Let He Who Is Without Sin…

I don’t care that John McCain had an affair and didn’t treat his wife the way I would want to be treated (or the way I aspire to treat my family).  Okay, well, I care in the spiritual sense but not a way that would affect my vote.  My support for Barack Obama has nothing to so with the fact that he appears faithful to his wife and devoted to his family.  It doesn’t hurt, but it is not the determining factor for me in choosing a president.

But for those who deem these kinds of things germane to politicians (even though they aren’t germane to CEO’s of corporations…does anybody not use a certain product because the executives in that company may be cheaters?) shouldn’t they apply it across the board?  After all, John McCain lost friends like Nancy Reagan when he left his first wife for another woman.

In a written statement, she described McCain as “a good friend for over 30 years.” But that friendship was strained in the late 1970s by McCain’s decision to divorce his first wife, Carol, who was particularly close to the Reagans, and within weeks marry Cindy Hensley, the young heiress to a lucrative Arizona beer distributorship.

The Reagans rushed to help Carol, finding her a new home in Southern California with the family of Reagan aide Edwin Meese III and a series of political and White House jobs to ease her through that difficult time.

The public record seems to conflict with McCain’s own statements about his relationships.

Although McCain suggested in his autobiography that months passed between his divorce and remarriage, the divorce was granted April 2, 1980, and he wed Hensley in a private ceremony five weeks later. McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to his first wife.

Until McCain filed for divorce, the Reagans and their inner circle assumed he was happily married, and they were stunned to learn otherwise, according to several close aides.

“Everybody was upset with him,” recalled Nancy Reynolds, a top aide to the former president who introduced him to McCain.

When John McCain began dating his new love, he was still married.

Carol McCain later told friends…that she did not know he was seeing anyone else.

John McCain sued for divorce in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., where his friend and fellow former POW, George E. “Bud” Day, practiced law and could represent him.

In the petition, he stated that the couple had “cohabited as husband and wife” until Jan. 7, 1980.

And if the name Bud Day sounds familiar, that’s because Day is one of the swift-boaters acting as a surrogate in this campaign, most notably in an attack against Wesley Clark.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.