Last week's New York Times expos? on Sen. John McCain's alleged relationship with a telecommunications lobbyist nearly a decade ago was a shabby piece of journalism.
The carefully planned and superbly executed riposte by the top-flight lobbyists with whom the Republican presidential nominee currently surrounds himself was a brilliant bit of politics.
The article was posted online Wednesday evening, and by Thursday night, the Times and not Mr. McCain had become the only story anybody wanted to discuss. Connoisseurs of campaign jujitsu had to award the Arizona senator and his staff a perfect 10.
What made the story controversial was its wink-and-nod insinuation that the 71-year-old lawmaker was sleeping with Washington lobbyist Vicki Iseman, an attractive woman 30 years his junior, and that - as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee - he did special favors for her clients.
So, what's the proof? According to two unnamed "former McCain associates," both of whom described themselves as "disillusioned" with the senator, "some of the senator's advisors had grown so concerned that the relationship [with Ms. Iseman] had become romantic that they took steps to intervene."
Oh. So there are no incriminating letters or e-mails; no tapes or pictures or phone records - you know, the sort of stuff the more literal-minded among us call evidence. At the end of the day, what you've got here are two anonymous individuals saying that other people thought something was going on. According to the two associates, "They joined in a series of confrontations with Mr. McCain, warning him that he was risking his campaign and career." Both said Mr. McCain acknowledged behaving "inappropriately." Just what "inappropriately" means here is anybody's guess. But doesn't a newspaper of record owe its subjects - and its readers - something more than ambiguity?
There's been a lot of discussion about the months-long internal drama that supposedly attended the Times' reporting and editing of this story. Four reporters were involved; one has since left the paper. There was apparently a lot of back and forth between editors in Washington and New York.
All of this, by the way, tends to put the lie to the McCain campaign's allegations that the story came as a bolt from the blue. From the evidence, nearly as many people around Washington watched this story's progress this winter as followed the Redskins. The New Republic was so well-versed on the Times' internal deliberations that it had a story on them ready to post online as soon as the paper published.
