If the New York Times hadn’t been the ones to break Lobbygate I would have probably dismissed it. But considering the reputation the newspaper has, as well as the astonishing number of reporters who pursued the story (how many NY Times reporters does it take to bring down the Republican nominee-elect for president? 4—plus two researchers) this really has my attention.
In case you missed it, the Times published a report Wednesday evening (EST) on their website detailing the relationship between Republican 71-year-old John McCain, the all but nominated nominee for president, and the 40-year-old Vicki Iseman, a lobbyist for media mogul Lowell W. Paxon. Iseman by the way, looks eerily like a younger version of McCain’s wife.
The article, which for the most part received its information from anonymous aides within the McCain campaign, stated that Ms. Iseman had been showing up often at McCain fundraisers, been taking private flights with the senator on a client’s corporate jet, even making numerous personal visits to McCain’s office.
His aides became convinced that the relationship had become romantic and they began taking steps to cut off the candidate’s contact with her for fear that word of it would get out, especially when media outlets started running stories about McCain writing letters on Paxon’s behalf. The article alleges that aides actually blocked her access several times when she visited, warned her about her actions in private, and even approached the senator about the prudence in cooling off his Boeing jets.
When these warning went unheeded, the aides decided to—for fear that word of McCain’s affairs would get out—get the word out. In all fairness to the McCain camp, both the senator, who has known about the article for months, and Iseman have denied the allegations that they were having an affair.
So what will the fallout look like?
Obviously, it won’t affect his standing as the Republican nominee (but wouldn’t that be the miracle the Huckabee camp has been waiting for? Or one of them at least).
But it will certainly change the way McCain is going to run his campaign against either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. As a candidate who has staked his value set to a platform of campaign finance reforms and revolutions in the way politicians make policy, this Lobbygate business has dumped a big bucket of ironic paint all over McCain’s face that his Democratic opponent would have to be blind and unscrupulous to miss. So unless Dick Nixon and Stevie Wonder have a tone-deaf kid that wants to run for president, McCain going to have to reign in the barbs if he doesn’t want to this brought up nine months from now.
People will forget this happened. There aren’t enough details to keep people interested for the next few weeks, much less the coming months. And I don’t see that creepy voyeur Ken Starr hanging around in the bushes so I doubt there will be any more naughty specifics to report.
But should McCain’s attacks get too numerous or too spurious, the Democrats have one hell of a bullet to fire back.
As far as the kids are concerned, if you’re worried about losing the youth vote Senator McCain, there are always television commercials. Don’ be like Bob Dole. Don’t wait until after the election to prove to the kids that, though you may be an old veteran, you’re still virile.
Make it happen Cialis. Make it happen.
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