‘Look, I Am My Husband’s Best Friend’

While her husband has been in Washington, Cindy McCain has been carving out a life of her own: last week she was in Vietnam to do charity work with Operation Smile. She paused to talk to NEWSWEEK's Holly Bailey. Edited excerpts:

Bailey: I read an interview that you gave The Arizona Republic years ago about how, when you married Senator McCain, you looked forward to being the wife of a naval officer, but instead you were immediately thrust into the public eye. Did you know what you were getting into? Were you prepared for this kind of life?
McCain: I married a Navy captain, and don't get me wrong, I'm not disappointed. But life presents you with many challenges and many different paths. We went from the Navy to politics, and it was the right thing. My husband is good at what he does. I think he will make a remarkable president, but he's also someone who in many ways, I think, is larger than life because he genuinely is true to our country. He has never done anything in his life where he didn't put country first. That's just who he is and what he's about.

But were you always OK with his putting country first? You've spoken before about how you sometimes felt like a single mom because you were in Arizona with the kids while he was in Washington and got home only on the weekends.
It was almost like a deployment. What I told the kids from the time they were little is that their dad was deployed and serving our country in Washington. I don't think they ever felt shortchanged in any big way. I will tell you that there were times when he would come home on Friday, and I'd had a long week with the little ones running around, and I would say, "Welcome home, I'm going out." In some ways, that's the way any mother feels, no matter where their husbands are. But I never personally felt like I was being shortchanged. I never felt that at all.

I've read that you felt very out of place in Washington. And, in fact, when you were first married, people there gave you a hard time because of the age difference between you and Senator McCain, that you struggled to be taken seriously even by some of his own staffers.
Washington is a company town. When I first met John, and the story has been told a lot, we both lied about our ages. But, truthfully, I never even noticed that he was that much older.

And your parents didn't say anything?
No, they really didn't. I had dated men my own age, certainly, but John was just intriguing—so well read and well spoken and interesting. I was spellbound by him when I first met him and still am, in many ways. In Washington back then and maybe even still today, there was a set dynamic on who they think you should be. And I maybe wasn't old enough for them or wasn't cast in a certain mold. I don't know. It's not an issue anymore today. I will say, we are talking about this 28 years later. We obviously did something right.

But you've spoken publicly about how difficult some of those years were. When you were first married, you suffered several miscarriages before Meghan was born — situations that are hard anyway, but your husband wasn't there for some of those times.
Yeah, the first one I was with him in Washington, and he was on the House floor and there were no cell phones in those days, and so it was hard to reach him. But he made it home in time to get me to the hospital. The others, I was in Arizona. For one, he was traveling overseas, and another he was back in Washington. Look, it was hard, but I can only view it as God's plan. I was never bitter about it, but I think he felt guilty because he was torn. But I know it wasn't his fault.