Just suppose the lobbyist who buddied up to John McCain eight years ago and bragged about having an inside track with the senator happened to be a fat, balding, cigar-chomping dispenser of money and seats on the corporate jet—name of Victor, not Vicki. Would The New York Times have focused so strongly on what two former staffers said anonymously about their concerns that the senator had a too cozy relationship? I think not.
Even though being too cozy with lobbyists—as the not-so-Mr. Straight Talk campaign "reformer" has been for decades—is a legitimate subject for inquiry, the story got on page one because of a hint of s-e-x. Because the story produced no facts about a romantic relationship—which was only hinted at by unnamed aides with no proof—the Times badly over played this angle, giving the right-wing noise machine and McCain boosters a legitimate reason to complain. Now subsequent headlines, blogs and stories routinely refer to McCain's "sex scandal."
With conservative pundits calling foul and the comedians salivating at the material (well, this does give new meaning to bundling) the story may not go away soon. But whether or not McCain played footsie with Vicki is not the issue. He should be attacked for the right reasons, such as his blatant collection of lobbyists who remain top aides, while pretending to be a maverick reformer, and an incredibly close association with lobbyist-donators over the years.
One of the most important campaign stories of the season went largely overlooked. The Watchdog group Public Citizen released a study on January 28 that showed McCain far ahead of the pack in the number of lobbyist-bundlers raising money for him. McCain had 59. (Giuliani was second but had only half as many, Clinton, 20 and Obama 9.) You can read it on line at www.WhiteHouseforSale.org In total, the number of lobbyists raising money for candidates had already exceeded the number in 2004.
Fortunately, the weaker Times lead was followed up by various sources published on Alternet, Politico.com, Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo, and in Newsweek, by Michael Isikoff. They are getting to the real meat– the hypocrisy between McCain's words and actions. Isikoff caught him in an apparent lie when McCain aides categorically denied the Times story and said that the Senator never spoke to Vicky Iseman or the communications company, Paxson, which was her client, regarding the company's bid to purchase a TV station. Isikoff produced a sworn deposition by McCain in 2002 that says just the opposite; that he had indeed spoken to "Mr. Paxson" and had pushed the FCC to act on Paxson's request. That Paxson was a campaign contributor could "possibly be an appearance of corruption" , McCain conceded, but he denied any wrongdoing.
Now the Republicans are using the original New York Times story which overly emphasized a possible sex scandal to raise money for a "maligned" McCain. The Democratic National Committee has responded. with its own pitch: In a blog letter, Howard Dean writes "McCain and the right-wing noise machine will do anything and say anything to win. Turning an ethics scandal into a fund-raising opportunity is just the start.…the facts are clear: from Keating Five to today, throughout his 25 years in Washington, John McCain has consistently taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from his special interest friends, flown on their corporate jets, and then turned around and tried to do favors for them. And he's surrounded himself with the type of people he claims to fight against." Among his lodestone of lobbyists, Dean mentions advisor Charles Black who "literally" operates out of the Straight Talk express, using the phones in his role as a lobbyist working for "corporate interests and foreign governments."
Lost in all of this was another item. War hero McCain has made points among the reasonable for assailing torture methods. How many know he flip flopped and went with the Bush administration on the recent vote? Mere torture is no match for a possible lobby hottie.
