NYTimes Profiles Cindy McCain

This morning's New York Times lead story on Cindy McCain just sort of, well, made me feel sorry for her. Although they didn't manage to interview Cindy herself for the story, they talk of how she was largely rejected by the Washington social scene after John divorced his better-liked first wife Carol. After that, the article steadily chronicles the couple's largely separate lives -- hers in in Arizona and his in Washington. But it seems that Cindy really missed her husband:

Mrs. McCain expanded her childhood home, turning it into a 10,000-square-foot mansion that struck more than one visitor as a shrine to her husband. On the walls, she hung photos of the storied McCain military clan and her husband clasping hands with Republican presidents. Elephants adorned the wallpaper in one bathroom and a pot rack in the kitchen. In the master suite, she installed a fireplace carved with “MC,” for McCain.

The article also talks about Cindy's trouble coping with the negative press during the Keating Five, which she afterward acknowledged was when she became addicted to painkillers. Several close friends also reveal that she wants to model herself after Princess Diana if she becomes First Lady and even once joined the same anti-landmine organization, a cause that Diana was famously known for taking up. Cindy's op-ed in the recent U.S. News and World Report shows that she's invested in making herself a philanthropic First Lady, a model of the old Junior Leagues and other wifely volunteerism found in the upper classes of America.

I don't really know what to say about this except that Cindy doesn't seem to be the kind of person that deals particularly well with the harsh reality of political public life. This profile the Times did was far and away better than the one the Washington Post did earlier this year (in fact, it was so bad the Post seemed to have a do over a few months later), but both revealed that she's somewhat awkward in the press, desiring to be liked more than anything.