My first thought when Keith Olbermann broke into a taped replay of Hardball on Wednesday night to announce that the New York Times was reporting an affair between John McCain and lobbyist Vicki Iseman, was that McCain had come so close to the Republican nomination only to flush his presidential ambitions down the toilet of the S.S. Monkey Business. Or to put it another way, Mike Huckabee's belief in miracles over math had been vindicated.
On closer review, though, the Times' sensational lede was backed up by reporting more worthy of a supermarket tabloid than the Paper of Record. So former chief of staff John Weaver and two anonymous, disgruntled ex-aides claimed to have spoken to McCain and Iseman to keep them apart? Nine years ago? Aside from a semen sample, you couldn't ask for more rock-solid proof. (To be sure, John and Cindy McCain's insistence that it is
a priori inconceivable that he would be unfaithful is a bit rich, considering that McCain serially cheated on his first wife, and his second wife was originally his mistress. But he's a maverick, so never mind.)
The actual story, which appeared in far more responsible form in the Washington Post, is the story of John McCain's long, continuing history of corrupt and corrupting relationships with lobbyists. This isn't breaking news, in the sense that it dates back to the beginning of McCain's legislative career 26 years ago, but it certainly is news to the vast majority of Americans, who are acquainted almost exclusively with the media-created character "John McCain, anti-corruption crusader," and not the actor who plays that role, a senator of middling accomplishment whose major contribution to American political life was his borderline-criminal facilitation of one of the greatest financial scandals of the last 50 years.
Those interested in judging McCain's reputation by his actions, rather than the other way around, should consult McCain: The Myth of a Maverick by Reason editor Matt Welch, easily the most worthwhile book purchase a political junkie could make this year. Here is Welch with a capsule summary of almost everything you need to know about the McCain-Iseman scandal.
The other important angle to Isemangate is the McCain campaign's pushback against it, a kind of anti-Clintonite sweeping denial that makes for optimal PR in the short term, but leaves no margin for lawyerly evasion should McCain's assertions later be disproved. Hours after the Times story went online, McCain's communications director Jill Hazelbaker averred that McCain "has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists." As Welch says, McCain's own memoirs contradict this claim.
In his press conference the following morning, in addition to denying an affair with Iseman, McCain repeatedly gainsaid the Times' much more credibly-reported account of meetings between McCain's staffers and the candidate, and between the same aides and Iseman, to put a stop to whatever relationship they had:
Q (Off mike) — confirm again. The New York Times is pretty explicit in quoting a couple of former aides, they say —
SENATOR MCCAIN: Yes.
Q — saying that some of your aides intervened and confronted not just Ms. Iseman, but you in particular, saying: Stop seeing her, don’t have a relationship with her, because this is going to hurt you. Are you saying that did not happen?
SENATOR MCCAIN: I don’t know if it happened at their level. It certainly didn’t happen to me.
[…snip…]
Q So none of them, nobody in your campaign said, "Senator, she’s a problem, don’t deal with her"?
SENATOR MCCAIN: No. No.
Perhaps McCain's relationship with the press is so cozy that he is justified in expecting that no lie of his, no matter how bold-faced, will gain mainstream currency. For what it's worth, though, McCain's blanket denials are already coming undone. Michael Isikoff, the best investigative journalist in Washington, reports that McCain's claim that Paxson Communications (one of the firms Iseman represents) never lobbied McCain to intervene on their behalf with the FCC, is patently false. Isikoff's source? John McCain's 2002 deposition on the matter. Following on Isikoff's heels, Bud Paxson, head of the eponymous firm, contradicts McCain as well.
There is scarcely a figure in public life whose popular persona and actual political record are as wildly divergent as John McCain's, so it could be that Mr. Straight-Talk will weather the storm, and perhaps even finally consolidate his support among conservatives who hate the liberal media even more than they hate "Aztlan Juan" McCain.
In the real world, as opposed to the fact-free fantasyland in which most reporters on the McCain beat reside, John McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis is a lobbyist, his senior advisor Charlie Black does his lobbying business aboard the Straight-Talk Express, and most of his top aides are — wait for it — lobbyists. Meanwhile, the paladin of campaign finance reform took public financing when it appeared that his campaign was on life-support, then tried to opt out of the public financing system by putting potential future public money up as collateral for a private loan (this is probably illegal), now refuses to recognize the FEC's authority over the public or private financial status of his campaign, and best of all, took it upon himself to deliver a lecture to Barack Obama on the categorical imperative to uphold one's commitments to public financing.
When the general election gets going in earnest, expect to see McCain scold his opponent's backsliding mores on a daily basis. Dare we have the audacity to hope that this time around, McCain will finally be called out as a transparently hypocritical bullshit-artist?
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