The imperfect hero

Both Carol and John McCain had been in terrible physical shape at their reunion in 1973. McCain's original injuries had been compounded by years of torture and botched medical treatment in Hanoi. Unbeknown to him, on Christmas Eve 1969, while visiting friends in Philadelphia, Carol had had a catastrophic accident, her car skidding off an icy road into a telephone pole. She had been thrown from the car, breaking both legs and her pelvis and sustaining serious internal injuries. She had been a model once, and willowy. Her injuries, and the resulting surgeries, left her several inches shorter and heavier.

In his biography, "John McCain: An American Odyssey," Timberg wrote that McCain began cheating on Carol while serving in a training squadron in Florida. "Off duty, usually on routine cross-country flights to Yuma and El Paso, John started carousing and running around with women," he wrote. Carol McCain told Timberg, the only writer to have interviewed her extensively about the breakup, that McCain's imprisonment had nothing to do with their divorce: "I attribute it more to John turning 40 and wanting to be 25 again."

But there is no question she was devastated. And their three children, Doug and Andy -- Carol's sons who McCain had adopted -- and Sidney, their daughter, were wounded as well. None attended their father's wedding.

"I was certainly mad and disappointed at Dad," Andy McCain told the New York Times in 2000. "I hold him responsible. I don't hold Cindy responsible one bit." Andy, 46, is chief financial officer of Cindy McCain's beer distributorship. Sidney, 42, lives in Toronto, where she works as a record company executive. Doug, 48, is an American Airlines pilot. They have all reconciled with McCain, who is unabashed about shouldering the blame.

"My marriage's collapse was attributable to my selfishness and immaturity more than it was to Vietnam," he wrote in "Worth the Fighting For." "The blame was entirely mine."

John and Cindy McCain married in the spring of 1980, a little more than a year after they met. He moved to Arizona and reinvented himself, running successfully for Congress in 1982 and then, in 1986, winning Barry Goldwater's Senate seat, which he has held for 21 years.

Cindy McCain frequently travels with her husband. But she limits herself to short introductions and gives few speeches. She is chairwoman of her family's Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship, Hensley & Co., which has revenues of more than $300 million a year. In 2006, Cindy McCain, who files tax returns separately from her husband, had an adjusted gross income of more than $6 million.