Those of us who live in Arizona have had a front-row seat in a series of McCain scandals -- his affair with a young heiress while married to the wife who raised his three children while he was a POW, his carpetbagging move to Arizona to begin his political career with his new wife's money and connections, the influencing-peddling of the Keating Five in the S&L collapse, and the DEA investigation that revealed that his wife had stolen drugs from a charity she ran to feed her addiction. Those incidents were certainly reprehensible, but what bothers me more is the vengeful and nasty way he handled the problem with his wife's drug addiction.
Amy Silverman, then a reporter for the Phoenix New Times (our 'alternative' weekly), had uncovered public records exposing Cindy's behavior. Cindy's addiction was made public the day those records were released. As Amy wrote for Salon in 1999:
But the story I was pursuing was not so much about Cindy McCain's unfortunate addiction. It was much more about her efforts to keep that story from coming to light, and the possible manipulation of the criminal justice system by her husband and his cohorts. ...It's a story of unintended consequences. It's also a story of power politics and media manipulation that's very un-McCain-like -- if you believe his national media hagiography.
More details about McCain's unpleasant history can be found in this excellent NY Times article from 2000.
This is a story we need to know, as in "Know thy enemy." I agree with clammyc that we need to get out front with the frame that McCain's history shows that he's not fit for the office he's been seeking for 50 years. We don't have to wait for a nominee to start exposing McCain.