The New Republic’s McCain scandal piece is up. It’s much more focused on the internal process at the Times leading up to yesterday’s publication of the story of McCain’s possibly sexual relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman and the corruption and favoritism connected to their relationship than I’d expected.

One thing that’s clear in the TNR piece is how hard McCain fought against the publication of this story:

From the outset, the Times reporters encountered stiff resistance from the McCain camp. After working on the story for several weeks, Thompson learned that McCain had personally retained Bill Clinton’s former attorney Bob Bennett to defend himself against the Times’ questioning. At the same time, two McCain campaign advisers, Mark Salter and Charlie Black, vigorously pressed the Times reporters to drop the matter. And in early December, McCain himself called Keller to deny the allegations on the record.

…

Immediately, the media pounced on the budding scandal. “If John McCain has hired Bob Bennett as his lawyer,” one commentator said on Fox News, “that’s a big–you don’t hire Bob Bennett to knock down a press story. You hire Bob Bennett because you have serious legal issues somehow.” On MSNBC, Pat Buchanan speculated that the Times newsroom was the source of the leak. “They’ve been rebuffed and rebuffed on this story, and they say we’ve had it, and they go around then and Drudge pops it just like he popped the Monica Lewinsky story first.”

The TNR piece reflects poorly on the Times, but I think it leaves many questions unanswered. It doesn’t offer any insight into why the Times published their story now, nor does it do anything to disprove the claims made in the Times piece about McCain’s relationship with Iseman and the corrupt relationship he maintained with her clients.

One of the aspects that I’m most interested in finding more about is why McCain hired Bennett, one of the nation’s top criminal attorneys, to beat back a media story.