‘McCain Blogette’ offers a peek into GOP candidate’s home life

Meghan McCain just wants to make her family and politics seem more real.

WASHINGTON (AP) — “McCain Blogette” seems an oxymoron: a senior citizen and his presidential campaign chronicled by the Facebook generation.

This is the goal of John McCain’s daughter Meghan and her Internet diary, www.mccainblogette.com. Meghan, 23, offers an insider’s view, offbeat and sometimes surprisingly intimate.

Though the Web site is about a campaign, it is not about issues and rarely mentions other candidates. Rather, it is intended to make her parents, and politics, seem more real.

There is a message for anyone worried her 71-year-old father is too old: “I have yet to see Dad take a nap on the trail,” Meghan writes under a picture of herself napping.

A different photo shows Meghan demanding, arm outstretched, that her father hand over the candy bar he wants to eat for dinner.

Meghan uses backstage images to spotlight her father’s sense of humor: cracking up with former President Bush just before Bush endorses him and snapping tongs at the camera as he grills at home in Sedona, Ariz.

There is a photograph of her mother, Cindy, barefoot in pink polka-dotted pajamas, having her hair taken down the night McCain clinched the nomination in Dallas.

“Having grown up in politics, I know it’s an industry that, for all intents and purposes, is known for being dirty and cruel,” Meghan wrote.

“Why do I choose to be involved in politics right now? Because my father is different,” she wrote. “He’s compassionate, full of life, hilarious and is a beacon of integrity to myself and to so many others. Politics is rough, but I absolutely adore my Dad and this campaign and have never, ever stopped believing in him.”

In some ways, the Web site is similar to the now-defunct “Five Brothers” blog that was part of Republican Mitt Romney’s campaign.

Romney’s five sons used their blog to poke good-natured fun at him. Son Matt made a prank phone call, ostensibly from California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger: “Who’s your daddy, and what does he do?” the governator demanded of Romney in what was really an audio clip from “Kindergarten Cop.”

The “Five Brothers” blog drew attention and lured viewers to the campaign Web site. It may even have generated support for the candidate, said Colin Delaney of Epolitics.com, an online political Web site.

Voters seem to make decisions “based on personality at least as much as policy,” Delaney said. “And if a blog gives them a view into someone’s personality that they didn’t have before and helps to create a personal connection, that may help to turn the casual visitor into an actual supporter.”