It’s one thing to have a slightly messy personal life. It’s another thing to lie about it. In a book. When there are public records.
McCain, who is about to become the GOP nominee, has made several statements about how he divorced Carol and married Hensley that conflict with the public record.
In his 2002 memoir, “Worth the Fighting For,” McCain wrote that he had separated from Carol before he began dating Hensley.
“I spent as much time with Cindy in Washington and Arizona as our jobs would allow,” McCain wrote. “I was separated from Carol, but our divorce would not become final until February of 1980.”
An examination of court documents tells a different story. McCain did not sue his wife for divorce until Feb. 19, 1980, and he wrote in his court petition that he and his wife had “cohabited” until Jan. 7 of that year — or for the first nine months of his relationship with Hensley.
Although McCain suggested in his autobiography that months passed between his divorce and remarriage, the divorce was granted April 2, 1980, and he wed Hensley in a private ceremony five weeks later. McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to his first wife.
So how will this play with women voters? Hard to say - but it didn’t play well with one; Nancy Reagan.
“Ronnie and I always waited until everything was decided, and then we endorsed,” the Republican matriarch said in March. “Well, obviously this is the nominee of the party.” They were the only words she would speak during the five-minute photo op.
We focus on John McCain’s angry outburst, but watch how happy he gets when someone calls Hillary Clinton (who he respects, he says now) a bitch. He’s giddy. Seriously.
There’s a lot of clips of McCain’s snippy ‘flash of temper’ exchange with a New York Times reporter a few months back. This NBC news story is a good summary - the issue is about the discussions in 2004 between John Kerry and McCain about McCain possibly being Kerry’s V.P.
So I was curious to figure out the truth - was McCain actually considering the idea of being Kerry’s V.P.? In the clip, McCain says “he never even considered it.”
That should be good enough - if McCain says it, it must be true. In fact, his defensive, angry exchange with the (female) reporter shows how passionate he is. It’s obviously just not an idea he’d ever entertain - are we all clear on that?
Oops! Look what he said in 2004.
McCain said in a television interview that he would consider the unorthodox step of running for vice president on the Democratic ticket — in the unlikely event he received such an offer from the presidential candidate.
“John Kerry is a close friend of mine. We have been friends for years,” McCain said Wednesday when pressed to squelch speculation about a Kerry-McCain ticket. “Obviously I would entertain it.“
An ABC reporter made McCain mad by asking him a question…
McCain became visibly angry when I asked him to explain how his Vietnam experience prepared him for the Presidency.
“Please,” he said, recoiling back in his seat in distaste at the very question.
McCain allies Sen. Lindsey Graham stepped in to rescue him. Graham expressed admiration for McCain’s stance on the treatment of detainees in US custody. “That to me is a classic example of how his military experience helped him shape public policy in a way no other senator could have done,’’ Graham said. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, also traveling on the trip, expressed admiration for McCain’s wartime service as well.
McCain then collected himself and apologized for his initial reaction.”I kind of reacted the way I did because I have a reluctance to talk about my experiences,” he said, noting that he has huge admiration for the “heroes” who served with him in the POW camp and said the experience taught him to love the U.S. because he missed it so much.
Here’s McCain being asked about Cliff Schecter’s book The Real McCain. He says he gets angry when he seeing out of control spending - he doesn’t mention he also gets angry when asked about his military record or when his wife says he’s bald.
Really. He yelled that at another Senator. But that’s only because he knows more about it then anyone in the room. He yelled it at another Republican, too.
Here’s what a fellow Republican says about John McCain..
Elected to the U.S. House in 1972 and then to the Senate in 1978, Cochran, a consummate gentleman, measures his words and his actions carefully. But he said something that surprised many in a Boston Globe article in January about his longtime Senate colleague McCain.
“The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine,” Cochran told the Globe. “He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.”
And why? Because of what Cochran saw with his own lying eyes…
Cochran said he observed McCain engage in a physical confrontation with a Sandinista while participating in a diplomatic mission led by Sen. Bob Dole and others in the fall of 1987. Cochran, McCain - who had won election to the Senate that year - and other members of a bipartisan committee of lawmakers called the Central American Negotiations Observer Group - met with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, head of the left-wing political party known as Sandinistas, about tensions in the region.
The atmosphere was tense, as the U.S. was pressing “pretty hard.” Cochran noticed a disturbance at the meeting table in a room lined with armed personnel.”McCain was down at the end of the table and we were talking to the head of the guerilla group here at this end of the table and I don’t know what attracted my attention,” Cochran said. “But I saw some kind of quick movement at the bottom of the table and I looked down there and John had reached over and grabbed this guy by the shirt collar and had snatched him up like he was throwing him up out of the chair to tell him what he thought about him or whatever. I don’t know what he was telling him but I thought, good grief, everybody around here has got guns and we were there on a diplomatic mission. I don’t know what had happened to provoke John but he obviously got mad at the guy and he just reached over there and snatched him.”
