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 A Story With LegsPosted on Feb 25, 2008By E.J. Dionne WASHINGTON—It seems odd, but for John McCain it was a blessing to have the chance to bury questions about his dealings with lobbyists beneath an alleged sex scandal. The prurient part of the story was easy to deny, and voters are sick of sex scandals. But even if the sex goes away, the underlying questions raised last week in the story for which The New York Times took such grief are unlikely to disappear. The McCain campaign’s sweeping denials may have been a bit too sweeping, and sex, in the end, is not what the story was really about. The Times got into trouble largely because of the second paragraph of its Thursday story about the relationship between Vicki Iseman, a telecommunications lobbyist, and McCain, then the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. Noting that McCain’s staff was anxious about their relationship in the run-up to McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign, the Times wrote: “A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fundraisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself. ...” A story opening that way was inevitably going to be seen as being about sex, even though the Times had no corroboration of that “romantic” relationship. On Sunday, Clark Hoyt, the Times’ internal critic, observed that editors who claimed otherwise ignored “the scarlet elephant in the room.” “A newspaper cannot begin a story about the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee with the suggestion of an extramarital affair with an attractive lobbyist 31 years his junior and expect readers to focus on anything other than what most of them did,” Hoyt wrote. Exactly. “The pity of it,” Hoyt added, “is that, without the sex, the Times was on to a good story.” McCain’s denunciation of the sexual innuendo won him allies well beyond the world of Times-hating conservatives. Many fans of the Times (including this one) think journalists should stay away from the sex lives of politicians unless there is a truly compelling public reason for doing otherwise. Last year I urged that we ignore the escapades of Sen. David Vitter, R-La., precisely because it’s important to preserve, as much as possible, the distinction between the public and private lives of politicians. But McCain’s denials didn’t stop at sex, and the story didn’t, either. On the same day the Times ran its account, The Washington Post ran its own story that stayed away from the “romantic” angle, but reported (as the Times also had) that McCain had written two letters to the Federal Communications Commission urging that it vote on the sale of a Pittsburgh television station to Paxson Communications, one of Iseman’s clients. The Post wrote that at “the time he sent the first letter, McCain had flown on Paxson’s corporate jet four times to appear at campaign events and had received $20,000 in campaign donations from Paxson and its law firm. The second letter came on Dec. 10, a day after the company’s jet ferried him to a Florida fundraiser that was held aboard a yacht in West Palm Beach.” In denouncing the story, McCain’s campaign denied he had ever met with Lowell “Bud” Paxson, the president of the firm. But Paxson later told the Post that he had met with McCain. More telling, Newsweek reported that McCain himself acknowledged in a 2002 deposition that he had met with Paxson. As Newsweek wrote, “With his typically blunt, almost cheery way of admitting the sinfulness of man, including his own weaknesses, he acknowledged in the deposition that his relationship with Paxson ... would ‘absolutely’ look corrupt to the ordinary voter.” And on Friday, the Post reported that while McCain may relish attacking lobbyists, many of the top officials of his campaign—including Rick Davis, his campaign manager, and Charlie Black, his chief political adviser—are themselves well-known lobbyists with long client lists. Why does this matter? Many of us have praised McCain over the years for his reform work and his criticism of special-interest politics. His reformer image is one reason he’s so close to securing the Republican presidential nomination. It’s thus perfectly reasonable for journalists to explore how McCain’s strong words about lobbyists square with how he’s actually dealt with them. The Times has been rightly chastised for improperly opening the door on McCain’s private life. But the window it opened on the candidate’s relationship with Washington’s special-interest world will not close any time soon, especially if McCain’s explanations keep raising new questions. E.J. Dionne’s e-mail address is postchat(at)aol.com. © 2008, Washington Post Writers Group Previous item: Playing Favorites Next item: On Geraldo and 'Black Geniuses' Elsewhere: . CommentsAre you a Truthdig member yet? Login now, or register with Truthdig. Add Your Comment |
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AIDS and the Myth of the Oversexed Negro
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By Frank Cajon, March 1 at 8:53 pm #
I don’t get the leap from this being about McCain being owned by lobbyists and special interests (just like HillBilly) to it being a ‘sex scandal’. Please, people. Bubba wrote the book on sex scandal and he is running with superdelegates in tow like it never happened, or like having no morals is a positive trait. Nothing I have read puts this fossil in a hotel room with his lobbyist buddy, much less teaching her the pleasure arts of a 71 year old man. I think it paints him a hypocrite on lobbyists and get back to the real business of the election, which is that he is a warmonger.
Report thisBy Thomas Billis, February 27 at 1:25 pm #
Poor deluded misinformed EJ.I know when the Times writes another mis guided and ridiculous story it is incumbent on the lap dogs to write a column on it and waste paper.Wheteher McCain is or is not having an affair is irrelevant and the fact that the Times article showed no proof of influence peddling I am sure is irrelevant to you.A good column would be the demise of one of the great newspapers of all times with the proof being this old and tired article about Mccain.Maybe you can prod the Times to bring back Judith Miller and do some real investigative reporting on this McCain thing.
Report thisBy cyrena, February 26 at 7:58 pm #
You’re so right Joe. American’s DO care about the politics of lobbyists, and not just Democratic ones.
Tom DeLay comes to mind, and we see that he is now ‘poof’. Then there’s the string of other repugs that have gone ‘poof’ in recent years, while Jacob Freeze thinks that ‘nobody cares’.
I would submit that to be the standard for all repugs and the right wing of the Democratic party as well. It’s like a favorite pontification….when they can’t rationalize the criminal or other inappropriate behavior of their heroes. They just say, ‘nobody cares’ about this, that, or the other thing. (whatever it might be).
Maani frequently tells us that ‘nobody cares’ about Hillary being a warmonger, despite the fact that multiple public opinion polls over the past 3 plus years, indicate that the American public DEFINITELY cares about this never ending war, and that they are smart enough to connect this war to the totally jacked-up economy, or the LOBBYSTS for the neconners and their defense/oil/media/insurance/health related industries.
And so…for those who DO care, (which is far more than many would like to acknowledge) we actually DID get the real ‘legs’ of the NYT story, beyond the inferred titillation of the ‘sexual’ intrigue. Actually, it is to THAT part, (the sexual inference) that most folks DON’T CARE!
Ok,,,OK,,I admit it. I don’t care. I didn’t care about Bill and Monica either. Bill did far worse things by which I HAVE been affected, than whatever he and Monica did. I won’t bother to list them now, but I should mention that whatever Ken Starr got paid was a huge waste of taxpayer money, and that stupid ‘report’ he authored was like a badly written porn novel, ALSO published at taxpayer expense.
Meantime, the real point of the McCain story, is to make it clear to the voting public, that he’s a treacherous hypocrite, running on an ideology of ‘reform’ when in fact he’s as bad as the rest of the repugs, and I don’t know why that even surprises anyone.
This story about his connection to lobbyists and the telecommunications corptocracy also diverted attention from his recent Congressional vote AGAINST the anti-torture bill. In other words, the most recent bill (since there have been so many) to re-affirm the prohibition against torture, in this case the waterboarding tactic. Yes, McCain the war hero voted against the passage of that bill, because apparently now that he’s not a POW any more, he doesn’t much care about those troops we currently have in the theaters, who might fall into ‘enemy’ hands. And…if they do, why would the ‘enemy’ be inclined or otherwise feel obligated to honor the international legal prohibitions against torture, (to our own troops) when the US of A has made it clear in the past 6 years, that it’s one of their favorite things to do? And, never mind the laws. Guess McCain says never mind the laws as well.
But, the sex and lobbyist story has sort of deferred attention from his vote for the continuation of torture at the hands of the military and/or the CIA.
Report thisBy PatrickHenry, February 26 at 5:07 pm #
What next?
Report thishttp://judicial-inc.biz/82jjohn_mccain_and_the_uss_for resta.htm
By Margaret Currey, February 26 at 3:41 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
Just because McCain seems smarter than Bush does not make him electable, I think this year even with Nader in the picture the Dems are going to win big time.
Because John McCain is 71 yrs old, his mother might be old but his father died at 70 yrs old.
McCain comes from a long line of Navy men and once out of the Navy the politics is next. After being in the navy is political and the Navy is a mans world.
Of course they let a few women in.
Report thisBy Joe, February 26 at 3:39 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
Jacob Freeze thinks:
“Democrats have been trying to excite voters about lobbying since forever, but nobody cares.”
JF, Don’t see where you get this. Democrats, overall, have been at least as corrupt as the Repubes over time.
Report thisBoth place personal and Party interests far ahead of long-term national interests (deficit-spending, goofy invasions,etc, etc)or, God forbid, the interests of the world at-large.
By writer 201, February 26 at 11:54 am #
I tend to agree. Where on earth is the outrage?
Report thisBy P. T., February 26 at 10:01 am #
Interesting to see conservatives get agitated at the New York Times. When John McCain was running against George W. Bush in 2000 in South Carolina, conservatives were suggesting McCain (who also was one of the Keating Five) had an out-of-wedlock child with a black woman.
Report thisBy KISS, February 26 at 7:41 am #
The forked tongue of Arizona has more than once been found to lie, cheat and bluster. The only repug in that fine organization “ The Keating Five”. His intervention in the telecoms give away. And now the coziness of the inner-squad of lobbying advisor’s.
Report thisWhile all of the candidates are corporate lap-dogs, he is the most disgusting.
By Expat, February 26 at 12:24 am #
^ a bankrupt old bastard afterall. He is in denile and it’s not the river in Egypt. His house of cards is comming down.
Report this