Opinion: John McCain to Cindy: Gee, Hon, thanks so much

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Every presidential campaign wants to turn its candidate into a likable human being, someone you wouldn’t mind palling around with if you were a multimillionaire politician who travels on chartered jets and in armored SUVs driven by unsmiling Secret Service agents packing serious heat.

One way to do this is to plop the candidate onto TV shows with Ellen and Oprah and Tyra and the chatty gals over at ‘The View,’ who don’t always all talk at once. Another way to reveal the human side is to dispatch a spouse to the same venues, unless the spouse’s name is Bill.

Last fall we learned from Michelle Obama that Barack tends to leave his socks and underwear around the house and doesn’t smell too great first thing in the morning. Thanks for that.

Cindy McCain looked very comfortable last week with Barbara and Whoopi and Elisabeth and the woman whose parents named her Joy as a sarcastic joke on the world. So this week John McCain‘s campaign sent Cindy off to ‘The Tonight Show with Jay Leno’ to win the millions of hearts of those sleepy American voters about to go to bed six months before the election.

She did get in that her husband is so healthy he’s going to hike the Grand Canyon again this summer, which only makes him insane. But in the course of that one single appearance the Arizona politician’s wife also revealed:

• that her 71-year-old husband is ‘not the best of drivers,’ so she takes the wheel most times.
• that when they met at a party, each lied about their age, McCain subtracting four years and Cindy adding four. And neither discovered the real 17-year difference until a newspaper published details from their marriage license.
• that at that same party the Navy flier kind of followed her -- except she used the word ‘chased’ -- around the hors d’oeuvre table and the possible future first lady thought to herself, ‘This guy’s kind of weird.’

Next week the McCain campaign should get Cindy on ‘The Dog Whisperer’ and she can describe putting their longtime pet down.

--Andrew Malcolm

Photo Credit: Associated Press