I’ve enjoyed Meghan McCain’s blog, McCainBlogette, since I first became aware of it long before we started this blog. Its not your common political blog. Meghan McCain and a few of her cohorts write about life on the campaign trail from their point of view. She gives a lot of insight into what goes on behind the scenes. She shares a lot of pictures and you can tell she adores her daddy. She looks a lot like him too, I think … but that’s beside the point.

I think she has been a real asset to John McCain’s campaign in her own way. She’s down to earth, genuine, open and a very likable young lady. I’ll resist the temptation to go into the obvious differences in personality, availability, likability, openness, etc between her and any other political daughters in the same age group or a few years older that come to mind.

She recently set down with Greg Veis of GQ and gave an interview. Here are some excerpts:

Meghan McCain arrives at the door to her apartment out of breath and wobbly in calf-high boots. It’s a seventy-five-degree February afternoon in Phoenix, and the 23-year-old daughter of the presumptive Republican nominee for president is wearing a black leather jacket over a scarf and gray scoop-neck T-shirt. I extend my hand to introduce myself, but she knocks it down and wraps me up in a bear hug.

“I’ve never had anybody fly across the country for me who I wasn’t dating,” she says. “I’m so flattered!”

Meghan deftly maneuvers Veis away from her bedroom and into a restaurant (good girl!)

Alas, the tour stops here. Meghan won’t show me her bedroom—it’s too messy, she says. Besides, she’s starving, and she really wants to take me to lunch at one of her favorite restaurants ever, Garduño’s Margarita Factory.

The kind of guys she likes

“I like bad boys for the most part,” Meghan adds. “In the past, I have liked tattooed guys who wear Converse. But I’d be open to anyone as long as you have a sense of humor. I have also dated totally normal guys who look like you, I guess—D.C.-looking guys.”

D.C.-looking guys?

“Journalist, yuppie, metrosexual guys. How’s that? You’re metro.”

“I’m an acquired taste,” Meghan says matter-of-factly. “I’m a daughter of a Republican senator. I started dating this guy, and he wouldn’t date me anymore because he found out who my dad was. He says, ‘I don’t agree with his politics.’ Isn’t that terrible? That’s why you’re dumping me? We only went on two dates, but still. Not everybody wants to go out with somebody so high-profile. If they do, they’re investment bankers. Seriously. Ugh! If you’re an investment banker, don’t hit on me. You can quote me. I’m not interested.”

She’s pretty feisty, kinda like her father

Meghan puts it more succinctly: “I’m almost incapable of bullshit. He’s the same way.”

What she thinks of Barack Obama

“He’s a rock star,” she says of the Illinois senator. “Everybody flipped out, but I think universally women find him attractive. Whatever.”

On the rumor she dated a Ron Paul Supporter

“That has been blown out of proportion in every way!” she exclaims. “What happened is that I dropped my coffee and he helped me with it and was like, ‘Do you want to go to Baja Fresh?’… Not that I would be against dating a Ron Paul supporter, but he turned out to be very strange. He collected Barbie dolls. I called my girlfriends after and was like, ‘That’s weird, right?’ ”

On the wild child gene that seems to run in her family

It’s clear that Meghan inherited her father’s devil-may-care streak.

“Yeah, he was a little rebel when he was my age,” Meghan says. “I’d rather that than if he were boring.”

John wasn’t the original McCain hellion, though. Meghan mentions her grandmother, 96-year-old Roberta McCain, who occasionally joins her son on the trail. Meghan calls her grandmother “crazy in a good way.”

“Nana drives fast,” Meghan says. “She got pulled over for doing 112 in Flagstaff about a year ago.”

You can read the rest at the GQ website.

I think I like the McCain family. They aren’t dull, that’s for sure.

h/t Gone Hollywood Outside the Beltway

I watched the interview that Sean Hannity did with John McCain tonight (3/13/2008) on television. One of the remarkable things about McCain is that he does not limit questions and will tackle just about anything asked of him. The only question he asked not to discuss was when Hannity asked him about his son who has recently returned from a tour of duty as a Marine in Iraq.

In response to that question McCain simply said that he and his wife do not discuss that. He said he preferred not to go there in the interview. Hannity asked him if he was proud of his son. McCain emphatically said that he has two sons serving in the military and he is enormously proud of both of them. He went on to say he is enormously proud of all of his children. Every one of them, he said with passion. He then said that his family is not the only family in America who are making these sacrifices for our country. He said how fortunate they have been that their son has returned when many haven’t. He said he felt it was inappropriate for him to make an issue out of his son’s service when so many have made those sacrifices and more.

His response brought tears to my eyes. I can’t say exactly why it brought tears to my eyes, but it did.

I appreciate the fact that he refuses to exploit his family for political capital. He also humbly understands that he is just another American and that there are many who make the same sacrifices without the glory and/or recognition that he gets. In his humility lies his greatness.

Every time I listen in on the bloggers telephone conferences with McCain, hear him interviewed or hear a speech he makes, I come away from it more convinced that he will be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Presidents of my lifetime. He is exactly what our country needs at this point in time.

Notice the expression on his face when he’s told what Barack Obama’s pastor has said about America. Also notice the facial expression when he’s asked how he has dealt with what John Kerry and John Murtha have accused our Troops of doing. This is a man who loves our country, will defend our country and has little patience with those who make themselves wealthy and powerful through criticizing America and/or our military.

crossposted at Blue Star Chronicles.