By Robert Schlesinger
My quick-hit thoughts on Big McC and the winsome lobbyist: McCain’s raised the stakes to Hart levels; this will help with conservatives; this will help Democrats; it’s not just the Times; and a handful of questions: Why now? What don’t we know? What’s next?
For more, read past the jump.
- Stakes: Watching McCain’s press conference brought to mind a pair of scandals past: McCain’s immediate, flat denial contrasted with Bill Clinton when the Monica Lewinsky scandal first broke. Before the famous, finger-wagging “I. Did. Not. Have. Sexual. Relations…” moment, Clinton’s initial denials were rife with weasel words. Not so McCain, whose statement was flat and all-encompassing. Which is the right approach – assuming that he’s telling the truth. Which calls to mind the other figure: Gary Hart denied similar rumors and challenged reporters to prove them. If anything McCain said this morning proves untrue, it could become crippling for his candidacy – and remember that his complete denial puts him squarely at odds with the staffers quoted (anonymously) in the story.
- Conservatives: My enemy’s enemy is my friend. And while the hard-core conservatives don’t like John McCain, they really don’t like The New York Times. Unless more evidence surfaces showing that McCain’s relations with lobbyists – and this one in particular – were inappropriate, this helps McCain with the conservatives.
- McCain’s Fall: In fending off the press, McCain handed ammunition to his Democratic opponent, when he said that he had lots of lobbyist friends. That’s a sound-bite we can expect to see over and over again in the fall in campaign ads as the Democrats set about demolishing his reputation for being a straight-talking, anti-lobbyist reformer.
- The Post: McCain didn’t just deny the Times today, because The Washington Post matched the Times’ reporting, specifically on the issue of whether aides confronted the senator. This is the crux of the issue regarding McCain’s denials: Key former McCain aides – and we can safely assume that if it was a couple of campaign interns neither paper would have run their stories – have told news organizations that they directly confronted McCain regarding the lobbyist and he has flatly denied it. Someone’s lying.
- Why Now? The Times has been working on this story since at least December. What prompted them to finally run the story? (UPDATE: A McCain spokesman is suggesting on MS-NBC that the Times ran the story now because The New Republic is about to run a story detailing the behind-the-scenes arguments at the paper over the story; The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein poses a similar question — why not then?)
- What Don’t We Know Will Hurt Someone: Josh Marshall makes a good point:
I find it very difficult to believe that the Times would have put their chin so far out on this story if they didn’t know a lot more than they felt they could put in the article, at least on the first go. But in a decade of doing this, I’ve learned not to give any benefits of the doubt, even to the most esteemed institutions.
…
Reading all of this stuff I have the distinct feeling that only a few pieces of the puzzle are now on the table. Given unspoken understandings of many years’ duration, a lot of reporters and DC types can probably imagine what the full picture looks like. But we’re going to need a few more pieces before the rest of us can get a sense of what this is all about.
- Next: McCain accused the New York Times of reckless journalistic malpractice, challenging, as Pat Buchanan just put it on MS-NBC, the paper’s “credibility and integrity.” I guess the next step is for the Times to offer him a regular op-ed column.
