Maverickology
Matt Welch | February 22, 2008, 7:46am
Because of the New York Times' shoddy execution, and the fact that the real underlying story (not the evidence-lite romantic speculation) is an A27 jobbie at best, the McCain-lobbyist "scandal" 30 hours later has become largely a debate about journalism and even a textbook example of political damage control and base-rallying.
But that doesn't mean there aren't interesting subplots that will be teasing out in the coming days. David Brooks, a longtime intimate of Campaign McCain, provides the most interesting Day Two analysis I've seen, basically laying the blame for the scandal on the longtime rift between McCain campaign manager Rick Davis, and his differently gruntled former Karl Rove figure, John Weaver.
At the core of that article that began on the front page are two anonymous sources. These sources, according to the article, say they confronted McCain in 1999 with their concerns that he was risking his career by interacting with Vicki Iseman. [...] I have no idea who those sources are. But they are bound to come from the inner circle of the McCain universe. The number of people who could credibly claim to have had a meeting like that with McCain in early 1999 is vanishingly small. I count a small handful of associates with that stature, including Davis and Weaver. There is nobody in that tight circle unaffected by the hostilities that emanate from the rift. [...]
Some closer to Weaver theorized that the sources must be former McCain campaign elders from 2000 who worked for rival campaigns in 2008.
I checked that possibility out, and it doesn't hold water. But while calling around to a dozen senior McCain friends and advisers Thursday, what struck me was the enormous tragedy of the rift. [...] [It] is like some primal sore. It affected every conversation I had Thursday, as it has infected McCain efforts again and again over the past many years.
The upshot, for the 99% of healthy humans who don't care about inter-campaign machinations? Team McCain might be getting ready to blame the formerly indispensable John Weaver, and depending on how that goes John Weaver might be poised to dig up more skeletons as the campaign season unfolds.
Oh, and there's this parting zinger from Brooks:
Thursday, McCain went all-in. He didn't just say he didn't remember a meeting about Iseman. He said there was no meeting. If it turns out that there is evidence of an affair and a meeting, then his presidential hopes will be over.
UPDATE: As I've mentioned before, McCain's dealings with Vicki Iseman's client Paxson Communications was a mini-scandal eight years ago first raised by the Boston Globe (McCain effectively managed the crisis, plus a related, ensuing one involving still more alleged favors for Ameritech, by producing a massive document-dump that smothered the stories with context). Anyway, the Globe story has always been hard to find online, until today.
Geotpf | February 22, 2008, 12:19pm | #
"R C Dean | February 22, 2008, 10:22am | #
They endorsed him, didn't they?
Only in the primary.
For all practical purposes, he is now the candidate in the general election, and you know they'll endorse the Dem in the general.
The reason this came out now is that their hand was forced by the TNR story. If they were neutral and/or pro-McCain, they would have just said "look, we've dug into some rumors, and can't come up with anything new that isn't anonymous innuendo. There's just not a story here." But they didn't; they published a mish-mash of old news and gossip. What does that tell you?"
That they didn't want to get scooped on their own story, so they published it before it was ready?
Look, what happened here was the following:
1. Times reporters have good info that a lobbyist was so chummy with McCain that she was banned from the office by McCain's staff for his own protection.
2. There are rumors that the two had an affair, but nothing even remotely resembling proof.
3. The editors at the Times know that a good sex scandal is a better story than just some random crap about somebody being kicked out of an office eight years ago, and sit on it until their reporters can prove the sex angle.
4. The Times can never nail down the sex angle (either because it wasn't true, or because McCain hid his tracks well).
5. The Times is about to be scooped on the story by TNR.
6. The Times doesn't want to be scooped on a their own damned story, and they had spent to much time on it to kill it.
7. So, they publish what they had, which was the apparently good info that the lobbyist was too chummy with McCain and was banned, plus the whisp of the rumor that the two were an item.
What they should have done was publish the good info and left the sex BS out. However, that was, as Matt Welch said, probably a back page story at best. So they published everything they had and looked stupid for doing so.
Matt Welch | February 22, 2008, 1:43pm | #
Matt, you've spent more time digging into his background than I have, so if you tell me he was always like that, I'll grant you the benefit of the doubt and stop attributing it to his captivity.
He was basically always like that. Later (especially after 1998 or so), he added some new flavors to his personality/ideology/worldview, through the exercise of
interpreting his Vietnam experience (and running for president, and burying Barry Goldwater, and discovering National Greatness) ... much, in fact, of what you probably don't like about him was cemented around this era.
But the biggest single impact of Vietnam on John McCain's psyche, in my view, was that it temporarily (for a quarter-century, actually) shook him from his faith in America's default righteousness in waging war. This was very, very traumatizing for him, so alien was that thought to his essentially benevolent-imperialist clan, that he made as the single biggest cause of his political career to "put Vietnam behind us." Only
after doing so -- by normalizing relations, wrapping a bow on the POW/MIA controversy, winning a few wars, and applying a 12-step style redemption narrative on his own Vietnam experience -- did he regain the essential faith in American righteousness and power.
But personality-wise, he's basically the same dude, only with more experience. Friends commented that he was basically just a bit more serious after coming back, but otherwise not a lot different. And people I know who have read all his medical documents tell me there's no there there (granted, they are sympathetic to the man).
