N.Y. Times' Editor Bill Keller Responds to McCain Flap

As the fallout mounts over the New York Times piece on John McCain and Vicki Iseman, Bill Keller says he's surprised at the magnitude of the negative reaction.

The Times editor, responding to reader questions online, strikes a somewhat different tone than when I interviewed him yesterday. He sounds chastened, and perhaps a little frustrated, by the reaction:

"I think we all expected the reaction to be intense. We knew from our experience last year, when word leaked out we were pursuing this story, that Senator McCain's operatives would set out to change the subject by making the story about The New York Times rather than about their candidate. That's a time-honored tactic for dealing with potentially damaging news stories. We knew some readers would disagree with our decision to publish this information. After all, we wrestled with our own doubts on that score. We anticipated that it would provoke at least a brief media firestorm -- and that our efforts to put Mr. McCain's relationship with a lobbyist in a bigger context would probably get lost in the retelling.

"Personally, I was surprised by the volume of the reaction (including more than 2,400 reader comments posted on our Web site). I was surprised by how lopsided the opinion was against our decision, with readers who described themselves as independents and Democrats joining Republicans in defending Mr. McCain from what they saw as a cheap shot.

"And, frankly, I was a little surprised by how few readers saw what was, to us, the larger point of the story. Perhaps here, at the outset of this conversation, is a good point to state as clearly as possible our purpose in publishing."

Keller proceeds to defend the piece, adding: "It seemed (and still seems) to us, was something our readers would want to know about a man who aspires to be president. Clearly, many of you did not agree."

Meanwhile, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel told reporters: "I think a lot of people here in this building with experience in a couple campaigns have grown accustomed to the fact that during the course of the campaign, seemingly on maybe a monthly basis leading up to the convention, maybe weekly basis after that, the New York Times does try to drop a bombshell on the Republican nominee. . . . Sometimes they make incredible leaps to try to drop those bombshells on Republican nominees."

Payback time, perhaps, for the administration's least favorite newspaper?

Here's what I filed on the controversy this morning:

It had all the ingredients: a leading newspaper, a presidential candidate, anonymous sources, shadowy lobbying, a hint of hypocrisy and denials of extramarital romance.

That combustible combination guaranteed that the surfacing of a long-rumored New York Times story about John McCain and a Washington lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, would ignite a fierce controversy, not just about the Arizona senator but about the newspaper's conduct as well.

Bill Keller, the paper's executive editor, dismissed a cascade of attacks yesterday accusing the Times of politically motivated sensationalism. "They're trying to change the subject to us," Keller said in an interview. McCain's advisers, he said, are attempting "to use the New York Times as an opportunity to rally the base."