The quiet force in McCain's campaign

WASHINGTON -- Election nights and campaign tours this primary season have spotlighted an elegant blonde in jewel-toned suits and a quadruple strand of pearls who stands beside her husband, Arizona Sen. John McCain, and says little.

Don't be fooled by the tableau.

Cindy McCain, possibly the next first spouse of the United States, is an heiress who travels to poor countries on medical missions, chairs a huge beer distribution company and is a key reason her husband is the presumptive Republican nominee for president. On Wednesday, in a taste of what her future could hold, McCain plans to attend a White House dinner to honor bishops and cardinals in town for Pope Benedict XVI's visit.

Though she was slow to warm to a second presidential bid after her husband's failed 2000 race, McCain is now an influential player. She gives "advice and counsel" on many issues, her husband told USA TODAY. Such as? "Things she sees that she thinks are important to our family and our lives."

That includes politics. When her husband's campaign ran out of money last summer, Cindy McCain forcefully argued for changes in personnel and strategy, and reassured fundraisers that spending problems were being addressed.

She also is effective at a microphone.

Last month, as Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama argued over who was best suited to answer an early-morning crisis call, she introduced her husband with a reference to their son in the Marines: "Everybody's talking about that call at 3 o'clock in the morning. I want him to represent my son at 3 o'clock in the morning."

And when Michelle Obama said in February that she was "really proud" of her country for the first time in her adult life, Cindy McCain had this to say: "I am proud of my country. I don't know about you, if you heard those words earlier. I am very proud of my country."

Both moments were spontaneous, McCain media strategist Mark McKinnon says. "People don't expect her to step out, and when she does, they really notice."

Cindy McCain, 53, is as reserved as her 71-year-old husband is extroverted, and a lot more polished in her appearance. But they are both independent-minded survivors of a punishing process.

Eight years ago, John McCain's bid for president began to unravel in South Carolina, where the McCains endured brutal attacks about their personal lives in fliers, phone calls and e-mails before the primary. Cindy McCain declined to be interviewed for this article, but her husband describes her initial reluctance about a second national campaign this year.

"There were clear misgivings and concerns," he says. "She knows how tough a political campaign is and how demanding it is."

Sharon Harper, a real estate CEO and longtime family friend, says Cindy "struggled with it." The turning point, she says, was when the McCains' teenage son, Jimmy, decided to join the Marines and fight in Iraq. "She didn't want to entrust her child to any other politician."

The second McCain campaign began as an expensive national effort, unlike the upstart 2000 bid. By last July almost all of the $24 million John had raised in the second quarter was gone, and the McCains called their staff to their retreat in Sedona, Ariz. The tense session produced a new campaign manager, Rick Davis, and marked the end of attempts to position John McCain as an establishment figure with a staff in every state.

Instead, the campaign returned to its 2000 focus on states with early contests, town hall meetings and unvarnished interaction with voters. Cindy had "strong opinions," McKinnon says, and was supportive of the changes.

In fact, she helped provoke them. She sensed that "spending was out of control, and it wasn't the kind of campaign John wanted to be running," McKinnon says. "She had a pretty strong hand in righting the campaign when it crashed. She was always the one advocating for going with a very stripped-down version … letting McCain be McCain and getting back to fundamentals."

Cindy McCain defined her broader role last fall at a panel of potential first ladies in Long Beach. "In the absolute end, it's just the two of us," she said. "We are our worst critics and our best friends. … He advises me on everything, and I advise him on everything."

If she were to become first lady, "I would not go to a Cabinet meeting," she told Harper's Bazaar last year. "I don't deem it appropriate."

The early days

Cindy Hensley McCain grew up in Phoenix, the only child in a wealthy family. Her father owned one of the country's largest beer distributors, Hensley & Co. A cheerleader and rodeo queen, she received a master's degree in special education and taught high school.

While on vacation with her parents 29 years ago in Hawaii, she met John McCain — a former prisoner of war who was 18 years her senior and whose first marriage was on the rocks. They married a year later and, aided by intensive campaigning and a public relations job with Hensley, John won an Arizona House seat in 1982.

He rose to the Senate four years later. Cindy, at home in Phoenix, had three children and started the American Voluntary Medical Team to help children in Third World countries. She also did something her husband calls the best indicator of her character: In 1991, she brought two sick babies out of Mother Teresa's orphanage in Bangladesh and adopted one of them.

"That was quite an act of caring and love," the senator says. "I had an inkling that she was bringing these two little babies with her, both of whom needed medical help. I didn't know that she had decided that we were going to adopt" one of them until she got home.

One baby with heart problems was adopted by a couple close to the McCains. The McCains' new daughter, Bridget, had a severe cleft palate that made it difficult to feed her. Now 16, she's a veteran of multiple surgeries and a typical teen involved with school and friends.

The other McCain children are Meghan, 23, who is writing a blog from the campaign trail; son Jack, 21, who is at the U.S. Naval Academy; and son Jimmy, 19, the Marine, recently back from Iraq.

At the time she was bringing Bridget home and arranging to adopt her, Cindy McCain was in a dark chapter of her life. She had become addicted to prescription painkillers after back surgeries in 1989 and was siphoning pills from her own charity.

Her husband and close friends noticed nothing amiss. "That's the thing. She was fine," Harper says. But McCain's mother, Marguerite "Smitty" Hensley, figured it out and confronted her in 1992.

McCain has said she quit cold turkey that day. But she didn't go public for two years, until after a former charity employee had triggered a federal probe into the pill thefts and was threatening to release details himself. Her lawyers worked out a deal involving a fine and no criminal charges.

Michael Grant, who hosted a public affairs program on PBS in Phoenix for 25 years, says the state was "just stunned by the whole episode." Media coverage was tough, he says, and included questions such as whether Cindy McCain was getting "softer, gentler treatment" than others would.

McCain weathered the political crisis, partly by using it to warn others about addiction. "This is a person who isn't perfect and doesn't pretend to be. She is … refreshingly honest about herself," says Mica Mosbacher, a Texas fundraiser for the campaign.

McCain's medical team went on 55 missions before she closed it in 1995. She now is on the boards of CARE, the HALO Trust (which dismantles land mines in war-torn areas) and Operation Smile, which sends doctors around the world to correct children's cleft palates.

Last month, visiting Kosovo with HALO officials, she inspected minefields about to be cleared and met with the president and prime minister. She's been to Morocco, India and Vietnam with Operation Smile.

Operation Smile officials say she's a hands-on worker who chats with families, organizes records and helps children through the screening process. "She just rolls up her sleeves and gets involved," co-founder Kathy Magee says.

That's not quite the image McCain has projected in this campaign. After one appearance, Washington Post fashion writer Robin Givhan called McCain's outfit suitable for a coronation and her hair "bolted down" like a piece of post-modernist architecture.

More than 13,000 references pop up if you Google the words Cindy McCain and the phrase "Stepford wife" — the book and movie about men who replace their wives with robots. Advice columnist Amy Dickinson, asked recently on NPR's Wait Wait … Don't Tell Me! what John McCain will do while the Democrats fight on, said he'll "take the next few months to rewire his wife."

Cindy McCain is a more traditional political spouse than Bill Clinton or Michelle Obama, who have been assertive and at times controversial on the 2008 campaign trail. She hasn't done much campaigning on her own, in part because her husband and his aides like her calming presence on the road. "She keeps him settled," top adviser Mark Salter says.

McCain does sometimes introduce the senator at events, but "I don't think she is going to do anything or say anything to get her husband in any sort of trouble," says political scientist Kim Fridkin of Arizona State University.

An adventurous spirit

That doesn't mean she's boring or distant. John McCain says his wife "dresses very well and she obviously is careful about her appearance. When people get to know her, they understand there's a very caring personality there."

An adventurous one, as well. Cindy McCain used to be a pilot, loves to drive race cars (her company distributes Budweiser, NASCAR's official beer until this year) and took a weekend trip to London a couple of years ago to hear guitarist Eric Clapton reunite with Cream.

At www.McCainblogette.com, Meghan's blog, Cindy is wearing pink polka-dot pajamas and doing the Wave in a red leather jacket ("I don't think red leather is appropriate on any level" for a future first lady, sniffed Fox News "image consultant" Amanda Sanders).

Meghan also spills that Mom "spoils our dogs silly" and "she can tell if a beer is fresh or not, depending on the taste." Movies her mother loves, Meghan told GQ, include Knocked Up and Wedding Crashers.

McCain's friends describe a protective, involved mother in jeans and baseball caps. "I am used to the person who drove the carpool" with a load of kids, says Betsey Bayless, a hospital CEO and former Arizona secretary of State who has known Cindy for 25 years.

McCain also is a multimillionaire executive, responsible for planning and "corporate vision" at her family's company. The Associated Press says her assets, including Hensley salary and stock, may total $100 million. Based on John McCain's Senate financial report for 2006, the Center for Responsive Politics pegs the family's net worth at $27 million to $45 million.

The assets, which are listed in broad ranges, almost all are in her name. Not listed: several shared family homes worth millions.

The McCains have not borrowed against their shared assets for politics, even when his campaign was strapped last year. Cindy told ABC News that "my husband has never believed that we should do that."

A changed view since 2000

The McCains had a rough initiation into national politics in 2000.

In New Hampshire, a distraught Cindy McCain raced to the front of the campaign bus, away from reporters, when her husband was asked how he'd react if Meghan, then 15, became pregnant and wanted an abortion. In South Carolina, the negative campaigning included false suggestions in anonymous fliers and phone calls that Cindy was a drug addict and John had fathered an illegitimate child — a reference to dark-skinned Bridget.

Since then, McCain has faced many challenges and transitions. Her mother died in 2006. Three children left home, two for the military. In 2004, after stopping blood-pressure medication, she had a stroke that damaged her speech, right arm and leg. Eight months later, she ran and walked a half-marathon. She had a knee replacement last fall and six weeks later campaigned in snowy New Hampshire.

"I've changed" since 2000, McCain said on the first ladies panel in Long Beach. "I'm more comfortable in my skin, politically."

When The New York Times published a story this year implying a romantic relationship between John McCain and a telecommunications lobbyist, the McCains appeared together to refute it.

Harper says the incident paled next to the illegitimacy allegation about Bridget in 2000, "probably the most hurtful thing ever." She saw Cindy just after the Times story appeared and says "it was old news" by then.

The McCains talk "five times a day at minimum" when they're apart, Harper says. Fundraiser Judy Black says the candidate "pays command attention when she leans over to tell him something."

Lisa Keegan, a friend and campaign adviser on education, recalls a day in 2000 when people were joking about George W. Bush's habit of taking a pillow from home on the road. "Somebody said to John, 'Don't you carry a pillow?' And he looked over at Cindy and said, 'Yeah, there she is.' "