The
women behind the presidential nominees
Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain are two very different
women with very dissimilar backgrounds.
First, I thought I would give you a little biographical
background on each of these two women.
Obama was raised on Chicago’s south side. Her father,
Frasier Robinson, was a city pump operator and a Democratic precinct captain.
Her mother, Marian, was a Spiegel’s secretary.
Obama graduated from Whitney M. Young Magnet High School
in Chicago’s West Loop. After high school, she attended Princeton University,
graduating cum laude in 1985 with a Bachelor of Arts in sociology. She went on
to earn a Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School in
1988.
Following law school, Obama worked as an associate in the
Chicago law firm Sidley & Austin, the oldest and one of the largest in the
country, in the area of marketing and intellectual property. There, in 1989,
she met her future husband, a summer intern, whom she was assigned as an
advisor. They married on October 18, 1992.
Obama soon launched a career in public service, serving as
an assistant to the mayor, and then as the assistant commissioner of planning
and development for the City of Chicago.
Cindy Lou Hensley McCain, an only child, was raised in Arizona;
she earned a Bachelor of Arts in education and a Master of Arts in special
education from the University of Southern California. She taught at Agua Fria
High School in Avondale, Ariz.
She met John McCain in 1979 while she was on vacation with
her parents in Hawaii. He was still married to, but separated from, his first
wife. John and Cindy McCain were married May 17, 1980, in Phoenix.
McCain founded the American Voluntary Medical Team (AVMT)
in 1988, leading several medical missions to war-torn nations during the Team’s
seven-year existence.
She made news in 1994 when she admitted to a painkiller
addiction and said she had stolen drugs from AVMT. She was not charged with a
crime, but agreed to repay the AVMT and attend a drug treatment facility.
McCain has served as chairperson of Hensley & Company,
the Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship founded by her father in 1955. By 2007,
she had an estimated net worth of $100 million.
Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain are very supportive of
their husbands, and both are out on the campaign trail and have seen attacks by
the opposition’s spin machine.
Obama remarked, “For the first time in my adult life, I am
proud of my country.” But fear mongers, such as Sean Hannity,
all seized upon the comment and started in unison to say that she hated
America, when they all knew that she was speaking of the ground swell of
grassroots support to the audience, and to everyone else in America who has
come out to support her husband.
Obama, the very next day, even made a statement to clarify
her comment to those who spun her words. But, to this day, Sean Hannity keeps saying that Obama hates America, even though Hannity knows what he is saying is a lie.
McCain has been harassed by the left for refusing to
release her Tax returns for 2007. When asked by Today co-host Ann Curry about
her returns, McCain said: “My husband and I have been married 28 years, and we
have filed separate tax returns for 28 years. This is a privacy issue. My
husband is the candidate.”
Curry responded by asking, “So you’ll never release,
you’re saying? Even if you’re first lady? After McCain
said, “No,” Curry added, “Because that is — even though not an elected
position, you would be in a very public role.” McCain replied, “I’m not the
candidate.”
McCain also has been attacked by the left for plagiarizing
food recipes that she copied word-for-word from the Food Network.
Both women come from very different backgrounds and both
seem to complement their husbands. Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain provide a
strength that anyone running for any elected office would need during these
times of “gotcha” politics.