McCain Flap

I'm gonna keep this brief. I used to respect John McCain. Back in 2000, I thought he must be a good guy because of the vile ways in which the Bush campaign attacked him:

". . . during the South Carolina Republican primary the George W. Bush-Karl Rove smear machine unleashed a torrent of racist attacks against McCain, including the now infamous push-poll phone calls to white suburban voters asking: "Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain if you knew he had an illegitimate half-black baby?" Rove's racist calls referred to McCain's adopted child."

Joseph A. Palermo at The Huffington Post, 2/14/08

But, since he lost out in 2000, McCain seems to have rolled over and done Bush's bidding with few exceptions. I grew to believe that McCain was like most other politicians, with maybe a few more scruples and a more refined sense of fair play. Thursday's New York Times article has confirmed this for me.

Now, when I first heard all the uproar on morning TV, I was astonished. The way the article was presented, it seemed like one of two things was going on here: either McCain had been caught in a sexual indiscretion with a lobbyist or the NYT had irresponsibly reported on a non-event. Since I'm a cynic, I didn't buy what MSNBC and CNN were saying without reading the article for myself. As far as I can tell, the main issue the article was addressing was that John McCain, who himself decried even the appearance of impropriety by legislators (after being caught at just that as part of the Keating 5), had once again been spending a little too much time with special interests and their lobbyists. While the morning news folks were up in arms about unnammed sources who claimed a romantic involvement between McCain and the lobbyist, the bulk of the article was ignored.

Again, read the article for yourself. Think for yourself. I saw two mentions of the possibility of a "romantic" relationship between McCain and Iseman, and those were cited only as suspicions by McCain staffers. Everyone interviewed for the story seemed to agree that McCain was being seen with Iseman too often. The report confirmed that staffers even confronted him about it. What The New York Times seems to be guilty of is reporting on a non-story: a congressman who hangs out with lobbyists! Wow!!! Unbelievable!

'Nuff said.