Assuming we had the power (which we don't) would it help to push the Cindy drug addict story?

[Stinky The Clown]

I like the notion that she could have been charged with a felony. But I'm not sure, given where this election has been pushed by the PALIN/mccain campaign, if this story helps us.

Addiction to prescription drugs as a result of an actual illness and an actual prescription by an actual doctor is no sin, really.

I fear the story could bring us a lot of blowback and a raise a lot of sympathy for Cindy (and by extension for PALIN/mccain).

What do you think?

[Taverner]

1. I think it would be wiser to push his mob connections

[iamjoy]

2. It Would Be Wrong

I don't care if it would help - which, I think it would backfire.
I think it would be wrong.

The only appropriate place in the debate for Cindy's past drug issue would relate to our drug policy at large and the disparities in sentencing.

[wtmusic]

3. Non-starting sympathy generator.

The GOP would love for us to make this an issue.

I'm not dancing.

[1Hippiechick]

4. "The McCain campaign also declined to comment. " says it all about the Post article, imo.

They think it's going nowhere or else they would be blaming democrats for the story, imo.

[katandmoon]

5. This story doesn't help Democrats in any way.

[tandot]

6. The media will portray us as the anti-women party for going after poor Cindy

She'll look like a victim who has overcome so much ("she is just one of us") and McCain will be portrayed as just wanting to protect his poor wife.

And, the whole story gives them an opportunity to talk about Obama and his drug use that happened a long time.

[TygrBright]

7. No. Cindy's not running for anything. Lots of people have a recovering member of their family...

...or even a still-addicted member. They won't buy the notion that having a recovering addict close to them makes THEM unfit for any particular job or activity.

She's been (apparently) clean and sober for several years. It's not likely to raise any eyebrows; in fact it might actually excite some empathy for the McCain family. There are a LOT of people in recovery, or with recovering family members. The detailed story will resonate for them as true and understandable and human.

No matter how much play the story gets, the addiction/recovery narrative will get the attention, not the "rich people get away with stuff" narrative. Even middle-class and poor addicts get away with a lot of stuff; their families cover up for them, too.

It's a non-starter.

judiciously,
Bright

[Dora]

8. If McCain enabled his own wife's addiction and drug abuse, how can we trust him to run this country?

He signed her out of the Sedona hospital when she OD'd and took her home, instead of getting her the treatment she needed. When the DEA found out about her THEFT and her CRIMES, McCain used his power and influence to call them off. You can bet your copper pots that If I had stolen the quantity of prescription drugs that she did, and TRAFFICKED DRUGS INTERNATIONALLY, I'd still be in the slammer today, no matter how many lawyers I had advocating for my "addiction."

He denied the reality of Cindy's addiction then and enabled it - by abusing his power.

He's denying our national problems now, and what's more, he's enabling them.

The story must be pushed.

[Stinky The Clown]

10. The problem is, the substance and real issues require a whole discussion

"Kicked prescription pain killer addiction and now clean and sober" is a far simpler thing to understand .... and ***very*** relateable by the average person.

[deminks]

9. Respectfully, I do not believe the reason this story keeps coming back

is about Cindy's drugging. I think it is about McShame throwing his weight around. He uses his Keating lawyer to get a sweatheart deal for her with the DEA - a deal that included a rehab program that apparently she never did - a deal that kept her out of prison for up to 20 years. He allegedly goes to a hospital and pulls her out of a program where she might get help. He lets her take some of the blame for the Keating mess and that eats on her. He lets his lawyer file a false extortion charge against the whistleblower in retaliation. It is all about him, how he looks. And right now he looks bad. He is ignoring the story, but it's not going to go away again. It went away in 2000 cause Chimpy beat him, and Chimpy had his own drug stories to work with. This time it is all him, front and center, and he has got some 'splainin to do. Her - I could not care less about.

I say push what McShame did.

IMHO.

:rant:

[Stinky The Clown]

11. I used to agree with you

But given where the campaigns have gone of late, this is the wrong story to use to get the Keating thing or any other story about JohnnyBoy out in front. The story is too explosive and too emotional. It is a simple "triumph over demon" story, whereas JohnnyBoy's dealings require a book to explain.

Nope .... we need to stay VERY FAR AWAY from this one.

[deminks]

14. The WaPo's point is that she has been out there this year giving the

"I beat the deamon" story, but the Post isn't buying it. No one should buy it. The story is much more complicated, and people who have drug problems around them know it is much more complicated. It is a story of the rich get off and the poor go to jail. That people can also relate to.

He interfered with Keating, he interfered with the missus. Not because of them, because of him.

IMHO only.

[horseshoecrab]

18. That's right deminks

It is about the abuse of power by McShame.


horseshoecrab

[tomg]

12. The Cindy McCain story: no

the John McCain misuse of power and interference in an investigation: yes, but carefully and legitimately. There is a remarkable difference between a story about a person who was addicted and is now clean with family help and the story of an enabler who interfered in an investigation and who used his political influence in clearly unethical ways to cover things up ( personally, I don't care if what he did was illegal in this regard - I care if what he did was ethical and if the enabling, particularly done at least partially out of self-interest, harms the addict. I also can see where when you are there in that situation, you really can't figure out what the right thing to do is).

I guess what I am trying to say is, if I were any husband or parent of an addict and if breaking the law in some way ( short of harming another) helped them get clean, I would do it. If I thought that bailing them out after a bullshit minor bust that unearthed a true problem would prevent them from getting treatment, when they called, I would hang up. Oh, you can take out the hypotheticals.

[kestrel91316]

13. I tend to agree. Things being the way they are, IYKWIM.

[TreasonousBastard]

15. She's not running for President. Besides, you...

should be able to name at least two First Ladies with substance problems who gained the nation's sympathy even if their husbands weren't so loved.

[MiniMe]

16. This story, especially 15 years later, is about the cover-up, not the addiction

The addiction is old news.

[NeedleCast]

17. No - Here's why

It's a deep story yeah? You have to read several pages of fairly boring information to get to the gist of the story. Most people don't have the attention span for it. Unless it can be chopped up into a short paragraph or two, it's probably not something that is going to cause a major change in how people are voting.

What happened to Bill Clinton when the Republicans attacked his drug use? Popularity went up.

I think the story is too much information without much payoff for most people to care about.

[Hawkowl]

19. A la Betty Ford? NO.

nt

[Princess Turandot]

20. No..

I'm having trouble with the strength of the 'abuse of power' inference - such a charge is not actually made in the article - because I don't believe that the DEA/DOJ would have signed off on the agreement they made with her, without running it past the AG's office. She was the wife of a sitting US Senator. I don't think a local AG would have handled this independently and let his DC bosses learn about it reading WaPo. This happened when Clinton was president. So, who did McCain 'abuse', high-priced attorney not withstanding? (Of course they would have hired a shark attorney; that proves nothing.) The Democrats were not on witch hunts, unlike the Republicans. It's very plausible to me that the DOJ would have looked for the least harsh but permissable sentence that they could give her, given who she was.

There's also no indication in the article as to whether or not the agreement was inconsistent with DOJ guidelines, for a first time offender illegally acquiring scripts for these types of prescription drugs for her own, not to deal. Her crime as far as I can tell was filling prescriptions which were written out in other people's names, and perhaps, taking medication as well from the program's existing stock. (I'm not sure of the latter.) It quotes 'experts' as saying that she 'could have' gotten 20 years. It doesn't quote them saying that her sentence, although very light, was not permissable DOJ guidelines, which is the question, not what kind of sentence someone with a cheap lawyer would have gotten.

So, I just don't see what else there is here.

[JSK]

21. What are you, sexist?

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[ljm2002]

22. "Addiction to prescription drugs..."

"...as a result of an actual illness and an actual prescription by an actual doctor is no sin, really."

Really? Then why was the DEA getting ready to charge her with a felony that could have netted her 20 years in jail? Oh, okay, no sin -- but it damned well is illegal. It's illegal to take prescription drugs that are not yours. It's illegal to have someone write prescriptions for you to feed your habit, long after the need for painkillers is gone. It's immoral -- i.e. sinful -- to steal from a charity. It's seedy and low-down to be stealing from your own charity while getting credit for being some kind of humanitarian.

And to top it off, she bought her way out of charges. The DEA agreed to drop charges as part of an agreement where Cindy reimbursed them for the substantial expenses of the investigation. So if it was you or me or one of ours involved in that situation, we would not have had that option.

Sorry, no sympathy -- and if we had any sense, we'd get off that sympathy wagon and hit her hard. Mind you, if I had my way, the use of drugs would be totally de-criminalized. While I would certainly want different policies for marijuana vs. heroin and meth and other hard drugs, I adamantly believe that the threat of prison is not the answer and in fact, making them illegal simply fuels the fire by providing large profits. But in the meantime we have people being thrown into prison for drug infractions that are much less than what Rich Ms. Cindy McCain did, yet she gets off scot-free while others rot away.

Piss on her. She does not get points. We ought to be investigating the lies -- like even the WaPo article noted that her stories did not add up: "Oh, I got the injury in 1989 when I hurt my back hoisting my baby up into a pouch" -- the baby that wasn't born yet. Riigghhtt... Or the part where the only record of rehab was a week's stay at a local facility...

Sorry. The part of this story that chaps my hide the worst, is that the rich heiress / Senator's wife was able to buy her way out of trouble, while the draconian War On (Some) Drugs continues unabated, and we have the highest incarceration rate in the entire f***in' world.

[Subdivisions]

23. Considering most of the US population is on drugs of some sort, no. n/t