Why authenticity matters

     The New York Times runs a story on Cindy McCain's experience as a political wife in and out of Washington. The details of her story are not new -- her implication in the Keating Five thing, her addiction to pain killers, her isolation. What's interesting is Cindy McCain's announcement to British media that she intends to use Princess Diana as an example for comporting herself. 

     Never mind that Princess Diana was, well, a royal princess. My five-year-old likes that idea, too. Forget for a moment all of Diana's well-aired psychological and emotional difficulties. The qualities Cindy McCain chooses to focus on and attempt to emulate are Diana's lauded efforts on behalf of the world's poorest, neediest people, particularly children. AIDS babies, land mine victims, sick orphans. 

     The trouble with Cindy mimicking Diana's humanitarian efforts is that the impulse is at odds with Cindy McCain's life story and, as is clear from her record, her true nature. Yes, there have been many philanthropists, primarily women, who train their sights on the world's least fortunate to mask the pain of their own misfortune; even lazy armchair psychologists like me know that the do-gooders relate to the suffering of others because in it, they recognize something about themselves. Diana is the poster child for this Poor Little Rich Girl Makes Good dynamic. 

     But Diana's impulse seems to have been genuine, a repudiation of the difficulties of a failed marriage played out on a world stage, an extension of her expressive love of children and empathy for the downtrodden, and in keeping with her inner life. Organic; authentic.

     Unlike Diana, Cindy McCain's difficulties have been entirely her own doing, in direct relation to her outsize ambitions. She was the only congressional spouse implicated in the Keating Five scandal. She was not merely a troubled political spouse who found comfort in pain killers and came to be dependent on them; she stole from her own charity to support her addiction and lied about it to salvage her husband's career (and in the process, threw other careers, not to mention needy people, under the bus). 

     It's all well and good to admire the charitable example set by Diana. It's quite another to announce to the world that you intend to follow Diana's example when you've already wrecked your reputation doing just that. (The article reiterates that Cindy McCain never actually went to Rwanda in her fabled 1994 humanitarian mission during the genocide.) She's a poseur. She has proven repeatedly that her first interests are herself and her husband's career. I wouldn't trust Princess Cindy to collect money at the PTA bake sale, never mind as an ambassador for the very people on earth who can least afford her politically expedient motivations and attendant fuckups.

     Running a sleazy, shameless campaign that is by all accounts antithetical to his own true nature has proven unsustainable for the multiple personality disordered John McCain, and probably doomed his shot at the White House. And while it's fine that that Cindy ask herself WWDD -- there are few among us, after all, who actually live up to our ideal selves -- her chances of attaining anything close to the grace to which she allegedly aspires are dim indeed.

     Mrs. McCain, we knew Diana. Diana was a friend of ours. You, madam, are no Diana.