Don't Do It, Dad

The text of Meghan McCain's Dirty Sexy Politics has just been published, but the subtext has been available for years. McCain is the daughter of 2008 POTUS runner-up John McCain. Fresh out of Columbia, she became a fixture on the campaign trail and the media thanks to (dad and) her McCainBloggette (now just a book promotion vehicle: her "work" has moved to Twitter and The Daily Beast) campaign blog.

Claiming to speak for the old time, Republican moderates, Meghan, 25,  repeats (and repeats and repeats) her political message that the Republican party has lost its way, with its representatives forced to cater to Tea Party "crazies." Given the recent campaign where father John felt forced to rail against some long-held positions in order to recapture the Republican nomination for Arizona senator, the daughter seems to be attempting to warn/shame the father ... with love.

You Spell Potatoe

Benjamin Quayle is running for the Republican nomination for retiring Phoenix-area congressman John Shadegg and what most people want to know is whether he can spell "potato." Ben is the son of Dan "potatoe" Quayle — remembered with this week's objet d'eBay, a 2000 campaign button from his failed attempt to transition to actual POTUS from from Bush VPOTUS.

Unlike candidates who have high standards to live up to, much of the reporting of the younger Quayle's campaign has revolved on how he is following in his father's foot mis-steps. Although something of a longshot in the the Aug. 24 voting, Quayle does bring to the campaign against his nine opponents the money his father's connections have enabled, as well as the low bar to lived up to (and hopefully, for him, jumped over).

Dads' Campaigns Not Big with PFKC

Ambivalence toward being first child seems to be the bond between all the potential first children. All, except perhaps those of "leave my children alone and I'll leave your children alone" Giuliani, whose estranged kids were caught up in a controversy over the level of their support for their father's candidacy.

Even Craig, part of the ever present effervescent (Mitt) Romney (boy) Quintet — who made a recent Florida campaign swing complete with 18 stops in three days and flipping flapjacks, feeding a watermelon to a hippo anda cting the teetotaler chatting with tipplers in a beer tent — admitted to a Wall Street Journal reporter, "Part of me just wants this all to be over."

Among the lesser (i.e., un-) known Potential First Kids Corps (PFKC), Univ. of South Carolina pre-dent Mary Ellyse Fendig gives her father Cap's campaign at best a tepid endorsement. "He's very fun-loving, but he's very serious about this," she says. And she hasn't quite put her life on hold for the county commissioner's POTUS campaign. With no apparent passion about the campaign or what it might mean for her (beyond the local press she is getting), she takes a more dad's-just-being-dad approach to the quixotic campaign: "He does just hold a local office, but he does a lot of state policy and he's very involved in things that affect our county," she said. "But I feel like that's like saying, 'If the Gamecocks thought they couldn't win, they wouldn't still try.' It's a personal ambition of his."

** It's a kid dad thing: Support the Player, even if not the game. **