20 February 2008
McCain’s Payback for Dealing with the Devil
Posted by Roy Bischoff under: Presidential Election 2008 .
The New York Times has obviously been waiting in the wings with this hit piece on John McCain. We knew it was coming and even though we are not supportive of Senator McCain, this kind of betrayal is unconscionable. The press worked tirelessly to end the candidacy of any Republican who did not have skeletons in their closet so they could try and ensure a democratic president. This must be shocking to the senator after being protected and coddled by the press for so long, but he should know what kind of pay the devil gives his followers. It has amazed me that almost everyone continues to call this man honorable. I simply cannot figure that out. I have selected parts of the long article to share but had to leave out some very pertinent information so clink on the link for more:
For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk
By JIM RUTENBERG, MARILYN W. THOMPSON, DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and STEPHEN LABATON
WASHINGTON — Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers. A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on 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 client, 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.
It had been just a decade since an official favor for a friend with regulatory problems had nearly ended Mr. McCain’s political career by ensnaring him in the Keating Five scandal. In the years that followed, he reinvented himself as the scourge of special interests, a crusader for stricter ethics and campaign finance rules, a man of honor chastened by a brush with shame.
But the concerns about Mr. McCain’s relationship with Ms. Iseman underscored an enduring paradox of his post-Keating career. Even as he has vowed to hold himself to the highest ethical standards, his confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest…
“He is essentially an honorable person,” said William P. Cheshire, a friend of Mr. McCain who as editorial page editor of The Arizona Republic defended him during the Keating Five scandal. “But he can be imprudent.”…During Mr. McCain’s four years in the House, Mr. Keating, his family and his business associates contributed heavily to his political campaigns. The banker gave Mr. McCain free rides on his private jet, a violation of Congressional ethics rules (he later said it was an oversight and paid for the trips). They vacationed together in the Bahamas. And in 1986, the year Mr. McCain was elected to the Senate, his wife joined Mr. Keating in investing in an Arizona shopping mall.
Mr. Keating had taken over the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association and used its federally insured deposits to gamble on risky real estate and other investments. He pressed Mr. McCain and other lawmakers to help hold back federal banking regulators.
For years, Mr. McCain complied. At Mr. Keating’s request, he wrote several letters to regulators, introduced legislation and helped secure the nomination of a Keating associate to a banking regulatory board.
By early 1987, though, the thrift was careering toward disaster. Mr. McCain agreed to join several senators, eventually known as the Keating Five, for two private meetings with regulators to urge them to ease up. “Why didn’t I fully grasp the unusual appearance of such a meeting?” Mr. McCain later lamented in his memoir.
When Lincoln went bankrupt in 1989 — one of the biggest collapses of the savings and loan crisis, costing taxpayers $3.4 billion — the Keating Five became infamous. The scandal sent Mr. Keating to prison and ended the careers of three senators, who were censured in 1991 for intervening. Mr. McCain, who had been a less aggressive advocate for Mr. Keating than the others, was reprimanded for “poor judgment” but was re-elected the next year.
Some people involved think Mr. McCain got off too lightly. William Black, one of the banking regulators the senator met with, argued that Mrs. McCain’s investment with Mr. Keating created an obvious conflict of interest for her husband. (Mr. McCain had said a prenuptial agreement divided the couple’s assets.) He should not be able to “put this behind him,” Mr. Black said. “It sullied his integrity.”…
Like other presidential candidates, he has relied on lobbyists to run his campaigns. Since a cash crunch last summer, several of them — including his campaign manager, Rick Davis, who represented companies before Mr. McCain’s Senate panel — have been working without pay, a gift that could be worth tens of thousands of dollars….
Mr. McCain’s friends dismiss questions about his ties to lobbyists, arguing that he has too much integrity to let such personal connections influence him.Mr. McCain’s confidence in his ability to distinguish personal friendships from compromising connections was at the center of questions advisers raised about Ms. Iseman.The lobbyist, a partner at the firm Alcalde & Fay, represented telecommunications companies for whom Mr. McCain’s commerce committee was pivotal. Her clients contributed tens of thousands of dollars to his campaigns.
Mr. Black said Mr. McCain and Ms. Iseman were friends and nothing more. But in 1999 she began showing up so frequently in his offices and at campaign events that staff members took notice. One recalled asking, “Why is she always around?”
That February, 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.
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.
Separately, a top McCain aide met with Ms. Iseman at Union Station in Washington to ask her to stay away from the senator. John Weaver, a former top strategist and now an informal campaign adviser, said in an e-mail message that he arranged the meeting after “a discussion among the campaign leadership” about her.
“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,” Mr. Weaver continued. “Ms. Iseman’s involvement in the campaign, it was felt by us, could undermine that effort.”
Mr. Weaver added that the brief conversation was only about “her conduct and what she allegedly had told people, which made its way back to us.” He declined to elaborate.
Mr. McCain said that the relationship was not romantic and that he never showed favoritism to Ms. Iseman or her clients. “I have never betrayed the public trust by doing anything like that,” he said. He made the statements in a call to Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, to complain about the paper’s inquiries.The senator declined repeated interview requests, beginning in December. He also would not comment about the assertions that he had been confronted about Ms. Iseman, Mr. Black said Wednesday.
The McCain aides said the senator sided with Ms. Iseman’s clients only when their positions hewed to his principlesA champion of deregulation, Mr. McCain wrote letters in 1998 and 1999 to the Federal Communications Commission urging it to uphold marketing agreements allowing a television company to control two stations in the same city, a crucial issue for Glencairn Ltd., one of Ms. Iseman’s clients. He introduced a bill to create tax incentives for minority ownership of stations; Ms. Iseman represented several businesses seeking such a program. And he twice tried to advance legislation that would permit a company to control television stations in overlapping markets, an important issue for Paxson.
In late 1999, Ms. Iseman asked Mr. McCain’s staff to send a letter to the commission to help Paxson, now Ion Media Networks, on another matter. Mr. Paxson was impatient for F.C.C. approval of a television deal, and Ms. Iseman acknowledged in an e-mail message to The Times that she had sent to Mr. McCain’s staff information for drafting a letter urging a swift decision.
Mr. McCain complied. He sent two letters to the commission, drawing a rare rebuke for interference from its chairman. In an embarrassing turn for the campaign, news reports invoked the Keating scandal, once again raising questions about intervening for a patron.
Mr. McCain’s aides released all of his letters to the F.C.C. to dispel accusations of favoritism, and aides said the campaign had properly accounted for four trips on the Paxson plane. But the campaign did not report the flight with Ms. Iseman. Mr. McCain’s advisers say he was not required to disclose the flight, but ethics lawyers dispute that.
Recalling the Paxson episode in his memoir, Mr. McCain said he was merely trying to push along a slow-moving bureaucracy, but added that he was not surprised by the criticism given his history.
“Any hint that I might have acted to reward a supporter,” he wrote, “would be taken as an egregious act of hypocrisy.”
7 Comments so far...
Mac Says:
20 February 2008 at 9:14 pm.
Good grief. Glad you only gave us a bit of the story Roy. In the past just something like this would have done him in. McCain would have been running for the hills. Not any more. It’ll just make him more likeable cause he is more like a regular guy. Sick world.
Client Finance » Blog Archive » McCain’s Payback for Dealing with the Devil Says:
20 February 2008 at 9:32 pm.
[…] Original post by In God We Trust […]
Carrie Says:
20 February 2008 at 10:16 pm.
I saw this on the news. They said McCain’s staff made a statement about how McCain has never done anything for any person or special interest that is questionable. What about Keating Five? What about riding on jets with Rupert Murdock? He’s the man that owns most of the media. And lots of other stuff. McCain is just like Bill Clinton. He lies so much he doesn’t even know any more when he is doing it just like he lied about Mitt. I think you are right Roy. He is not honorable.
Ghost Says:
20 February 2008 at 10:28 pm.
Man what a hit piece. The full article is worse than what’s up there. Carrie, I found a quote by the McCain campaign that you were probably talking about and it does kind of make me choke.
Here it is:
“It is a shame that the New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit and run smear campaign,” said Jill Hazelbaker, the McCain campaign’s communications director. “John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.”
Hank Says:
20 February 2008 at 11:02 pm.
This all just kind of reminds me of what it use to be like to vote in the old Soviet Union. One name on the ballot. That’s what I feel like we are going to get in November. These three that are left are like one name cause they come from the same smoke filled back room. Believe me, I come from the land of back rooms and I can smell the cigar smoke from a mile off on these guys so to speak.
Cavetrollhead Says:
20 February 2008 at 11:16 pm.
Well we did indeed know it was coming.
Ghost does that quote refer directly to this article?
The problem with this article is that it is too long. 10% of the people who start it are going to finish it. It probably won’t be too damaging to McCain all by itself for that reason. I would bet that Most voters get their opinions from short pithy pieces and from TV and radio. You know, the 20 second snippets people, and slow readers like myself.
The real killer to me is that Romney got so much grief over a few lobbyists out of hundreds of his staff. Meanwhile everyone ignored the fact that McCain’s campaign was truly being run by lobbyists. The press seemed only interested in the encounter Romney had with the impudent AP reporter as a way to hint sideways that Romney was being controlled by lobbyists.
The odd thing about this article is that it mixes innuendo about an affair with a long winded recital of the Keating five. Most people will give up on this article after the hints of an affair and the intro to the Keating five. Then it goes into lobbyists running McCain’s campaign even now. It is definitely a smear piece.
How can people not see this blatant manipulation by the NY TIMES. Get Romney out so we can defeat McCain.
Cavetrollhead Says:
20 February 2008 at 11:16 pm.
Well put Hank
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