The big story which broke last night was a New York Times article, reported by a raft of top flight reporters, on John McCain’s relationship with a telecommunications lobbyist, Vicki Iseman. Though the article covers other subjects related to ethics, there isn’t much original reporting in the Times’ piece outside of his relationship with Iseman. It covers his involvement in the Keating Five scandal and his efforts to pass campaign finance reform, but that is all public knowledge already. That accounts for roughly half of the article. The rest is solely about his relationship with Vicki Iseman and work he did for her clients.

I’ve put the Iseman-focused parts of the story below the fold, removing the passages rehashing the Keating Five scandal and McCain’s work on campaign finance reform. Read in whole, his relationship with Iseman seems to have clearly lead to repeated efforts on his part to favor her clients. It is also clear that his relationship with Iseman was problematic from a social standpoint to an extent that required his staff to intervene:

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

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

Now my guess is that McCain isn’t trying to kill a story because there’s the appearance of impropriety between him and companies lobbying him. My guess is that it is because this thing is a sex scandal that has some bad government aspects added in for good measure.

The Washington Post added more details to the McCain staff’s intervention in his relationship with Iseman. Of note:

The aide said the message to Iseman that day at Union Station in 1999 was clear: “She should get lost.” The aide said Iseman stood up and left angrily….

Concern about Iseman’s presence around McCain at one point led to her being banned from his Senate office, according to sources close to McCain.

Again, it strikes me as unlikely that someone would be banned from a Senator’s office merely because they effectively lobbied a US Senator on behalf their clients. This is about sex and corruption.

Continue reading “McCain’s Lobbyist” →

His campaign isn’t that competent – it failed to gather enough signature to be on the ballot in one of the most conservative districts in Indiana. Thomas at Blue Indiana reports:

To my surprise, I noticed that John McCain — the presumptive front-runner for the GOP nomination — was just a little short in a few districts, including my precious 4th, despite the fact that Attorney General Steve Carter had already turned in their petitions. I made a few phone calls, and one by one I found out that the McCain camp had got the job done across the state.

Except in the 4th District.

In the 4th District, they are short.

By my latest count, they turned in 496 signatures for the 4th, and the latest IED report for this morning shows them with only 491.

So this afternoon, I filed a challenge with the Secretary of State’s office to keep John McCain off of the ballot. You can check it out here. (I’ll have a .pdf version up when I get back to Bloomington this evening.)

Let’s be clear here: This is one of the most Republican-friendly districts in one of the most Republican-friendly presidential states. John McCain has been endorsed by Governor Mitch Daniels, Attorney General Steve Carter, state GOP chair Murray Clark, and Secretary of State Todd Rokita.

And despite all of this high-level help, these guys managed to screw up one of the most basic steps that any candidate can take in the state.

Not getting on the ballot can mean different things. For example, New York state has very high requirements to be on the ballot statewide (something like 5,000 signatures statewide to be on, plus 500 per congressional district to win actual delegates). The Dodd campaign, having limited resources and facing small prospects for winning Hillary Clinton’s home state, made the choice to not go after a spot on the ballot. But then again, we were a second tier campaign that had very limited resources to work with.  McCain is the Republican nominee, though, and has attempted to get on the ballot in the IN 4th…and failed to get the support he needed.

I think this says more about the state of McCain’s campaign now than what we can expect, say, five months from now. But it certainly doesn’t make me scared about his capacity to organize now, particularly compared to the success we’ve seen the Obama campaign generate through their grassroots machine.

Hat tip to Joh Padgett for the link.

One of the things that has made the Republican Party successful for much of the last twenty-five years or so was their willingness to take a politically unpopular position and stand by it, wedging people between their attacks and their principles. It’s a strategy that created the electoral mentality where a voter might say, “I don’t always agree with him, but at least I know where he stands.” George W. Bush, John McCain, Joe Lieberman (who is functionally a Republican), and many others have done well when they took positions and stood by them in the face of popular support for better positions. On the flip side, we saw Paul Wellstone win two elections by standing firm on his principles and not taking politically expedient stands. I shudder to compare the two, but the similarity is worth pointing out. Voters like knowing where politicians stand and what they stand for, and Wellstone is a prime example of how principled stances can be rewarded.

The Republican Party has been crafting a narrative for the general election around two very unpopular positions: the prolonging of the war in Iraq into the infinite future and granting retroactive immunity to telecom companies who helped the Bush administration break the law and spy on Americans without warrant. They are attacking Democrats on these issues and attempting to brand the Democrats’ contrary positions as one that arises from weakness. While we’ve seen Republicans head down this path with repeated accusations of Democrats stabbing the troops in the back or pushing for a surrender in Iraq, The Hill reports on the growth of these talking points into their national election strategy.

Republican lawmakers, candidates and party officials have launched a nationwide campaign this week to portray Democrats as  weak on national security.

Their starting point is a dispute over the administration’s counter-terrorism surveillance policy, but the end point is the election in November.
…

But a nuanced policy debate outside of Washington could be a risky move for Democrats, who are competing with slogans that proved effective in campaigns since the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks.

Republicans appeared to be going back to that playbook this week in various parts of the country, trying to link vulnerable lawmakers with the bitter dispute in Washington.

Leaving aside the trite “this is bad for Democrats” assumption,  this is worrying to the extent that it shows the Republicans willing to go to the mat on issues that they’re just not popular for. This will inevitably lead to the sort of concern trolling journalism provided by The Hill’s Alexander Bolton. Combined with the inevitable (and already existent) fawning admiration for John McCain in the Beltway press, and you can see a scenario where every insane attack by the Republicans on Democrats on Iraq or FISA is met by back slapping enthusiasm from the press. “Boy are these Republicans principled and manly!” “Why would Democrats dare to talk about policy now?” “There’s no way challenging Bush will play well for Democrats!” And so on…

As I’ve said before, the Republicans are going to hinge their election strategy on convincing America that Democratic candidates want the terrorists to win, want to stab the troops in the back and run home as fast as can be.  We know this is coming and the Republicans are confirming it. They are banking on their ability to stand firm on unpopular positions while slandering Democrats. I won’t make any predictions about their likelihood of success, but it is certain that they will succeed in creating a truly toxic environment – which is yet another reason anyone who thinks we can solve this country’s problems by working with these people on issues like Iraq, health care, and the economy is just not paying attention to what the Republican Party is all about.

The ability for Democrats to succeed under this kind of rancid attack is going to be determined by the ability for Democrats to, like Wellstone, stand up for what they believe in and make sure that voters know exactly what their principles are. It’s time for Democrats to show some spine and be prepared to push back hard against the coming Republican smear attacks.