McCain’s Ethical Challenge

25 February 2008 |permalink | email article

John McCain’s alleged relationship with a woman telecom lobbyist, which caused anxious advisers concern during the his first White House run in 2000, led The New York Times’ front-page story last Thursday, causing a firestorm of controversy and initial sympathy for the senator from the right where’s he’s not trusted. 

The Times’ Public Editor on Sunday wrote that article had ramifications both for McCain and the paper.

Most readers saw the 3,000-word piece as about illicit sex, without proof, not about what the article intended – that McCain’s career was nearly ended by ethical corruption, rebuilt but is still careless about appearances of scandal.

Ironically, The Times had no problem in endorsing McCain for the Republican nomination even though executive editor Bill Keller told public editor Clark Hoyt that “it’s a pretty important thing to know about somebody who wants to be president of the United States.”

McCain’s savvy team of lobbyist advisers, aware a story was coming, launched an awesome PR blitz accused the paper of a “smear campaign.”

But the episode may become a Pyrrhic victory for McCain and fatal for his candidacy if more troubling details emerge – endless reprising the Keating Five scandal and an official favor done by the Arizona senator for a benefactor years ago.

The Times story has called attention to sweeping denials by his campaign to rebut ties, aside from sexual innuendo, that McCain might have done legislative favors for the Washington lobbyist and her client.

McCain denied on Friday he had never “done anything that would betray the public trust or make a decision which in any way would not be in the public interest or would favor anyone or any organization” – a statement which may haunt him.

Saturday’s Washington Post reported that broadcaster Lowell Paxson contradicted statements from McCain’s current presidential campaign that the senator did not meet with Paxson or lobbyist Vicki Iseman before sending two controversial two letters in late 1999 to the Federal Communications Commission.

The letters demanded that the Commission act on the long-stalled bid by Paxson Communications to purchase a Pittsburgh TV station.

Paxson told The Post that he talked with McCain in his Washington office several weeks before McCain wrote the letters and that Iseman helped arrange the meeting and “probably” attended.

Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff has obtained an explosive sworn disposition McCain gave in a lawsuit more than five years ago which seems to contradict one part of a sweeping denial by his staff to rebut the Times story about his ties to Iseman.

Asked by First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams about many trips he took aboard Paxson’s corporate jet and whether Iseman accompanied him, McCain responded “I do not recall.”

Abrams asked McCain this: “Do you believe that it would have been justified for a member of the public to say there was at least an appearance of corruption here?”

“Absolutely,” McCain replied, adding “I believe that there could possibly be an appearance of corruption because the system has tainted us all.”

 

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