Car Accidents and Presidential Campaigns

Virginia Beach, WAAs the US Presidential election escalates in the run up to November 8, copious attention is being paid to the candidates, and their qualifications to lead. Part of that process, is the vetting of the candidates past, as well as those of their partners.

It seems that car crashes play a prominent role in the recent, and long past histories of many involved in the Presidential race of 2008.

Many will have been reminded of the horrific [car crash] the took the life of Democratic Vice-presidential hopeful Joe Biden's first wife, and that of an infant daughter on the eve of his swearing in as a US Senator. His two boys, now grown and recovered, were seriously injured in a crash that happened when the Biden clan, without Joe, was out in the family station wagon to buy a Christmas tree when a massive truck slammed into their car.

And followers of the Obama camp will know of the car accident that Michelle Obama was in last year. According to reports the wife of the Democratic Presidential hopeful was being driven in a campaign van while campaigning in Hampton, Iowa when a motorcyclist crashed into the van's left side. While Obama was not hurt in the incident, the motorcyclist was seriously injured and was rushed to hospital.

Over on the McCain side, much has been made of the Republican candidate's heroics while a POW, and the trials of his wife Cindy over her past problems with prescription drug addiction.

However, there's a car accident in McCain's background too. His first wife Carol, whom he divorced in 1980 to marry Cindy, was involved in a horrific car crash in 1969 that has left her in pain, and facing medical bills for the rest of her life.

As car accidents often do. They happen in an instant, but the aftereffects can last for a lifetime.

Carol McCain was still grieving over the fate of her POW husband John in 1969, when she went to spend her third Christmas without John at her parent's home. Following dinner, Carol jumped in the car to deliver some gifts to a friend's house.

She never made it. That Christmas Eve her car skidded on an icy patch of road and slammed into a telephone pole. Carol McCain's pelvis and one arm were shattered by the impact, and she suffered massive internal injuries. She was found hours later beside the wreckage of her car, having been thrown through the windshield.

Some people have the good fortune to not only survive, but also recover completely from such accidents. This writer is one of them. However, Carol McCain was not one of the lucky ones. She spent six months in hospital, and was made to suffer through 23 surgical procedures in total. In order to save her legs, surgeons were reportedly forced to cut away massive amounts of shattered bone. Not only was she confined to a wheelchair and forced to use a catheter, but also the surgery resulted in a loss of about five inches in her overall height.

Carole McCain would eventually battle out of that wheelchair, and learn to walk again. But the car accident took away her willowy beauty, adding weight to her frame and lines to her face—and pain for the remainder of her life.

As Americans know all too well, John McCain went through his own hell, as a POW for more than five years in a prison camp. Tortured and mistreated, he heroically dismissed the opportunity to jump the queue ahead of other comrades and waited for his turn to be released. He arrived back in 1973 an emaciated shadow of his former self. But then, so was Carol, who insisted that McCain not be told of the car accident, or the resulting life-altering and permanent change to his wife's physical appearance.

In this way, both Carol and John McCain were survivors of their own private hell—although some may argue that John got the better end of the stick, after he divorced Carol in 1980 and married into money with Cindy a month later. Carol maintains that John was fair and good to her within the context of the relationship's demise, transferring their home to her, paying her alimony and child support, and agreeing to pay for her medical care for the rest of her life.

However, for his torture as a POW John McCain was deemed a hero.

For her torture from the car crash Carol McCain, now 70, was simply forgotten.