McCain's Integrity

I don't think the argument holds that this will unite movement conservatives around McCain as the victim of the liberal media's old gray lady. This is a terribly damaging story, and it's hard to believe that there's not a lot more to it that will be forthcoming.  McCain's adamant denial this morning that there is any truth to it means that either the Times has been completely irresponsible or that McCain is lying. Either is possible, but which is the more likely?  And if the story becomes one of McCain's lying about all of this, it clearly undermines whatever shred of credibility he has about being the straight shooter.  It's hard to see how he could survive that.

One could also ask if this is Huckabee's miracle or a second one for Obama. If this knocks McCain out, could Obama waltz into the White House essentially unopposed the way he waltzed into the senate after his GOPer opponent dropped out because of sex scandal?  This time with Mike Huckabee playing the Alan Keyes role? How strange would that be?  It raises question about Obama's working and ongoing contractual arrangement with the big red-complected fella with the horns and the long, pointy tail.

But let's leave aside questions who benefits most from the release of this story. The story, whatever the motivations behind its release, is now out there, and it's a stick that stirs the hornet's nest of McCain's past. All kinds of things will now be revisited, including his involvement with the Keating five, the scandal in the early nineties about Cindy McCain's Limbaughesque addiction to painkillers, which she stole from a non-profit she headed. Not to mention McCain's caddish behavior while still married to his first wife. There is a pretty ugly picture that emerges from behind of the carefully crafted image of the straight  shooter. McCain is starting to look a lot more like Giuliani--or just like another typical GOP pol in the pocket of Big Money.

Because the aspect of this story that is most troubling is the way in which it reveals the influence of lobbyists on our lawmakers. Commenter eggroll at TPM makes the point:

Go back to 2000 and the Bill Thomas affair. Before taking over the House Ways and Means Committee, the legislator had a 3-year affair with top-tier Medicare lobbyist, Deborah Steelman. The short-lived public kerfuffle provided a brief insight into big pharma's between-the-sheets efforts in DC. After a short statement from Thomas' wife that the matter was private, Steelman went on to run Communications for Eli Lilly, and Thomas jumped the queue to head up Ways and Means (largely on Republican suspicions that the notoriously smart Thomas needed more adult upervision). To this day, Thomas remains the leading suspect for insertion of the Thimerosal provision in the Patriot Act, suggesting that he was compromised for years.

Both the McCain and Thomas stories illustrate the comfort level lobbyists had with top guy in Congress in that period.

This story, if it turns out that there was an affair, is different from and more serious than the Clinton/Lewinski affair precisely because it shows how manipulable McCain is by people who have a special-interest agenda.  Clinton may have shown he's a lech with powerless intern, but it's far more serious to be a lech with a lobbyist.

TPM commenter flyonthewall sums it up:

Here's the de minimus reading of the Times piece: John McCain, who certainly ought to have known better, given the sordid rumors that have swirled about him at an earlier stage in his life, again placed himself in a compromising position with a woman not his wife, whose career depended on his goodwill. Even if they were just good friends, even if he just enjoyed the attention of a pretty, young blond woman who made him feel young again, even if they never crossed the line to physical intimacy, I think this story is incredibly damaging for a man running on his integrity. It calls into question his judgment, his honesty, and his maturity.

And, if anyone ever gets ahold of any actual evidence, as opposed to rumor and innuendo, things get a whole lot worse for the senator from Arizona.

And my guess is that more evidence will be forthcoming--if not from the Times, from elsewhere. One could argue that from a strategic point of view, assuming McCain survives this, it's better to get it all aired out now and move on.  But McCain is emerging as precisely the kind of candidate that represents everything Americans are tired of in the Beltway culture, and precisely the kind of thing that makes Obama look all the more attractive. 

Comments

[Matt Zemek]

Yes, this story will hurt McCain far more than it could ever help him.

With that said, this was a shoddy piece of journalism.

It had some solid facts and salient points, in connection with lobbyist influence and McCain's considerable inconsistencies relative to the Straight Talk persona and "redeemed man" personal narrative.

However, it had to then focus on the sexual aspect of the relationship with Ms. Iseman. In so doing--without airtight evidence and public sourcing--the Times only soiled the reputation of journalism again. To have touched on the sex without anything solid does two things:

1) It goes out on a limb without having the goods to back it up.

2) Far worse, it takes the (proper) focus off the lobbyist influence issue, and allows Joe Q. Public to be engrossed in the tawdry sexual aspects of the piece, which are both peripheral and dubious.

I picked the wrong time in human history to be a journalism major. In this story--and all the conspiracy theorizing that has predictably flowed from it on newspapers and blogs--I find all the journalistic sins and shortcomings that make my college football readers tear me (and my profession) to shreds.

Sad.

[Jack Whelan]

Matt--

I think it's too early to say whether the Times has been irresponsible. If nothing more comes out, then it has been. But I doubt this is the end of it.

And while you're right it's not primarily about the sex; it's about the lobbyist, the story would get no play if there were not a sexual angle to it. And if it turns out that there's fire beneath all the smoke, then we need to know what kind of guy we're dealing with here. He's certainly not the honest broker he presents himself to be, and better we find that out earlier rather than later.

[Matt Zemek]

Jack,

That's the difficulty with journalism these days, when the average American's attention span is so short.

Sex is one of the few things that will get eyeballs reading a paper, but sex is simultaneously the kind of topic that routinely obscures the far more egregious abuses of power that go on behind the scenes.

The responsible journalistic approach is to rely on solid facts and sourcing, the less confidential the better. The Times could have run a lower-play story that would have achieved appropriate goals without a lot of fuss. The NYT's visibility still could have registered--albeit on a smaller scale--with people wanting to be informed.

Instead, the paper overextended itself, and you have this all-too-familiar right-wing pushback which will only continue the culture wars. There was some good reporting on lobbyist influence here, but it was undone by an unnecessary and/or incomplete focus on sex, and so--as a result--the short-term gain of exposing McCain's hypocrisy, which is a public service provided by the NYT to its national readership, will be greatly eclipsed by the negative fallout caused by a continuation of the culture wars.

Journalism desperately needs to be trusted, and this kind of story is exactly what will prevent journalism and journalists (like myself, albeit for just 5 months a year in the sports world) from being trusted in the future. That's a bad thing.

[Jack Whelan]

Matt--

If nothing more comes out on this, I agree with you completely. I think that one of the most puzzling things is that the Times endorsed McCain knowing that there was a story here likely to break. This story is after all about his judgment and his vulnerability to special-interest influence. The sex angle plays a minor role in the actual reporting--it's more innunendo than accusation. Nevertheless the Times knew what it was doing by including that paragraph about aides being concerned about a romantic relationship.

What makes me question whether this was in fact the sleazy piece of journalism that it appears to be is the fact that they held it for so long. Keller doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who would let this story out if he didn't think there was plenty of solid evidence to back it up. He's a staid, cautious, establishment type who carries water neither for the extreme right or liberal democrats. I don't understand his motivation for letting a story out like this if after all this time and thought he knew this story would make the paper look like a supermarket tabloid.

But who knows what the motivations and pressures were that came to bear. I'm certainly not one to defend the journalistic standards of the NYT. But it doesn't make sense to me that Keller would expose the Times to precisely the criticism you are making for the sole purpose of smearing a presidential frontrunner. I could very well be wrong about that, but something doesn't add up.

ps: Seattle P-I agrees with you, Matt: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/thebigblog/archives/132415.asp