Interesting standards the New York Times has over there…
A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, in his offices and aboard 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.
When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s clients, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.
Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.
So this is the story? Not that they had an affair, but they hung around each other enough so that people began to talk? I mean, if you’re going to make the accusation, then make the accusation.
Instead we get stuff like this:
A former campaign adviser described being instructed to keep Ms. Iseman away from the senator at public events, while a Senate aide recalled plans to limit Ms. Iseman’s access to his offices.
No identified sources? No on-the-record sources? All we get is “according to two former McCain associates,” presumably that reference to one Senate, one campaign. Are these sources some folks he fired who might have an axe to grind? Or are these people who have no reason to lie, or to paint a more salacious picture than warranted?
We get one named source.
Both said Mr. McCain acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman. The two associates, who said they had become disillusioned with the senator, spoke independently of each other and provided details that were corroborated by others.
Separately, a top McCain aide met with Ms. Iseman at Union Station in Washington to ask her to stay away from the senator. John Weaver, a former top strategist and now an informal campaign adviser, said in an e-mail message that he arranged the meeting after “a discussion among the campaign leadership” about her.
“Our political messaging during that time period centered around taking on the special interests and placing the nation’s interests before either personal or special interest,” Mr. Weaver continued. “Ms. Iseman’s involvement in the campaign, it was felt by us, could undermine that effort.”
Mr. Weaver added that the brief conversation was only about “her conduct and what she allegedly had told people, which made its way back to us.” He declined to elaborate.
We also get staff saying there’s nothing to it:
Mr. Davis and Mark Salter, Mr. McCain’s top strategists in both of his presidential campaigns, disputed accounts from the former associates and aides and said they did not discuss Ms. Iseman with the senator or colleagues.
“I never had any good reason to think that the relationship was anything other than professional, a friendly professional relationship,” Mr. Salter said in an interview.
And this prompted Olbermann to put the “BREAKING NEWS” banner on MSNBC? Right now they’re running, “New York Times report links McCain to female lobbyist Vicki Iseman.” Hey, perfectly vague term to insinuate that the Times has the goods on an affair.
Buchanan: “If this is all they got, it’s terribly unfair. If they have more, why isn’t it in the story?… It seems to not be worthy of a New York Times story.”
UPDATE: Obviously, this was the story that Drudge talked about back on December 20 – before Iowa, before New Hampshire, before the Republicans had a man on course to be the nominee. As this site noted then, the lead reporter on the McCain story, Jim Rutenberg, has written about Drudge and his ties to other campaigns in the past. Some folks in the McCain camp suspect that Rutenberg wanted the story to run back in December, and bits of the story showing up on Drudge were a way to light a fire under the editors who were understandably cautious about the story.
So now we’re in a weird no-man’s-land in this story. It’s too late to cost McCain the nomination. But it doesn’t seem strong enough to really derail him; it’s the vague insinuations of the wording of two aides vs. denials from everyone actually involved.
As far as we can tell, back in December, the article looked like an unfair, thinly-sourced hit piece on a possible Republican nominee; now it looks like an unfair, thinly-sourced hit piece on the likely Republican nominee.