John 'McLovin' McCain

Matthew Yglesias:

Certainly it'd be a bit rich of McCain to get outraged that anyone would even suggest that he might engage in sexual improprieties. After all, it's well known that he repeatedly cheated on his first wife Carol, of a number of years, with a variety of women, before eventually dumping her for a much-younger heiress whose family fortune was able to help finance his political career. That's well known, I should say, except to the electorate, who would probably find that this sort of behavior detracts from McCain's "character" appeal.

Nicholas D. Kristof:

Although he was still living with his wife, he was aggressively courting a 25-year-old woman who was as beautiful as she was rich.

That troubled period was perhaps the crucial turning point in John McCain's life, and the decisions that he made then started him on the course that he hopes will take him to the White House in January. In just a few years from those times of soul-searching in his office as Navy liaison to the Senate, Mr. McCain would have a new wife, a new home state and a bright new political star as president of the class of newly elected Republican members of the House of Representatives.

For a candidate running on character and biography, it is also an awkward time to remember: Mr. McCain abandoned his wife, who had reared their three children while he was in Vietnamese prisons, and he then began his political career with the resources of his new wife's family.