Dealing from the Bottom of the Deck

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It didn't take a rocket scientist to realize that the MSM would turn on McCain. It didn't take a genius to understand that the Keating Five scandal would return, just as it's pretty likely that the terms "temperament" and "gender gap" are going to become staples of press coverage (all of which I predicted here).

What is surprising, however, is how quickly The New York Times has turned on McCain, and how ugly it's become. What the Times has done is despicable.

This is the "Seinfeld" of news articles -- a report about nothing. Its purported point? That because of his sponsorship of ethics laws, John McCain himself must be purer than Caesar's wife. But the real agenda behind the story is twofold: To acquaint a new generation with Keating Five, and even more damaging, to report gossip that John McCain allegedly had an affair.

First, The Times is treating John McCain, this woman, and their families unfairly. Note that the woman named as the supposed involvement denies anything improper, as does the senator. So on what basis does the Times run with the story, which will tarnish both reputations? Two unnamed sources have asserted that McCain admitted to something "imrproper" (whatever that means). That sounds like something a low-grade tabloid would do. It's pretty sleazy.

No doubt we're supposed to trust the Times that the sources are reliable and free of any conflicts of interest. Ha. Times and trust just don't go together when it comes to politics. Aren't they the ones who ran this story about Nancy Reagan's affair with Frank Sinatra, based again on unnamed sources, that time Kitty Kelley's?

As a side note, some of the details don't even make sense. If something improper happened, as the Times suggests in reporting the suspicions of its unnamed sources, why was John Weaver meeting with woman at Union Station and asking her to stay away from the senator? The report clearly indicates that, if there was an affair, it wasn't the Clinton-style "wham bam" kind -- McCain and this woman clearly knew each other well. So why would a staffer be breaking it off with her, instead of the senator himself? McCain and his staff would have realized, had he behaved improperly, that it was important that he and the woman part on good terms.

In any case, had The Times followed a policy to report any presidential dalliance about which two unnamed staffers were willing to speculate, they'd have had no time to cover anything else during the Clinton years. Amazing how standards change.

Second, the Times has poorly served the American people, or really, the Republican Party -- not that it cares. Its editors clearly have had this story in the works for some time, and they had to have known it would be of great interest to the GOP voters who were trying to decide, at the end, between Romney and McCain. But because McCain was the paper's favorite Republican, it held off until there was no danger of a more conservative contender winning the nomination.

Now, with the Democrats engaged in Obama-Clinton internecine warfare, The Times doubtless thought it unwise to let the GOP coalesce around McCain too easily.

Finally, it's an example of how eight years of Bill Clinton has degraded the political culture. Pre-Clinton, a paper would have thought a little harder about reporting this kind of anonymously sourced, denied-by-all-named-parties type story. But the fact that, between 1993 and 2001, these stories turned out to be both numerous and true, has eroded what is a normal, natural and healthy caution on the part of the media to sling around damaging accusations with abandon.

Especially where, as here, there's just no real story to report. Unnamed sources allege McCain behaved improperly with lobbyist. Both deny it. One doesn't have to be a big McCain fan to ask: Where's the beef?