McCain's own public statements about how and why he divorced Carol and married Cindy Hensley, directly conflict with the public record. In his 2002 memoir, "Worth the Fighting For," McCain wrote that he had separated from Carol McCain in February 1980 before he began dating Cindy Hensley. But that account has been contradicted by a recent report by the Los Angeles Times (also republished in the July 11 2008 issue of guardian.co.uk). The newspaper report states that, contrary to the claim by McCain that he received a license to marry his second wife about a month before a judge granted his divorce from Carol McCain in April 1980, McCain's divorce petition and other court documents show that he and Carol had lived together until January 7, 1980. In deed, McCain himself has acknowledged that he was legally married to Carol when he began seeing Cindy; he has claimed the two were separated.
Nevertheless, McCain has acknowledged that he had girlfriends during this time, without going into any details. So far, the closest McCain has come publicly to admitting his infidelity, according to Robert Timberg, his biographer and fellow Annapolis graduate, is that after the marriage fell apart, McCain later reportedly told him that he had engaged in a series of extra-marital "dalliances."How does the woman at the center of all this, Carol McCain, the former wife of Mr. McCain's, explain it? Carol emphatically says, "I have no bitterness" towards McCain. "My accident is well recorded," she adds, "but it wasn’t the reason for my divorce. My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25."
But Robert Timberg, the fellow Annapolis graduate and writer of "The Nightingale’s Song," a bestselling biography of McCain, has this explanation about why the McCains’ marriage had frayed: "John started carousing and running around with women,’ said Timberg.
6. Lacks Basic Human Compassion and Principles.
In recent times, what is increasingly heard among keen political observers about John McCain, is almost the same complaint. The general complaint is that John McCain seems to have drastically changed lately, and that he lacks core, lasting principles and does things merely on the basis of what is immediately politically expedient. As Rex Nutting put it, true, John McCain has in nearly 30 years or so in national politics "honed a reputation as a guy who'll say the truth regardless of the political consequences. But McCain has [now] crashed the Straight Talk Express." Nutting adds that "on almost every issue where he took a principled stand against the Republican line -- taxes, immigration, oil drilling, the Religious Right -- he's changed his views."
At the very core of the charge about McCain's lack of principle, is the common offense and complaint about John McCain's treatment of his then wife, Carol, while he secretly romanced Cindy Lou Hensley and tried to get rid of Carol in order to marry the far younger, more attractive, richer and more connected Cindy. By and large, from the facts available, one vivid picture that emerges from the records, is a John McCain, the politician and self-centered womanizer who, mainly for financial and political connection reasons, effectively abandoned his crippled wife, Carol, and "married up" to Cindy, a much younger and much richer former rodeo beauty queen 18 years younger than Carol and a heiress to a lucrative Arizona beer distributorship. The facts concerning this have been well-documented and amply confirmed by many first-hand participants in the events. (See, for example, the following for some of the most recent accounts: "McCain's broken marriage and fractured Reagan friendships," Los Angeles Times, July 11, 2008; and Mail Online, "The Wife U.S. Republican John McCain callously left behind," by Sharon Churcher, June 8, 2008, www.dailyMail.co.uk/female/Article-1024927/The-wife-John-McCain-callously-left-behind.html/).
In 1979 – while still married to Carol – John McCain met the then Cindy Lou Hensley, the scion of an Arizona beer distributing family fortune, at a Honolulu cocktail party in Hawaii, and over the next six months, he spent almost every available minute pursuing her, flying around the country to see her. Then, with such an unusual speed and rapidity rarely before seen, McCain pushed for a divorce from Carol while he secretly romanced his new dream girl, Cindy, and had barely obtained the divorce from Carol when he wed Cindy the next year, just one month later. Thereupon, McCain promptly retired from his purportedly beloved U.S. Navy in 1981 and, then, aided thereafter by his new wife's fortune from her family's beer distribution business, McCain launched his political career, making an uncommon successful run for the US House the following year, in almost a record time. He was then elected to the U.S. Senate within merely 5 years in 1986.
It was McCain's treatment of his first wife, Carol, that has most riled many observers and participants ever since, as the most telling manifestation of his lack of human principle and compassion.
Ted Sampley, who fought with US Special Forces in Vietnam and is now a leading campaigner for veterans’ rights, is quoted as saying:
"I have been following John McCain’s career for nearly 20 years. I know him personally. There is something wrong with this guy and let me tell you what it is – deceit. When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left behind, he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him knew it. Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and beautiful and very wealthy. At that point McCain just dumped Carol for something he thought was better."
Sampley adds:
"This is a guy who makes such a big deal about his character. He has no character. He is a fake. If there was any character in that first marriage, it all belonged to Carol [who had let McCain have his divorce and didn't fight him]."
Ross Perot, the multi-billionaire political crusader, who reportedly was the one who paid Carol's medical bills all those years of her surgeries and medical treatments, is now said to "believe that both Carol McCain and the American people have been taken in by a man [John McCain] who is unusually slick and cruel – even by the standards of modern politics." Perot adds, "McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory. After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history."
The bottom line: TIME FOR THE MEDIA – AND AMERICA - TO WAKE UP!
THE CENTRAL QUESTION: How then did we come to this current pervasive “popular” mythology that John McCain has actually been "fully vetted" already by the American electorate and that he has actually "passed the test" to be President were he to be elected to that sacred office? Just where is the credible evidence or proof of that conclusion or assumption? And when, where and how, was that evidence or proof ever presented to the American people? Lest the American people become swindled once again into yet another national political deceit and disaster in this epochal 2008 election, as they had been swindled into in Iraq by the main stream press and media that was largely in slumber only to wake up to the actual truth only when it was already too late, the American Press and Media had better snapped out, very quickly, of the ongoing mythology of the "automatic qualification" of Sen. John McCain to be a good, worthy or competent President of the United States. And, get into doing their duty - the duty and responsibility of OBJECTIVELY investigating, verifying, asking the hard but necessary questions, and demanding answers! And, hopefully, this article, as with reporter Max Nutting's within quoted article and others like it, will be only the opening salvo for the press and media to wake up and perhaps actually begin their proper legitimate duty of looking into this fundamental issue of these potentially history-changing 2008 elections.
Benjamin Anosike, Ph.D. Anosike, author of several dozens of legal and political texts, is a New York based legal expert and independent commentator, and frequent writer on legal and public affairs.
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