...be smart about it. A diary at the top of the rec list goes after Cindy directly and many people have expressed concern in the comments about the appropriateness of the diary. A direct attack on a candidate's wife can have blowback. I hope the right-wing idiots who are trying to make a big deal about Michelle Obama's "pride" find that out. In the case of Cindy McCain, we can constantly keep her past in the public consciousness without being mean about it by rightfully attacking John McCain for trying to cover it up and his hypocritical drug policy.
Follow me below the fold for the details...
First, always express sympathy for Mrs. McCain. Yeah, I know it's hard to feel sorry for a perfectly coiffed country club heiress fembot in a power-red dress and cultured pearls but doing so will deflect any charges of attacking Cindy. "Poor Cindy McCain! It must have been terrible to be in so much pain that she resorted to stealing Percocet and Vicodin from her own charity. I'm sure she must have been under a lot of strain just being married to a man who cheated on his first wife. She must always wonder when is it going to happen to her".
Then, simply switch to John McCain's attempted cover-up and media manipulation.
The irony is that Cindy's secret would have stayed secret if John McCain's heavy-hitting lawyer, John Dowd... hadn't heavy-handedly pulled out all the stops to protect the McCain family.
Dowd tried to get back at the man on Cindy McCain's staff, Tom Gosinski, who had blown the whistle on her drug pilfering to the DEA. But in the course of trying to get local law enforcement officials to investigate Gosinski -- Dowd and the McCains considered him an extortionist; others might call him a whistleblower -- Dowd set in motion a process that would eventually bring the whole sordid story to light. When that maneuver backfired, the McCain media machine went into overdrive to spin the story.
Do we want a heavy handed President whose vindictiveness will have unintended consequences?
Then, of course, there's the hypocrisy
Of the four major candidates, McCain has expressed the most hawkish positions on drug policy. He wants to increas penalties for selling drugs, supports the death penalty for drug kingpins, favors tightening security to stop the flow of drugs into the country, and wants to restrict availability of methadone for heroin addicts. He said the Clinton administration was "AWOL on the war on drugs" and he would push for more money and military assistance to drug-supplying nations such as Colombia.
Source: Boston Globe, p. A21 Mar 5, 2000
So there you have it. Don't attack Cindy, attack McCain for vindictiveness, hypocrisy, and the need to control the media. This is just another illustration of why McCain is unfit to be President and not an attack on his wife.