The XX Factor: What women really think.

Feeling Sorry for Cindy

When I sat down with Cindy McCain for Reader's Digest, the most dramatic thing was how changed she was from 2000, not only physically, though that's also true, but in her demeanor. I remembered her from her husband's first run as being a lot of fun—not in the "Guy walks into a bar ...'' sense, but she'd always seemed genuinely amused, which is about all you can be as the circus is passing by. In those days, she sometimes said true things, too—not anything wildly out-of-school, but that she'd never before spent so much time with her husband, and that any day John trotted out a new joke was a happy, happy day. Also, I must say that I admired her as a wife, for being so supportive and all-in. When my husband wrote a book that came out that year, I remember promising him that at Politics & Prose, I was going to be on my very best Cindy McCain behavior for at least five minutes, and look at him like he was the last piece of cake; I wasn't completely kidding, either.

Now, though, she seems like an altogether different person, someone I hadn't met before. As I say in the piece, she's been through a lot since 2000, so maybe that's it. But she does seem far more brittle, like she's been warned that if she says anything remotely in keeping with human experience, someone will come and do harm to her loved ones. Part of her is really strong, or she would not go on these humanitarian trips all over creation; I think that's probably the truest part of her, and where she can really be herself. Another part of her, however, seems just plain petrified, and maybe that's not an irrational reaction, either.

Anyway, Dahlia, to answer what you asked me, I am not usually an asker of very tough questions—go with your strength, I say, and I'm more Larry King than Tim Russert. (I was going to say I was more Baba Wawa, but she and the rest of the "View' crew were tougher on John McCain than anyone else has been this cycle.) Yet I finally did get so frustrated with Cindy's beyond-boilerplate answers—she's never seen her husband lose his temper, they've never had an argument, he constantly amazes her because he's "so young''—that I did, to my own surprise and believe me to hers, blurt out a question about whether the stories that he'd called her an ugly name were true, I guess just to see if it mattered what I asked. Her response: "Oh, no! Oh no, no, no! Oh please; you know something? No. But I—no, absolutely not; preposterous!''

She did go out on a limb and suggest that abortion wouldn't be a big issue for voters this year: "You know something? We have a war, an economy that's failing right now, we have people without homes and jobs, we have an immigration issue and those are the issues of the day.'' But she declined to say whether she agreed with her husband's view that Viagra should be covered by insurance, while birth control pills should not: "You'd have to ask him with regard to what you're talking about.''

And, here is what maybe should have been my lede: She has the shiniest legs I've ever seen.