destroyed both of us”, she once
said.
Another grim moment came during the 2000 primary in South Carolina, when a
false rumour circulated that Bridget, the Bangladeshi orphan the McCains
brought to the US for medical treatment in 1991 and then adopted, was really
his illegitimate child: the smear did huge damage and George W. Bush went on
to win the primary and then the election.
Then a stroke in 2004 left her unable to walk. “I did something very dumb,”
she said yesterday. “I didn't follow my doctor's orders. I was prescribed
blood-pressure medication and I thought I was too young to need it.” She has
now fully recovered, she says. “I was very lucky. I take good care of myself
now.”
All of this has ensured that the Republican campaign has been protective of
the candidate's wife, keeping her largely out of the limelight. But in
recent weeks she has emerged again. Polls show that she is more popular than
Michelle Obama. So now she is on show. Tonight she is hosting a fundraiser
in London, alongside Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State, which
is expected to raise at least $500,000 (£250,000) for the Republican's
presidential campaign.
Cindy McCain claims a personal connection with Britain, as this was where her
father, who went on to create one of the largest beer distribution companies
in the US, was based as a bombardier during the Second World War. He was
shot down three times and rescued from the English Channel. “He had a lot in
common with my husband,” she remarked drily. “He became very successful, but
he believed to the day he died that his finest hour was serving alongside
the British.”
She is emphatic that if she becomes First Lady, she will expand her
humanitarian work. “I intend to make that the focus of what I do.” And
suddenly we are away from the politics and the pressure, and back in a
Vietnamese hospital, the world where Cindy McCain is, perhaps, most
comfortable
At a hospital in Nha Trang last week, she spotted a woman with a tiny baby,
weeping because the surgeons believed the child, with a severe cleft palate,
could not be operated on. Cindy McCain is an active campaigner for Operation
Smile, a group that deploys American doctors to repair cleft palates. Her
adopted daughter, Bridget, suffered from a cleft palate, and was deemed to
be beyond saving. “I see a mother crying. I totally understand that. The
fear. I have been there.”
All the reserve and the caution have evaporated. “I am going to follow up and
see if we can bring mother and baby to the US. We have been in touch with
the doctors every day since we left Vietnam.”
Cindy McCain may be heading for the White House, but this, it seems, is where
she would most like to be: helping out in a hospital in Vietnam, where her
husband's political journey started 40 years ago and hers continues.
CINDY LOU HENSLEY
May 20, 1954: Born in Phoenix, Arizona, the only child of beer wholesaler
James Hensley and Marguerite Hensley.
1968: Named Junior Rodeo Queen of Arizona.
1978: After graduating in special education, she turns down a role in the
family business to begin a career as a teacher of children with Down's
syndrome. 1979: Meets John McCain at a military reception in Hawaii. He is
married to his wife Carol at the time.
April 1980: Carol and John McCain divorce and he marries Cindy on May 17. They
make a prenuptial agreement that keeps most of her family's assets under her
name.
1984: First child, Meghan is born, followed by John Sidney IV (Jack) in 1986,
and James in 1988.
1991: While at Mother Teresa's orphanage in Bangladesh she meets a girl who
needs to be brought to the United States for medical treatment and decides
to adopt her, naming her Bridget.
2000: Becomes chair of Hensley & Co, after her father's death.
