McCain was still married and living with his wife, Carol Shepp, when he began his affair with Cindy Hensley. In fact, McCain even obtained his msarriage license to hensley while still married to Schepp. While he was imprisoned, Carol Shepp was in an auto wreck (1969), thrown through her car's windshield and left seriously injured. Despite her injures, she refused to allow her POW husband to be notified about her condition, fearing that such news would not be good for him while he was being held prisoner.
When McCain returned to the United States in 1973 after more than five years as a prisoner of war, he found his wife was a different person. The accident "left her 4 inches shorter and on crutches, and she had gained a good deal of weight."
According to The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof, "McCain was aggressively courting a 25-year-old woman who was as beautiful as she was rich." McCain divorced his wife, who had raised their three children while he was imprisoned in Vietnam, then launched his political career with his new wife's family money. In 2000, McCain managed to deflect media questioning about his first marriage with a deft admission of responsibility for its failure.
Gingrich and Giuliani both conducted well-documented affairs in the last decade, while still in public office.
Giuliani informed his second wife, Donna Hanover, of his intention to seek a separation in a 2000 press conference. The announcement was precipitated by a tabloid frenzy after Giuliani marched with his then-mistress, Judith Nathan, in New York's St. Patrick's Day parade, an acknowledgement of infidelity so audacious that Daily News columnist Jim Dwyer compared it with "groping in the window at Macy's." In the acrid divorce proceedings that followed, Hanover accused Giuliani of serial adultery, alleging that Nathan was just the latest in a string of mistresses, following an affair the mayor had had with his former communications director.
But the most notorious of them all is undoubtedly Gingrich, who ran for Congress in 1978 on the slogan, "Let Our Family Represent Your Family." (He was reportedly cheating on his first wife at the time). In 1995, an alleged mistress from that period, Anne Manning, told Vanity Fair's Gail Sheehy: "We had oral sex. He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, 'I never slept with her.'" Gingrich obtained his first divorce in 1981, after forcing his wife, who had helped put him through graduate school, to haggle over the terms while in the hospital, as she recovered from uterine cancer surgery. In 1999, he was disgraced again, having been caught in an affair with a 33-year-old congressional aide while spearheading the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton.
So where's the scrutiny of John McCain? It's possible that McCain's charmed relationship with the press will pull him through the scrutiny again. But in light of the Edwards confirmation, will McCain's offenses see the MSM light of day? It was confirmed this week by the RNC that the McCain campaign is going to pay supporters to go onto democratic leaning blogs and news service blogs to say "good" things about John McCain. Maybe we here at DKOS should start infiltrating republican blogs and news service blogs to help inform them of McCain's adulterous relationships. "Fair And Balanced", you know!
Current U.S. Senator David Vitter (R, LA) in the next installment!
Comments are closed on this story.