John McCain’s campaign must have had a fun night gaming out a twisted little sex-and-corruption story that seems to have completely blindsided the Arizona story (although in fact the campaign had at least some warning). As DemFromCT points out at Kos, the story about an improper and likely sexual relationship with a major lobbyist (breaking with GOP tradition, a female and over 18) who had business before McCain’s committee makes it a bit hard for the candidate to market himself as a straight shooter with character coming out of his ears.
The story has enough sources at this point, at least one of whom went on record, that McCain’s denials will just lend the story a he said-they said aspect. Since the press usually throws up their hands in those circumstances and declares the issue a draw in circumstances like this (balance!), if I was the guy with his suspicious mug on the front page of every gossip rag except the Weekly World News I really wouldn’t want to let things stand where they are.
The problem is that McCain’s savings and loan adventure with John Charles Keating makes it hard to argue that he never put his hand in the cookie jar. He can’t claim that he never slept around on his wife, unless you don’t count the first wife who McCain left hospitalized to hook up with his younger, wealthier, better-connected mistress. Neither aspect of this story is exactly new for McCain. The best angle that McCain could credibly take at this point is innocent until proven guilty, yet he already has well-placed associates willing to take the stand against him. Then you have the corroborating evidence that hasn’t yet made it into print.
Now how about the possibility that McCain’s credibility went down to friendly fire? It seems hard to believe that the Times ran this story without help during this silly season when almost every negative story about candidate X trails muddy footprints back to campaign A, B, Y or Z. But if someone did drop the bomb on McCain, who was it? It doesn’t help Democrats to let the story out now when so much more mileage could be had by timing the release to overlap with press coverage of the ’08 GOP convention. Mitt Romney hadn’t even dropped out when the reporting was well underway. If the story came out just before Super Tuesday, like the AmSpec thinks it could have, then Romney might not have had to drop out at all. Instead, with sadness but a sense of duty Romney would have picked up the frontrunner mantle from a tarnished hero who spent the most important week of primary season explaining what he did or didn’t do with his committee chair and a lobbyist friend. The important principals in the story are Republicans who don’t seem at first blush very receptive to Democrats urging them to tell tales. Hmm.
ThymeZone
Well, it took me a while to figure out what is going on here, but I think I did …. starting with listening to McCain’s statement this morning.
First of all, there is widespread misunderanding of the NYT story. The story doesn’t say that McCain had an affair or gave favors to a lobbyist. It says that he put himself in a position where there is the appearance of that.
That by itself is no crime. The issue here, and what the story was telling you, is that McCain has an attitude problem. He sees himself as being above that kind of criticism, and he rejects the very idea that anyone would accuse him of such things. This is the stance he took in the Keating scandal. It’s the stance he took with his own staff on the lobbyist thing. Apparently, McCain thinks that because he was a heroic POW, he cannot be challenged or questioned about his character and integrity.
The story here is not whether there is a blue lobbyist dress with a stain, its about whether you want to elect yet another president who thinks he is above the scrutiny of lesser people.
That’s the the NYT story doesn’t have to prove anything about him and lobbyist. It simply has to show that he put himself in a questionable light, and then refuses to listen to anyone who points that out.
It’s an important issue, but I wonder if anyone is getting it?
wonkie
I wonder what McCain’s first wife looked like? He seems to be a serial monogamist with a thing for tall,thirtish, blondes.
bartkid
>(breaking with GOP tradition, a female and over 18)
No.
Just ask Henry Hide or Newt Gingrich.
Joshua
“breaking with GOP tradition, a female and over 18”
Maybe this is what the wingnuts mean when they say he’s not a True Conservative?
srv
Huckabee.
Rudy G.
Only one affair? Amateur.
tom.a
All I know is anyone who has to be “protected from himself” is much more dangerous than appears on the surface.
bartkid
Hey, that reminds me, doesn’t Mr. McCain’s marital/relationships timelines have some well-documented Hyde-ian or Gringich-esque overlappings?
demimondian
No. You see, Hyde and Gingrich had affairs with staffers — vulnerable, young, impressionable, and, above all, dependent upon them. No threat should the relationship go sour — what are they going to do? Go to the press?
McCain’s judgment is questionable because he got involved with a woman who could (presumably) afford to rat him out. Obviously, he let his hormones get ahead of his brain.
Jake
TZ’s analysis is spot on. The story is a classic Dog Bites Man: Republican Thinks Laws Are for Little People.
If Iseman was a guy … most people wouldn’t think there was a sex angle. Um. Well, not for more than a few minutes … If Iseman were an old, unattractive guy, no one would think there was a sex angle, but the NYT padded the story out because there’s an attractive woman involved.
She was a model before her car accident.
rob!
i know i drink the Obama-Aid daily(mmm…sugary sweet!) but doesn’t crap like this just, in the macro sense, help Obama? people look at Clinton(lots of marital problems) and now McCain and just shrug and say “eh, enough of this corrupt hypocritical crap, let’s get all new people in there.”
4tehlulz
Not really. It may keep McCain from focusing on him, but McCain would benefit from the rallying around him against the ZOMG LIE-BRUL MEDIA.
Ned Raggett
That John Weaver guy speaks.
TR
Hell, I wouldn’t put it past someone in the McCain camp to have floated this.
What better way to rally the conservative base around him than have the New York Times make an attack?
Ned Raggett
I sure wasn’t ruling it out! Unintended consequences at least.
Davebo
POTD!
John S.
And yet, that’s exactly what he did:
Nothing to see here, folks. Move along!
demimondian
It’s interesting that Kurtz focuses on the marital fidelity issue instead of the ethics and corruption issue when he pontificates at WaPo, I see that he’s taking his medicine again — trying to deflect the discussion into the thing which doesn’t matter but has great inside baseball talking points (getting even with the Republicans for Lewinsky, serial monogamy instead of adultery, etc.) instead of looking for the real issue, which is McCain’s history of “bad judgment” with lobbyists and campaign supporters.
4tehlulz
>>“I’ve never done any favors for anybody — lobbyist or special-interest group. That’s a clear, 24-year record,” he told reporters.
2008 — 24 = 1984
Keating = 1987
umm…no.
I wonder if our media will note this discrepancy….
4tehlulz
So that’s what the kids called cocksucking nowadays…
John S.
I don’t find it interesting at all.
Kurtz has proven himself to be a shameless hack time and time again. I mean, anybody who hangs on the words of Michelle Malkin – Citizen Journalist and Our Lady of Perpetual Outrage – isn’t quite right in the head.
Zifnab
I can definitely seeing the McCain campaign floating the story when he is least vulnerable. He’s got the nomination locked up, he knows he’s going to get blasted with this in the General. So just let the media chew on this non-scandal scandal for a while and by August no one will give a crap, because we’ll have discovered that Obama’s wife has two black children!
As much as anything, I’ll bet this is one of those “scopes” that need to be thrown out before anyone does any research, least the press fail to one-up itself.
maxbaer (not the original)
Wasn’t it Charles Keating?
ThymeZone
I’d say there’s a 50-50 chance. Did you all see the shit-eating grin on Cindy McCain’s face this morning? Seriously, I thought it was bizarre.
But look at how Bush handled the drunken driving story during his campaign. They arranged for it to be trotted out at just the right time, arranged for it to be murky enough to create doubt, and then stomped on it.
McCain is being coached by experts now. They know how to manipulate these things. Yes, I believe that it’s a good possibility — no liklihood, but possibility — that they arranged this as a way to solidify the base, and to get the story off the table before it can do any real harm later.
From now on, this story is “old news.”
Jim
Hey, I’m committed to getting a Dem in the White House, but all this story will do is get “the base” behind McCain because they hate the NY Times even more, and there isn’t enough in the story to really hurt McCain. Another in a long series of bad judgment calls by the Times.
Tim F.
Yup. Brain fart.
Civilized Crank
How’s this for a conspiracy theory….
The conservative establishment (the radio folks like Limbaugh, et al.) hate McCain, hate that they could not beat him, hate the fact that they could not beat them shows just how weak and powerless they actually are, and hate that he could potentially win the presidency without kissing their ring (however implausible that might be at this stage).
Now, this being the internet age and all, they can’t JFK McCain without it turning into another Litivenenko. So the next best thing is to destroy his campaign, for him to tank so bad that they, the conservative establishment, can use his failure as their pulpit to blast those non-believers who have wandered off the ranch of late and blame a loss in November on McCain and non-conservatives, and not their crappy leadership and suicidal ideological purity that led to this mess in the first place. This would allow them to reclaim the leadership mantle and drive the party into ground further, ala British Labour during the Thatcher years.
The only thing that doesn’t fit is why do it now, when McCain could still be replaced at the convention? Well if the establishment believes there is no way McCain would quit or allow himself to be dethroned at his convention, then now maybe allows the story to slowly bleed him as the dominant media narrative is Obama-Clinton. Of course, the best evidence that the winger establishment was behind the story is the focus on the New Republic. There is no reason for the conservative establishment to be mad that McCain is getting ran aground (remember they have been actively campaigning against him most of the year) only about the timing. So the idea that New Republic forced this story now angers the folks not because they didn’t want the story to see the light of day, but rather because they wanted it to see the light of day at a later date.
Again, just a theory. Most likely this is BS overblown by digruntled former aides.
Tsulagi
Yep, that’ll cost him votes with a huge demographic in the party, the Gay Old Perverts family values crowd.
Earlier he had tried to woo them with a new campaign theme song: ABBA’s Take a Chance on Me. But that caused some chest thumping among the Republican manly men at RedState expressing disapproval. I think they were holding out for Dancing Queen.
jrg
All of this talk about McCain’s possible infidelity is premature. We won’t know for sure until we’ve spend $90 million in taxpayer dollars to drag his name through the mud, taking time to DNA test every dress Ms Iseman owns.
The government should also be tapping McCain’s phone line. If he’s done nothing wrong, he has nothing to hide.
Poor McCain… “If I knew it would be this kind of party, I would have stuck my dick in the mashed potatoes.”
A Different JC
To my eyes this is a perfect hatchet job on McCain because to the independents out there – who could go either to McCain or Obama in November – the two “old news” stories about McCain hadn’t yet been aired.
How many of the independents know about the Keating scandal? I asked my young ex-Republican relatives (under 30 y.o.) and they hadn’t. Same thing for McCain’s shameful treatment of his first wife.
Now, in the real world it’s OK to be a scumbag legislator and to cheat on your wife then divorce her while she’s in the hospital… but it’s not good if you’re trying to run as Mr. Clean Maverick.
So who did the hatchet job? Well, considering that the story has been around for 8 years, and then as a ‘hot’ story since November, it can’t have been the GOP dudes… which does make me wonder… after spending $40 million couldn’t Romney have hired one oppo-research guy?
I don’t think it’s Obama because he’s also trying to run as Mr. Clean and these hit-jobs always have blowback (too many witnesses). It could be a dormant mine laid by Hillary but her campaign is too busy unearthing material on Obama (plagiarized Kindergarten fridge art?)
This leaves the press itself. And from what we see from the interplay between the NYT and TNR, it appears to have been a rush to scoop inter-professional rivalry. The Times didn’t want to be shown as dithering blockheads by the New Republic, so they rushed the story to print.
But while I think it will help McCain with the conservative base (who hate the NYT worse than they hate bin Laden), it will seriously hurt McCain with everyone else.
Birdzilla
I dont know but i would rather have McCain then Obama