NEWSWEEK: Cover: Behind That Smile

NEW YORK, June 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Cindy McCain tells Newsweek that it took her longer to get past the dirty politics of the 2000 South Carolina primary than her husband, Sen. John McCain. "It's another lesson I learned from my husband about forgiveness," she tells White House Correspondent Holly Bailey in the current issue. "I have publicly said it was very difficult for me because it was my daughter ... You can go after me, but stay away from my children. In a sense, I am over it. I can sit here now and say it was just politics, and that's the downside to all this."

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080622/NYSU003 )

Cindy McCain's interview is part of the June 30 Newsweek cover, "Behind That Smile," (on newsstands Monday, June 23). Bailey also talks to Cindy McCain about their son in Iraq, a topic they do not bring up on the campaign trail. She says, from a mother's standpoint, "If I can hear his voice, I know he's OK. And I know that's a feeling that thousands upon thousands of other families in this country have felt. It's been good for me to meet other mothers who are going through what I go through, and I have made a lot of lasting friendships through this common bond."

Cindy McCain says she had to "think about it a little bit" when asked whether she was eager to go through another presidential election. "I wasn't as eager as others were," she says. "I had to come around. I'm very happy and I support him 100 percent, and I'm onboard. But having done this before, I knew what I was getting into, and I didn't know if I was ready to make the sacrifice again. It's not that I don't believe in my husband, but if I was going to do this, I wanted to do the very best I could and give 100 percent. So I did have to think about it a little bit."

In the cover story, Bailey profiles Cindy McCain, who calls herself her husband's "best friend, best adviser and closest confidant." After nearly 30 years together but apart, she has her own sense of mission, one that does not necessarily require a husband in the White House. That doesn't mean she doesn't want it -- particularly for him. As First Lady, she would not sit in on cabinet meetings. But the White House would give her a platform to advance causes, like special education, that are important to her. "My biggest goal is hopefully to inspire more people to get involved in their communities, to focus on, as my husband has said, causes greater than themselves."

Bailey was with Cindy McCain last week in Vietnam where she went to do charity work with Operation Smile, which helps children with cleft palates. She got started after a 1984 scuba diving trip in Micronesia, when a friend was injured and had to be taken to the hospital. She was sickened by the filthy conditions in the ER: "There were cats in the operating room and rats everywhere," she says. When she returned home, she began collecting medical supplies and sending them to the hospital. "Finally, the hospital called and said, really what we need is a good orthopedic surgeon," she says. "So I called some friends and we planned a trip ... I don't know what made me do it."

She named her charity the American Voluntary Medical Team. In 1991, she camped in the Kuwait desert five days after the end of the gulf war to bring medical supplies to refugees. That same year, she visited Mother Teresa's orphanage in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where she saw 160 newborn girls who had been abandoned. The nuns handed her a small baby with a cleft palate so severe that she couldn't be fed. Another baby, also just a few weeks old, had a heart defect. Worried they would die without medical attention, Cindy applied for medical visas to take the girls back to the United States. But the country's minister of health refused to sign the papers. "We can do surgery on this child," an official told her. Cindy, frustrated, slammed her fist on the table. "Then do it! What are you waiting for?" The official, stunned, simply signed the papers. "I don't know where I got the nerve," Cindy said.

When she arrived in Phoenix, she carried the baby with the cleft palate off the plane. Her husband met her at the airport. He looked at the baby. "Where is she going," he asked her. "To our house," she replied. They adopted the little girl and named her Bridget. Family friends adopted the other little girl.

Last week in Vietnam, Cindy relived that time as she talked to a young Vietnamese mother at a hospital in tiny Nha Trang. The woman clutched a tiny newborn with a severe cleft palate. Ditching her handlers, she went over to talk with her. "Where's the interpreter?" Cindy said. In tears, the woman told Cindy that she had been denied a consultation by the Operation Smile workers because they feared her baby was too sick to be helped. "I had a baby just like yours," Cindy slowly told her, allowing the interpreter to translate. She played with the baby's tiny fingers, recalling that her own daughter had been written off as unsavable. She joined the mother in the observation room and listened as cardiologists told them they feared the baby might go into cardiac arrest if they were to operate. As the mother cried, Cindy, through an interpreter, told her that she knew exactly how she felt and patted her back. "That baby deserved a shot," she said, "just like Bridget did." In the end, the doctors decided to perform the surgery.

    (Read interview and cover story at www.Newsweek.com)

    http://www.newsweek.com/id/142650
    http://www.newsweek.com/id/142651 - Interview