The Newspaper and the Senator

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 21, 2008 9:03 AM

The New York Times dropped a bombshell on John McCain last night, questioning his past relationship with a female lobbyist.

How much does the paper have? Why did it wait until now? And how will the story play out?

I reported on the first hints of this in December, when the Arizona Republican hired criminal attorney Robert Bennett to help handle the Times inquiry. "What is being done to John McCain is an outrage," Bennett told me then.

I wrote in The Post that the matter involved whether McCain had done legislative favors for a Washington lobbyist and her clients. The Times effort had leaked onto the Drudge Report. I didn't mention the rumors of a possible personal relationship because I had no proof and didn't know what, if anything, the Times had.

Bennett went on Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes" last night to denounce the story, and Sean Hannity joined in the denunciation.

McCain's spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker said in a statement last night: "It is a shame that the New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit and run smear campaign . . . Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics."

Less than three hours after the Times posted its piece, The Washington Post, which had also been pursuing the allegations, put up its version.

The first thing to know about the Times piece is that both McCain and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, deny there was any romantic relationship. So it's not a Monica Lewinsky or Gennifer Flowers situation. And whatever happened, or didn't happen, took place eight years ago.

Iseman, a telecommunications lobbyist, "had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client's corporate jet," the Times says. "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. . . .

"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."

In early 1999, "Mr. McCain and Ms. Iseman attended a small fund-raising dinner with several clients at the Miami-area home of a cruise-line executive and then flew back to Washington along with a campaign aide on the corporate jet of one of her clients, Paxson Communications. By then, according to two former McCain associates, some of the senator's advisers had grown so concerned that the relationship had become romantic that they took steps to intervene.

"A former campaign adviser described being instructed to keep Ms. Iseman away from the senator at public events, while a Senate aide recalled plans to limit Ms. Iseman's access to his offices. . . . Both said Mr. McCain acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman."

The Times has an on-the-record confirmation from John Weaver, McCain's former top strategist, regarding an aide to the senator warning Iseman at a Union Station meeting to stay away from the boss. Weaver e-mailed that he arranged the meeting after "a discussion among the campaign leadership" about her.

Weaver said: "Our political messaging during that time period centered around taking on the special interests and placing the nation's interests before either personal or special interest. Ms. Iseman's involvement in the campaign, it was felt by us, could undermine that effort."

On the policy front, the Times cites McCain, a champion of deregulation, sending several letters to the FCC that would have benefited Iseman's clients, among others. In one instance, Iseman acknowledged to the Times that she sent McCain draft language for a letter to the commission on behalf of Paxson Communications.

As for the timing of the story, you might think the Times had waited until McCain had all but secured the GOP nomination, to avoid influencing the primaries. But my understanding is that is not the case--that the team of reporters has been wrestling with it and the editors published it when it was ready.

The McCain/Bennett strategy, of course, is to make the Times the issue. The senator's statement doesn't deny any of the specifics in the piece.

As for the political fallout, the issue should be the confirmable facts and what they say, or don't say, about McCain's run for the presidency. In Bill Clinton's case it turned out to be quite relevant, and he had sexual relations with that woman, and some others. In this case, we have two people who deny such a relationship.

Oh, and for those who think newspaper coverage follows an editorial line: The New York Times endorsed John McCain.

Time reaches McCain confidant Mark Salter: "The bulk of the story's more titillating accusations, he said, stemmed from 'two blind quotes . . . Are these the standards of the New York Times? No. They are the standards of the National Enquirer.' "

Christopher Orr opines in the New Republic: "One interesting question about the piece is just how it will be received by the considerable segment of the conservative movement that already views McCain with deep suspicion (the Ann Coulters, the Glenn Becks, and other assorted anti-McCainiacs). On the one hand, as Noam notes, being 'attacked' by the New York Times is seen as a feather in the cap by many Republicans and, as printed, the story is hardly dispositive. On the other hand, the story does feed into the feeling on the part of some conservatives that McCain is a sanctimonious phony who's really no purer than the fellow politicians he occasionally castigates."

On to the Democratic race:

How far are journalists going in suggesting, implying or insinuating that Hillary Clinton's campaign has two weeks to live?

Is her latest crushing loss, in Wisconsin, being depicted as the beginning of the end?

Not in so many words, but that's the underlying message. It may be cloaked in demographic analyses about how Barack Obama cut into her base, or mathematical calculations about the delegate count, but the take-away is that her chances are "between slim and none," as CNN's Jack Cafferty put it yesterday.

I don't know any journalist who privately believes that Clinton is going to win the nomination. Of course, the media experts have been spectacularly wrong several times over in this campaign. But coming back from an 0-for-10 losing streak isn't easy.

Obama even blew Hillary off the television screen on Tuesday night, as I report here.

It's got to be discouraging for the Clintonites. In the days before Wisconsin, the coverage was all about controversies they generated--whether Obama had plagiarized Deval Patrick, whether he had broken his promise to accept public financing in the fall--and one they didn't, the Michelle Obama comments on lack of pride in America. And Hillary still got creamed.

Tonight is the first of two debates before Ohio and Texas. How does the New York senator change the conversation? Does she simply offer a souped-up version of "speeches" versus "solutions," which doesn't seem to be getting her much traction? Does she say the Republicans will crack Obama open "like a soft peanut," as Bob Kerrey warned about her husband in 1992? Does she start throwing around names like Rezko? Or does she worry about being perceived as too negative?

The headlines on the liberal blogs tell the story. The New Republic goes with "The Collapse of Hillary." Writes Michael Crowley:

"It's been a few weeks since that inevitability collapsed--the South Carolina blowout was probably the tipping point. But it was only last night that Hillary finally acquired the odor of a loser . . .

"The Clintons have played most every card imaginable, some more explicitly than others: inexperience, age, electability, race, drugs, Rezko, Exelon, and now plagiarism . . .

"Meanwhile, with every win, Obama makes more sense. He is no longer a leap of faith but a real winner. And what once seemed a major threat to his chances--uncertainty about the role of his race--has faded away. It was Obama's great luck to preface the March 4 votes in Ohio and Texas by winning without enough black voters to make for a storyline about a racial divide. Conversely, Hillary has been completely stripped of what was once her greatest asset: inevitability. Many of her early supporters believed the Clinton machine was virtually invulnerable. Mark Penn had mapped the electoral matrix. Her press team operated with the flawless efficiency of a Secret Service detail. Bill had telepathic powers over fellow Democrats. But none of it has worked so far. And if none of it has worked until now, why should it work on March 4--which even Hillary's defenders call her last stand?"

For American Prospect, it's "The Underperfomer." Ezra Klein says the latest results "have less to say about Obama than they do about Clinton, and in particular, the collapse of her campaign. Her aura of inevitability has given way to a fight for relevance. She is no longer the default candidate--her losses are not confined to demographically unfriendly electorates or surprise upsets. They have become the norm for her campaign and are damaging the foundations of her candidacy . . .

"Politically, the Clinton campaign has been, if anything, worse. The campaign repeatedly squandered advantages by overreaching on the attack and presenting surrogates it proved unable to control. Bill Clinton's frequent outbursts did not bespeak a disciplined campaign operation. Nor did Mark Penn's increasingly desperate spin, as when he suggested, in what Markos Zunigas called the 'insult-40-states-strategy,' that the true test of a campaign was its ability to win primaries in massive, heavily Democratic states like New York and California. The constant reports of campaign infighting didn't help, nor did the ceaseless leaks."

Hill has even lost Susan Sarandon, the Nation reports:

"More than 1,000 feminists have signed a statement criticizing Hillary Clinton and supporting Obama for president--evidence that Clinton's support among women activists continues to decline. The group, 'Feminists for Peace,' started out with 100 signers before the super-Tuesday primaries, and has 1,200 signers two weeks later." Sarandon is among them.

On the right, the outlook for HRC is equally bleak, as in this Ed Morrissey post:

"Hillary will not convince anyone to cast a superdelegate vote for her if she can't win a lot more states. Right now, it appears that the more she tries to press, the worse she performs. Negative attacks and ridiculous charges of plagiarism only dug the hole deeper.

"We are just about to the end of the Restoration. If Hillary winds up losing Ohio, she has almost no hope of winning Pennsylvania in April, even if she manages to win Texas. She has to pull a rabbit out of her hat in the next two weeks, starting with the debate tomorrow night, and hope Obama melts down in the meantime. Otherwise, the superdelegate firewall will become her Maginot Line. She will be left with two choices: quit or face the humiliation of seeing her superdelegates abandon her at the first possible moment of the convention."

What about the plagiarism flap? Slate's Jack Shafer sounds like he's going to chide the media for giving Obama a pass, but winds up brushing it off:

"The speed with which reporters have circled Barack Obama to defend him against charges of plagiarism coming directly from the Hillary Clinton campaign indicates that the press is in the tank for Obama or--less conveniently for Clinton--that she's guilty of inflating his poor footnoting into grand theft larceny . . .

"So, did Obama steal the words?

"I think not. Most campaign speeches are composed by speechwriters who assume the candidate's persona. The candidate becomes the public 'author' of these words when he speaks them, even if all he did was a light edit of the script. A speechwriter would never claim he was plagiarized by his candidate, nor would a volunteer. In fact, the volunteer would be elated. Patrick and Obama, who rely on the same campaign wizard, David Axelrod, have shared enough campaign rhetoric to be declared separated at birth."

But at the Huffington Post, Rachel Sklar says this touches on something important about Obama:

"It seems to fit with the general modus operandi of the media: If it's Hillary Clinton, the intent was probably nefarious, if it's Obama, it's no big deal, and why is Clinton's team blowing it so opportunistically out of proportion? . . .

"The Obama campaign has said that this is no big deal. With respect, I disagree. I think this is a big deal, particularly for Obama, whose stock in trade is soaring oratory and his inspirational message of hope. I know I keep using those words -- and I'm not alone -- but it's important here, because it goes, in effect, to Obama's core competency. Put bluntly, Obama was attacked for offering 'just words,' and he made his case for the value of words by using someone else's recycled speech from over a year ago. This is his argument for why talk isn't cheap?"

In a case of Michelle vs. Michelle, Mrs. Obama draws a strong rebuke from Michelle Malkin:

"Like Michelle Obama, I am a 'woman of color.' Like Michelle Obama, I am a working mother of two young children. Like Michelle Obama, I am a member of the 13th generation of Americans born since the founding of our great nation. Unlike Michelle Obama, I can't keep track of the number of times I've been proud -- really proud -- of my country since I was born and privileged to live in it . . .

"Her self-absorbed attitude is completely foreign to me. What planet is she living on? Since when was now the only time the American people have ever been 'hungry for change'? Michelle, ma belle, Barack is not the center of the universe."

Will it blow over because she's just "the wife"? Don't be so sure, says Time's Mark Halperin:

"The dominant Old Media has not yet pounced on her remark. But if you sample talk radio and the conservative blogs, you will get a neat preview of what will happen if Barack Obama is the Democrats' presidential nominee and his wife makes similar statements as a potential first lady. The opposition will launch a full-scale assault against her judgment and (at least indirectly) her character and patriotism, and all previous remarks, including this one, will be recycled, replayed, and condemned. If she makes such a comment in October 2008, it could be disastrous for her husband's campaign . . .

"Those who think that the remarks of candidate spouses don't count should hearken back to 2004. Teresa Heinz Kerry's words were mocked, parsed, and censured by the Bush campaign and the Republican opposition, to great effect. In one incident, Mrs. Kerry was forced to apologize for suggesting Laura Bush had never held 'a real job,' and her occasionally brash statements and behavior contributed to the negative image of Senator Kerry as patrician and remote."

Stay tuned.