"Associates" = "Lobbyists"?

Here is the most explosive graph from the Times story:

In interviews, the two former associates said they joined in a series of confrontations with Mr. McCain, warning him that he was risking his campaign and career. Both said Mr. McCain acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman. The two associates, who said they had become disillusioned with the senator, spoke independently of each other and provided details that were corroborated by others.

"Associates" -- that's an umbrella term for friends, family members, aides and the like. But if the Times really had former paid campaign staffers -- aides -- making these allegations, it would have attributed them to "aides."

Who might associates be? Who might disillusioned associates be?

How about Washington lobbyists who (a) may have known Vicki Iseman personally, (b) supported McCain in 2000, (b) would have been of significant enough stature to known McCain personally, and (c) either endorsed another candidate in 2008 or refused to endorse McCain?

The tip for this story originated in November, according to the New Republic -- in other words, during the height of the primary season when McCain was beginning to make a comeback in New Hampshire.

Comments

You're kidding, right, Marc?

The only way you can make this leap is by decontextualizing the quote.

Below, you yourself quoted the full context:

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.

In interviews, the two former associates said they joined in a series of confrontations with Mr. McCain, warning him that he was risking his campaign and career.

"Two former associates" clearly refers specifically to the "former campaign adviser" and the "Senate aid."

Posted by The Confidence Man | February 21, 2008 12:51 PM

The tip for this story originated in November, according to the New Republic -- in other words, during the height of the primary season when McCain was beginning to make a comeback in New Hampshire.

Uh, really? November? Wasn't McCain's campaign still pretty dead -- even in New Hampshire -- at that time? (Come to think of it, isn't that around the time McCain pledged public money as collateral for the loan that floated his faltering campaign?) I thought things didn't really start picking back up until December.

To doublecheck my recollections, I looked up pollster.com's record of polling from NH, and McCain doesn't start ticking up in the polls until mid-December, except for one poll that has him slightly above the mid-teens at the very end of November.

So if McCain was regarded as a surging threat at that time, the polls certainly don't indicate it, and my recollection is that NH didn't catch McCain fever until well into December. And this says nothing about what I think is a simple fallacy of describing November as "the height of primary season." So to me, your conclusion seems quite a bit off-base.

Posted by Jeff Larson | February 21, 2008 12:51 PM

There is a fascinating post at the New Republic about the backstory to the backstory at the Times.

Despite the strange flaws in the Times story, noted in the New Republic piece, this is going to be very bad for McCain.

Reading between the lines of the stories, it looks as though the Times reporters had more evidence of the affair than their editors were willing to put in print. Now that the guardians of the news have been overthrown by the new media, those details are eventually going to leak onto the internet if not into the old media. Since McCain has already made blanket denials, in the manner of Larry Craig, those details are going to shred his credibility thread by thread.

My prediction is that, by the time the story has run its course, McCain will have withdrawn from the Republican nomination.

Posted by Peter Walsh | February 21, 2008 1:06 PM

Funny, Peter, I came away with just the opposite--they printed all they had and now justify it by insisting that it's enough. I guess time will tell.

Posted by dt | February 21, 2008 1:12 PM

What's more, the WaPo version of the story comes right out and says "aides" in the lede (in the first word, no less).

Now, granted, those two aides may have been lobbyists previous or subsequent to (or, hell, given McCain's ethics, simultaneous with) their employment by McCain. But I don't think they can be separated from McCain as easily as your speculation, Marc.

Posted by The Confidence Man | February 21, 2008 1:13 PM

Marc's working this story pretty hard, harder than I remember him working anything else. Methinks he's latched onto a new source in a campaign somewhat more likely to appear in the general election...

Posted by Jeff Larson | February 21, 2008 1:15 PM

Well, New Hampshire was really important to the Romney and Giuliani campaigns. And given that we know that Giuliani and McCain are personally close, while Romney and McCain hate one another and their campaigns have routinely been dumping oppo against one other since early 2006, I find the digruntled-former-Mccain-aide-working-for-primary-opponent-tries-to-finish-off-mccain-candidacy angle plauible.

Posted by dry_fish | February 21, 2008 1:27 PM

I wonder when Lieberman will condemn this conduct, and back a censure resolution in the Senate...

http://www.washingpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/lieberman021399.htm

Posted by TKD | February 21, 2008 1:28 PM

I find the digruntled-former-Mccain-aide-working-for-primary-opponent-tries-to-finish-off-mccain-candidacy angle plauible.

Excellent point. I should correct myself to say that I don't think that scenario is implausible, but I think Marc's analysis is misleading in some ways and in any event doesn't quite add up.

In other words, wrong reasons, but a potentially correct conclusion.

Posted by Jeff Larson | February 21, 2008 1:32 PM

If this story does major damage to McCain, Mike Huckabee might come out looking like a genius for staying in the race.

Posted by CMC79 | February 21, 2008 1:37 PM

This story is really a win for McCain. The "liberal" New York Times is a convenient baddy for conservatives, so his enemies on the right will be able to rally to his defense and thus solve - for now - his problem with right wing support.

And the NYT allegations are so sketchy and disjointed that this will be long gone come November.

http://www.political-buzz.com/

Posted by matt | February 21, 2008 1:37 PM

The other reason I think there's more to it is that McCain went out in late November/early December when the Times first floated the story and hired Bob Bennett as his attorney. Bob Bennett as in Caspar Weinberger and Iran-Contra/Judith Miller and the leak/Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky Bob Bennett. You don't go hire Bob Bennett when you fear a tabliod hack job. You hire Bob Bennett when (a) your political life is on the line AND (b) you are facing real consequences beyond political shame. McCain got himself a bazooka back in November/December when this seemed like just another mosquito of a political scandal. It speaks volumes, and people in DC know what it says.

Posted by dc | February 21, 2008 1:46 PM

dc, McCain isn't alleged to have committed a criminal act, so I take it that Bennett was hired less for his courtroom skills than for his experience in "crisis" public relations mangement.

Posted by dry_fish | February 21, 2008 2:13 PM

At this point in the saga, I don't think the average voter is swayed one way or the other about these revelations but I haven't seen any coverage about what the general public thinks about this.

My analysis: if you are a McCain voter you are insulted by the "gutter politics" of the NYT; if you are a Conservative you are laughing along w/Rush & Co. about how McCain's cozying up to the liberal NYT has bitten him in the butt; finally, if you are a Democrat, you are idly bemused by the situation. I guess the only people who might be swayed one way or the other are undecided Independents. We'll see if this thing goes any further if it affects thier vote.

Posted by SN | February 21, 2008 2:19 PM

I'd like to get Charles Keating's take on the matter.

Posted by Paleo | February 21, 2008 2:22 PM

McCain isn't alleged to have committed a criminal act, so I take it that Bennett was hired less for his courtroom skills than for his experience in "crisis" public relations mangement.

That depends. After all, there had to be a damn good reason he was hired, and the people that did the hiring know a whole lot more about what actually happened, and what the ramifications could be, than most anybody else.

Posted by justinb | February 21, 2008 2:23 PM

This has the smell of David Axelrod/Barack Obama and the South Side Chicago Political Mob all over it. They took out Obama's first political opponent Blair Hull with a family smear concerning his divorce, when Obama was far behind in the polls. Next election Obama faced, they eliminated his opponents by challenging their sponsor lists. Next election they whacked Jack Ryan with another personal smear by digging up private court documents concerning his custody battle with ex wife Jerri.

It's a pattern born in the grimy streets and grimy minds of the South Side political scene going back a hundred years.

Posted by robert ethan | February 21, 2008 3:04 PM

A few points here, from my seat in Ontario:

1. Ambinder has posted but ONE of a number of potentially key passages in the article. Notably McCain contradicted this account in his presser today, claiming no one came to him on the topic of Iseman. One problem among many for the Straight Talk Express is the potential that these aides come out of the closet, so to speak, to defend their integrity etc.

2. On a reread of the article, I vote for the following as the most important lines, just preceding Ambinder's quote above: "That February [1999], McCain and Iseman attended a small fund-raisign 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." --- I speculate something happened on that plane, which the "campaign aide" witnessed, which campaign aide in turn may well be a source. Speculation, true, but otherwise, why is this flight being centered out? To compound matters, later we learn that McCain did not "disclose" this flight, with his advisers and "ethics lawyers" in dispute over the need to do so. Legal ramifications, anyone?

3. McCain looked out of his league at the presser, Halperin's careful edit notwithstanding. What is "not true"?; all of it or just some of it, and if some of it, which of it? His initial claim that he never spoke to Keller, which he had to correct, was, shall we say, not entirely "straight", and the claim that Weaver never spoke to him about Weaver talking to the NYT, has already been flatly contradicted by Waever, who still "loves" McCain.

4. This could all blow over, or blow up, who knows how these things really work. The $31m Kazakh dictator, human rights, Giustra story on Bill Clinton was a one-day wonder, after all, unaccountably. But I am inclined to think that this one lingers, and either becomes a persistent thread of the campaign, or, much less likely, knocks Mac from the race.

Posted by Michael Klug | February 21, 2008 3:35 PM