Meghan McCain is a 23-year-old, socially liberal John Kerry voter who loves Superbad, Dita von Teese, Bud Light (see right hand), and campaign blogging. Trouble is, this self-described “Daddy’s girl” will do—and say—almost anything to help her 71-year-old father win the White House
By Greg Veis; Photograph by Jeff Riedel
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’s parents, Senator John and Cindy McCain, bought her this loft around the time she graduated from Columbia
University last spring, and the interior looks like a spaceship furnished by West Elm. There’s a giant silver chimney that extends out of her fireplace into the ceiling about twenty feet above. Across the living room is a very stylish and very uncomfortable-looking pod chair. And then there’s Meghan’s prized tchotchke of the moment: a skull that, when you open its mouth, reveals a clock.
“You like it, right?” she asks, opening it for me. “Because I told my friends I’d throw it away if the GQ guy didn’t like it. I totally love it, though! It’s ironic!”
She leads me into the kitchen. On a perch above the cabinets, wooden block letters are arranged to spell indulge. Meghan then invites me to inspect her refrigerator, like the celebrities do on MTV Cribs. Inside are some Bud Light cans, a six-pack of Stella Artois, and twelve cups of Jell-O pudding.
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.
On the drive there, I handle the wheel and Meghan fills the silence. I learn the basics of her past few years: how she graduated from Columbia (“I loved it so much”); how she wanted to be a music journalist but doesn’t anymore; how she got prize internships at Newsweek and Saturday Night Live.
Meghan’s cultural tastes are pretty straight down the middle for a recent college grad. She went crazy for Superbad, Knocked Up, and The Big Lebowski (“I fucking love that movie”). On TV she’s currently riveted by MTV’s A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila. “It’s a bisexual-dating show!” she cries. “It’s hilarious!”
When she ticks off a list of celebrities she’s into, she offers a surprising pick: the burlesque stripper Dita Von Teese. “I know she’s not someone you would expect the daughter of a Republican candidate to like, but I love her,” she says. “I love the way she dresses. If I could look like that all day, I would…in her day clothes, I mean.
“And, yes, I know she’s a fetish star, but”—she lowers her head for this—“I think that’s rock ’n’ roll.”
*****
Meghan has been given a prominent place in her father’s presidential campaign, most notably with her blog, McCainBlogette.com. Loosely inspired, she says—loosely!—by Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72, McCain Blogette is a sometimes irreverent, sometimes overly rah-rah account of life on the Straight Talk Express (“Lindsey Graham is hilarious!”), with tons of photographs and even iPod playlists (favorites have included Wolfmother and Hot Hot Heat). Charming and self-deprecating, McCain Blogette often makes Meghan’s 71-year-old father seem less old, which is surely one of the reasons it exists, even if Meghan occasionally does something like refer to Barack Obama as “sexy,” which she did right before the New Hampshire primary.