Picture of the Day
When the NYTimes runs this picture, with this story, and this caption, the "everyman" image is gone.
(John McCain is one of the richest members of the Senate. His wealth comes from his wife, Cindy, who inherited a $300-million-a-year beer business. (AP/Gregory Bull))
From the article,
But by all accounts, Mrs. McCain is far from a forceful presence at the company, where she is chairwoman.
She crisscrosses the country on the company jet, keeps an accountant on the company payroll to mind her personal finances, drives a company Lexus with “MS BUD” plates and says she oversees the company’s “strategic planning and corporate vision.” Yet she almost never shows up in the office, is deemed an absentee owner by Anheuser-Busch and has left scarcely a mark on the company, present and former executives say.....
Another person knowledgeable about the company’s finances said Mrs. McCain’s involvement in Hensley was more limited. “Delgado will tell her how much money they made, so she can tell him how much she’ll take out,” this person said.....
How much she receives in profits is not a matter of public record. Distributions to other shareholders, who discussed them only anonymously, suggest she receives hundreds of thousands of dollars several times a year.
Now, that's hardscrabble.
(So now the story shifts to McCain dependent on his wife?)
posted by mikevotes at
6:49 AM
6 Comments:
This, combined with the "houses" issue, is potentially huge. I'm shocked that the media is on it.
And the Republicans seem caught flat-footed and disoriented like a deer caught in the headlights. "What's wrong with being rich?", they keep asking. They've been out of touch for so long that they no longer "get it".
Also, the story on the servant staffing bites deep. The price of butlers and maids has gone up so much that it's obvious these people need a big tax cut. Cindy might have to draw her own bath, otherwise.
While Americans seem peculiarly enchanted by foreign royalty, the idea of American royalty touches a nerve in the national psyche. These aren't people who worked hard to rise to the top on the basis of sweat and merit. Everything was literally handed to them by inheritance or marriage. On a level playing field, they would sink rather than swim.
We always knew the McCain's were rich in the back of our minds, but this development thrusts it our faces. Nobody is saying you can't be rich, but nobody is saying that I have to vote you into the WH, either. Compared to the McCain's, the "celebrity" Obama looks like "one of us".
By
Todd Dugdale , at 1:00 PM
I am, too, on two levels. First, the general tone is pretty sharp, but secondly, and I think more importantly if it sticks is the implication that it's his wife that carries him. I know this is sexist, but, in the political world, especially if you're trying to play "tough guy," it's immasculating.
And the image of Cindy McCain just showing up at the business every few months to take out the hundreds of thousands she needs is pretty damning in the political eye.
This whole money thing is turning definitional to McCain. It could prove critical.
By
mikevotes, at 3:02 PM
I think more importantly if it sticks is the implication that it's his wife that carries him.
Absolutely. That's a given. It's not hard to see his resentment of that situation, either. This is fodder for the late-night comedians.
And the image of Cindy McCain just showing up at the business every few months to take out the hundreds of thousands she needs is pretty damning in the political eye.
Especially when Cindy is at these town hall forums talking up her "difficulties" as a working woman trying to raise children. That ought to resonate with single working mothers that don't have butlers, drivers, and maids.
By
Todd Dugdale , at 3:42 PM
Yeah. It's spreading into a definitional, and if it does, it overwhelms all the imaging they've tried to do.
(And it also falls into that bitch slap theory of politics. There's really nothing the McCain camp can say to take all of this away, so it's just there, and they have to be slapped with it over and over.
Makes them look weak.)
And, one other key difference, the fact that it's inherited. If she'd actively made the money, it would be a very different dynamic.
Does it imbue them both with enititlement?
By
mikevotes, at 4:50 PM
It's funny - she doesn't look like a beer heiress. She looks like she runs Estee Lauder.
By
r8r, at 10:09 AM
Well, she doesn't really look like she "runs" anything to me, except occasionally terrorizing the house staff.
"Marta, you call these cheese puffs!"
By
mikevotes, at 1:16 PM
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