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.