McCain’s blogging daughter

The Week magazine

Meghan McCain would rather blog than campaign, says Maeve Reston in the Los Angeles Times. Spouses and children of presidential candidates typically are found stumping tirelessly on the candidate’s behalf. But John McCain’s 23-year-old daughter prefers to chronicle her father’s quest for the White House on the Web. Her blog, Mccainblogette.com, is filled with photos and observations of life on the campaign trail, mainly of the mundane or trivial variety. A typical entry will detail her father’s recipe for dry ribs (“He uses lots of garlic salt, lemon pepper, and lemons”), the green rubber band he wears on his wrist (“It’s sort of like his stress ball”), or his sweet tooth (“My dad wanted a candy bar for dinner, I said, ‘Hand it over’ and got him a salad”). One thing Meghan doesn’t want to blog about is politics. “I don’t think it’s my role. It’s not a medium to get policy or to sell my candidate’s issue.” Her softball approach is not for everyone. “Why is this girl so vapid?” one reader recently complained to the media gossip website Gawker.com. McCain, a Columbia graduate, says she resents that remark: “They see blond hair and they see makeup and automatically I am whatever their blond stereotype is.” If anything, she says, she hopes to become first daughter so she can blog even more about what goes on behind the scenes. “I’d want to expose everything. Because I don’t understand how, in politics, it got to this point where politicians and their families have been so isolated.”