What do we know about John McCain's family? What should we know about the families of presidential candidates?

Photo courtesy of the doleinstitute.org. According to the Web site, this is holiday greetings from 2003.

If candidates are going to run on family values, we should see their family values in action. -- Chad

The typical average American voter can tell you that Hillary Clinton is married and has one daughter, Chelsea. The reasonably knowledgeable American voter might be able to tell you that Barack Obama is married and perhaps they know he has two young daughters, but may not know his wife's name (Michelle) or his daughters (Malia Ann, Natasha or "Sasha").

Those who read our pages know that Mitt Romney has 5 sons, none of whom have ever served in the military, and know Rudy Giuliani is on his third wife and his children didn't support his campaign. They might be able to tell you what Janet Huckabee looks like, and certainly can name John Edwards' wife (Elizabeth).

Michelle Obama was on Larry King last night. She has been a focus as some of the limelight has shifted to the spouses of the candidates.

You may not know about the policies of Fred Thompson and Dennis Kucinich, but you might know what Jeri Thompson and Elizabeth Kucinich look like.

But Cindy McCain has been invisible. Who? Who is Cindy McCain? Why, she is John McCain's second wife. Second wife?

What do we know about John McCain's family? How many voters know Cindy McCain is the daughter of a wealthy Anheuser-Busch distributor, and that his money helped launch McCain's political career?

How many children does John McCain have? Does he have grandchildren? From the Rovian smear tactics, we learned that McCain has a "black baby," but do you know the child is 17-18 years old?

As a society, we have been obsessed with family members of major presidential candidates: Roger Clinton, Billy Carter, Kitty Dukakis, Ronald Reagan, Jr., Tipper Gore, Teresa Heinz Kerry, and yes Bush children named George, Jeb, Marvin, and Neil.

If McCain is hiding the fact that he has grandchildren to hide his age, that move would be horribly cynical. After all, we found out that when George H.W. Bush was running for president that he loves his grandchildren, including "the little brown ones."

According to answers.com, McCain has four grandchildren, though we don't know from which children, who they are, and how old they are.

According to Wikipedia, "McCain adopted her two children Doug and Andy, who were five and three years old at the time; he and Carol then had a daughter named Sidney in September 1966." and "In 1984 McCain and his wife Cindy had their first child together, daughter Meghan. She was followed in 1986 by son John Sidney IV (known as "Jack"), and in 1988 by son James. In 1991, Cindy McCain brought an abandoned three-month old girl, who badly needed medical treatment for a severe cleft palate, to the U.S. from a Bangladeshi orphanage run by Mother Teresa; the McCains decided to adopt her, and named her Bridget."

Even though Republicans have run on family values in the last 30 years, we generally know more about the family members of Democratic candidates than Republican candidates. After all, The Washington Post deliberately sat on knowledge during the 1996 campaign that Bob Dole had an affair on his first wife.

So either we want to know a lot or we don't. We shouldn't separate it out where we know the Democratic candidates' families and not the Republicans. There are a number of voters who might have been turned off by George W. Bush back in 1992 if we knew then what we know now.

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