While Michelle Obama Has Been Front and Center, Cindy McCain Is a Mystery

By Helen Kennedy
Daily News Staff Writer

Cindy McCain, whose husband has been a political celebrity for a decade, is more of a mystery to the public than Michelle Obama, even though her spouse was all but unknown until last year.

A new Newsweek poll found a large gulf between the two would-be First Ladies: Half of voters say they don't know enough about McCain to have an opinion about her, whereas 71% have an opinion about Obama.

"Many know her only as the blond standing alongside her gregarious husband, lips fixed in a practiced smile, ice-blue eyes serene and adoring, but inscrutable," Newsweek said of McCain.

And though Obama has attracted far more criticism—conservative commentators call her the Illinois senator's "bitter half" and question her patriotism—she is still viewed more favorably than her rival.

The Newsweek poll found that voters thought Obama would make a better First Lady than McCain by a 31% to 25% margin.

That surprising figure suggests a possible reversal in a trend that has favored more traditional, Republican First Ladies. At this point in the 1996 campaign, voters preferred Elizabeth Dole over Hillary Clinton by 14points, and in 2004, they preferred Laura Bush over Teresa Heinz Kerry by 20 points.

"I think maybe it's because Cindy McCain has made the conscious decision to stay in the background, while Michelle Obama has been front and center," said Myra Gutin, author of "The President's Partner: The First Lady in the 20th Century."

Gutin speculated that McCain has been a political spouse long enough to know through bitter experience that any slip she makes can hurt her husband, whereas Obama is still learning that hard lesson.

"Cindy McCain just seems very circumspect and very careful in her dealings with the national media," Gutin said. "So she hasn't become part of the national conversation the way Obama has, with her remark about being proud of her country for the first time."

Both spouses embarked on fresh media tours last week to try to sweeten their images.

Obama, 44, did a stint on "The View" and - to the campaign's quiet gratification - got more attention for her dress than anything she said.

McCain, 54, appeared on "Good Morning America" and posed on the cover of Newsweek for a profile that presents a far more complicated and independent woman than a casual viewer might imagine.

The story reports that McCain, who stayed in Arizona to raise her children, has lived a largely separate life from her husband for the past 20 years. They see each other on most weekends, but he was not there when she had two miscarriages in the 1980s and a stroke in 2004.

It also notes that she has a pilot's license, drives racecars and travels extensively in the Third World to deliver medical care to impoverished children.

Unlike Rudy Giuliani's wife, Judi Nathan, Cindy McCain said she had no plans to sit in on cabinet meetings as First Lady.

In the Newsweek poll, 49% of voters had a favorable opinion of Obama compared to 33% for McCain. Both women were viewed unfavorably by about one in five voters, the poll found.

What's notable is that Obama's favorable numbers have held steady despite a raft of partisan criticism that McCain has largely avoided.

A Pew poll last week found that 28% of respondents said they had heard something negative about Obama in the media, but only 7% said that about McCain.

That could be changing.

The Los Angeles Times Sunday mapped some political pitfalls presented by the multimillion-dollar beer business McCain runs, including a fight with Mothers Against Drunk Driving over rules requiring alcohol-content labels on booze.

hkennedy@nydailynews.com

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