Guarded Cindy Gives McCain Perfect Accessory

Cindy McCain has been a candidate’s wife for more than half her life, and she’s gotten pretty good at it, the Washington Post reports in a profile. The demur, good-looking, stay-at-home mom knows how to humanize her husband and avoid policy talk. “I don't see any chink in her armor,” says her mother-in-law, “and I'm not biased.” But Mrs. John McCain has an intensely guarded, even sometimes secretive, private side.

The couple’s distance—he in Washington, she in Arizona—moved Cindy to deal with her problems alone. Afraid of flying, she got her pilot’s license without telling John. She hid a painkiller addiction from him until she’d kicked it. “She wanted to be the best possible Mrs. John S. McCain as she could,” says a brother-in-law. “I think she honestly felt that she did not want to be one of his problems.” (More Cindy McCain stories.)