Big Love: McCain/Palin Style

Cindy, the heiress, was exactly the kind of woman McCain needed to propel his burgeoning political career.
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It's sort of ironic considering the scrutiny Mitt Romney underwent during the primaries for being a Mormon that John McCain's campaign has recently been coasting in spite of the fact that McCain has two wives. Indeed, as the McCain/Palin ticket -- the political world's real life version of Big Love -- gathers steam, Mormon Mitt is left on the sideline entertaining himself with his own jokes and dreams of what if...

The overlaps between McCain's courtship of Cindy and his more recent courting of Sarah, and the trials and tribulations of Bill Hendrickson (Bill Paxton) on HBO's hit drama are uncanny. Cindy, who is to John what Nicki (Chloe Sevigny) is to Bill, is John's second wife, the woman who he began dating while married to his first wife and college sweetheart, Carol.

Cindy, the heiress, was exactly the kind of woman McCain needed to propel his burgeoning political career. The mix of her family's wealth and political connections in Arizona, his ambition and not to mention his own family's wealth portended to make them Arizona's it couple. Like his first wife, Cindy surely hoped that she would have been his last.

Then along came Sarah, the political wunderkind the GOP considered too gifted for small-town politics. Entering the twilight of his political career with his presidential campaign sputtering, McCain, forever "The Mavrick" eschewed convention and brought Sarah into the fold. A la Bill's marriage Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin) in Big Love, John's selection of Sarah as his running mate ruffled some feathers within the GOP clan. There have been murmurs that she's an outsider, too young, but for John she is just right--a point with which his pollsters would agree.

Adding his own twist to this drama, instead of settling down at one of his many homes, John, his family now complete, with Cindy and Sarah and their gaggle of kids in tow have been criss-crossing the plain states spreading their gospel of "Country First" in hopes of securing his eighth and final home, after all as his youthful nemesis recently declared, "eight is enough."

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