She has already been deployed by the McCain campaign as an editorial counterpoint, taken out of her cellophane wrapping long enough to soundbite that, unlike Michelle Obama, she's always been proud of her country, always will be.

In this clip, McCain delivers the patriotic rejoinder with a plucky little hand gesture reminiscent of Liddy Dole at her most down-homey, but the more interesting bit is when she and her husband are asked to elaborate, and she simply repeats what she said before with a distinct lack of oomph, as if she's afraid of going off-script and straying off-message, having not rehearsed a more fleshed-out follow-up. The article attached to the clip mentions that when she was later asked again to expand on her remarks, she again stuck to her original soundbite, though her reliant stressing of the word "extremely" is interesting, as if she's trying to overcompensate for a lack of inner conviction by overemphasizing a particular word, clinging to it for support. Cindy McCain strikes me as a poignant figure, though maybe that's a sentimentality on my part. But she looks like someone paralyzed of making a mistake, of being anything less than decorous; she may even envy Michelle Obama's freedom to move and speak like a fully authorized human being