Surprise, Surprise!

Posted by on . 5 comments.

The NYT informs us that John McCain — who has built some kind of reputation for himself for a) lustful fornication outside the sacrament of marriage, and b) blithely abandoning principles he himself has piously espoused in the past — seems to be a dishonest randy old sod. Go figure! And if you can muster up the wherewithal for a chorus of “Shocked! Shocked, I tell you!”, more power to you.

More than anything else, the story seems to be about the sleazy reality that underlies the “Mr. Clean-as-a- whistle-since-the-Keating-Five-scandal” public image that McCain’s advisers seek to project for him.

Was John McCain banging pretty telecom lobbyist Vicki Iseman? Hard to tell. And the NYT certainly doesn’t push that angle.

Did McCain have cozy, sleazy, questionable relationships with lobbyists who represented companies which had business before the powerful Senate Commerce Committee McCain chaired? Yessir, yessir, three bags full.

Does this man deserve to be the next President of the United States? You be the judge.

Iseman, incidentally, did very well by her alleged non-relationship with McCain:

Iseman, 40, who joined the Arlington-based firm of Alcalde & Fay as a secretary and rose to partner within a few years, often touted her access to the chairman of the Senate commerce committee as she worked on behalf of clients such as Cablevision, EchoStar and Tribune Broadcasting, according to several other lobbyists who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
[...]
Three telecom lobbyists and a former McCain aide, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Iseman spoke up regularly at meetings of telecom lobbyists in Washington, extolling her connections to McCain and his office. She would regularly volunteer at those meetings to be the point person for the telecom industry in dealing with McCain’s office.

Whether or not she was selling herself to him, she was very successfully selling her access to him to her clients. (For the record, Iseman seems to have made partner at Alcalde & Fay in 1998, eight years after she joined them as a secretary, with a degree in elementary education from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. I must confess that when I read the WP‘s Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Michael D. Shear‘s go “… and rose to partner within a few years”, I was thinking something much less than eight years. Funny how you can give people the totally wrong impression without actually lying to them.)

The kindest light this story sheds on John McCain is that he has extremely poor judgement. Which brings us right back to: Do you really want this man to be the next President of the United States?

Comments

  1. sarabeth says:
    February 21, 2008 at 12:29 pm

    Not sure at this point if I’ll have more on this story tomorrow. It’s my sense, though, that:
    — there will probably not be any further evidence about whether McCain was sleeping with Iseman
    — it will become incontrovertibly clear that McCain interceded with the FCC (and possibly other government agencies) on behalf of Iseman’s clients

  2. Zombieplatitudes says:
    February 24, 2008 at 8:40 pm

    You:

    Was John McCain banging pretty telecom lobbyist Vicki Iseman? Hard to tell. And the NYT certainly doesn’t push that angle.

    The first two paragraphs of that Times Article, the lede, and the support graph. Since you seem to be unaware of the way newspaper writing works, these two paragraphs are where reporters place the most important information:

    Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

    A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, 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 — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

    But you know, they certainly weren’t “pushing it”.

    Yours is hackery of the highest order. McCain is plenty vulnerable on the subject of lobbyists, but the Times decision to focus on the thinly sourced “sexy” angle gave conservatives an opening to discredit the story.

  3. sarabeth says:
    February 25, 2008 at 3:59 am

    Thank you. My daddy always used to say: whatever you do, try to be the best at it. He would have been so disappointed if my hackery was just common or garden variety.

  4. Zombieplatitudes says:
    February 25, 2008 at 3:27 pm

    We must all embrace our talents.

  5. sarabeth says:
    February 25, 2008 at 3:59 pm

    That’s what your daddy always told you?