Posted by
Always To The Right on Thursday, August 21, 2008 10:31:58 PM
Kenneth Vogel comes up with the answer at Politico that eluded John McCain in his earlier interview.
The actual number of houses owned by McCain is … zero. That’s right —
the Senator doesn’t own a single property in his own name
I
suspected that this was the actual answer when the story first made
headlines. The McCains have a pre-nuptial agreement that separates
their finances. The “homes”, as Barack Obama and his campaign put it,
are mostly investment properties in Cindy McCain’s trust. Since John
McCain has no involvement in his wife’s business affairs, he would have
little knowledge of the assets in her portfolio.
Of course, a couple of these aren’t investment properties. Cindy
bought a condo for their daughter, for instance, and she purchased
another in La Jolla for an elderly aunt whom she supports. The McCains
live primarily in a 6600-square-foot condo in Phoenix and a
three-bedroom condo in Arlington when Congress is in session. They
also have a Sedona ranch that again is part of Cindy’s portfolio.
No doubt, McCain’s clumsy answer gave Obama room to poke fun at him
as rich and out of touch at the same time. However, McCain himself
doesn’t own any property and isn’t “rich”, and Cindy and her family
earned their money honestly. They certainly didn’t partner with a now-convicted political fixer to buy a house in a tony neighborhood.