About That Times Story On McCain's Relationship
February 21, 2008 -- 10:45 AM EST // //

Let's try a little experiment. Let's take the meat of the big New York Times story and substitute the words "Dem Presidential Hopeful" for "John McCain":

Early in Senator Dem Presidential Hopeful’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on 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. Dem Presidential Hopeful had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

Mr. Dem Presidential Hopeful, 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. Dem Presidential Hopeful led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.

If these words had appeared on the front page of The New York Times, wouldn't we all be yelling and stamping our feet about "panty sniffing" and condemning the use of anonymous sources who suggest a possible affair that may or may not have happened and wasn't directly alleged by anyone?

That's a sincere question. Wouldn't we?

After all, the above grafs appear to constitute the meat of this story. The gist of it seems to be that according to anonymous sources, eight years ago McCain's aides intervened in a relationship between him and a female lobbyist that may or may not have been sexual, and may or may not have constituted improper influence peddling, because they were worried that something untoward might be happening and were concerned about what her appearances with him in public looked like.

This is basically the core allegation here, and it's wrapped up in layers of implication about McCain's tone-deafness when it comes to appearances and about his history providing precedent for alleged questionable behavior vis a vis influence peddling in this case.

The suggestion that the relationship might have been sexual, which is made at the top and towards the end of the story, basically amounts to an allegation that anonymous sources said there was concern that the relationship might have become romantic. Anonymous sources say McCain acknowledged behaving "inappropriately," but the story doesn't say how. Again: How would we react to this if it were written about Senator Dem Presidential Hopeful?

Former McCain aide John Weaver is quoted on the record saying that he met with the woman, but his quotes are inconclusive as to what it was specifically about her conduct that worried McCain advisers.

To be clear, there very well may be much more to the story that is yet unknown. As Josh wrote last night, the story reads as if it had the meat lawyered out of it, and it's perfectly possible that The Times went with this because it knew lots more that it couldn't report. And as Mark Kleiman notes, more reporting by the AP is showing that there may be some meat to the lobbying side of the story.

But if you merely evaluate the words that are on the page of The Times, when it comes to the question of any affair you can't help but conclude, as Matthew Yglesias did, that they just didn't have or couldn't share the goods on an alleged romantic relationship and thus shouldn't have gone there.

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Update: Times exec editor Bill Keller responds to all the criticism of the story.

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