schadenfreude \SHOD-n-froy-duh\, noun: A malicious satisfaction obtained from the misfortunes of others.
You've got to believe that many Republicans on the Hill, and in conservativeland, are secretly enjoying watching "Mr. Campaign Finance Reform" John McCain take incoming on the issue of ethics and cozy lobbyist ties.
You've also got to believe that Mitt Romney is burning this morning, as a truism put forth by Pat Buchanan on MSNBC last night and increasingly borne out by the circumstantial evidence, solidifies: the New York Times may have decided the Republican nomination for president by holding the McCain-Isenberg story until now, rather than running it before the New Hampshire primary.
And you've also got to believe that in a way, this is the best thing that could have happened to John McCain. It will get the right wing of the party, which really hates him, to forget their guile and go after the "liberal" media on his behalf, putting their bloggers, talk radio flaks and Fox News at his service.
That said, McCain will not escape the questions of his personal relationship with Isenberg, like it or not. Stories about sex don't fade away easily, even if the mainstream media won't touch them. Evangelical Christians just got one more reason to hang in there for Huckabee. Even worse for McCain, his press conference this morning (with his rich wife, and her prenuptial agreement, by his side...) makes it clear that he will have an even harder time escaping questions about whether he did favors for his lobbyist friend, and whether there might have been other friends, and other favors. At the least, it paints McCain right into the corner Barack Obama wants him to be in: an old politician practicing old-time politics, complete with cozy ties with lobbyists, romantic or not.
Questions are also being legitimately raised about the Times, and whether they were pushed to release a story they were sitting on because a competitor was about to run with a story of their own, alleging that the Grey Lady was sitting on the scoop. TNR responds here. And as the MSNBC crew are saying this morning, the Times had to know that their story would lead to headlines like this:
Back to the story. The Washington Post advances the NYTimes' story:
McCain's Ties To Lobbyist Worried Aides Before 2000 Campaign, Advisers Tried to Bar Her
By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Michael D Shear Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday, February 21, 2008; Page A01
Aides to Sen. John McCain confronted a telecommunications lobbyist in late 1999 and asked her to distance herself from the senator during the presidential campaign he was about to launch, according to one of McCain's longest-serving political strategists.
John Weaver, who was McCain's closest confidant until leaving his current campaign last year, said he met with Vicki Iseman at the Center Cafe at Union Station and urged her to stay away from McCain. Association with a lobbyist would undermine his image as an opponent of special interests, aides had concluded.
Members of the senator's small circle of advisers also confronted McCain directly, according to sources, warning him that his continued ties to a lobbyist who had business before the powerful commerce committee he chaired threatened to derail his presidential ambitions. ...
Stop right there for a second. In his presser this morning, McCain twice denied not only that he had an untoward relationship with Iseman, but also that he was ever confronted by aides, and he referred to "more than 150" staffers reporting to him on Capitol Hill, and "anonymous" sources claiming they spoke with him. Someone is lying. If it's McCain, and it is somehow proved that he WAS confronted by aides about Ms. Isenberg, than he's got a problem. Onward, to the part of the WaPo story that to my reading, contains data that's even more harmful than the entire Times article:
... Three telecom lobbyists and a former McCain aide, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Iseman spoke up regularly at meetings of telecom lobbyists in Washington, extolling her connections to McCain and his office. She would regularly volunteer at those meetings to be the point person for the telecom industry in dealing with McCain's office.
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. Senior McCain aide Mark Salter, in an e-mail, denied that Iseman was ever barred from the office or was even a frequent presence there.
Iseman's bio on her lobbying firm's Web site notes, "She has extensive experience in telecommunications, representing corporations before the House and Senate Commerce Committees."
Her partners at Alcalde & Fay include L.A. "Skip" Bafalis, a former five-term Republican congressman from Florida, and Michael A. Brown, the son of former commerce secretary Ronald H. Brown and a former Democratic candidate for mayor of the District.
Its client list is heavy with municipalities and local government entities, which suggests that its major emphasis is on the controversial business of winning narrowly targeted, or "earmarked," appropriations. [There go those nasty earmarks...]
In the years that McCain chaired the commerce committee, Iseman lobbied for Lowell W. "Bud" Paxson, the head of what used to be Paxson Communications, now Ion Media Networks, and was involved in a successful lobbying campaign to persuade McCain and other members of Congress to send letters to the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of Paxson.
In late 1999, McCain wrote two letters to the FCC urging a vote on the sale to Paxson of a Pittsburgh television station. The sale had been highly contentious in Pittsburgh and involved a multipronged lobbying effort among the parties to the deal.
At the time he sent the first letter, McCain had flown on Paxson's corporate jet four times to appear at campaign events and had received $20,000 in campaign donations from Paxson and its law firm. The second letter came on Dec. 10, a day after the company's jet ferried him to a Florida fundraiser that was held aboard a yacht in West Palm Beach.
McCain has argued that the letters merely urged a decision and did not call for action on Paxson's behalf. But when the letters became public, William E. Kennard, chairman of the FCC at the time, denounced them as "highly unusual" coming from McCain, whose committee chairmanship gave him oversight of the agency.
McCain's campaign denied that Iseman or anyone else from her firm or from Paxson "discussed with Senator McCain" the FCC's consideration of the station deal. "Neither Ms. Iseman, nor any representative of Paxson and Alcalde and Fay, personally asked Senator McCain to send a letter to the FCC regarding this proceeding," the campaign said.
Iseman and her firm, which includes high-profile Republicans and Democrats, have also represented a number of other companies that have had issues before McCain and the commerce committee, including Univision, a Spanish-language television network. Iseman clients have given nearly $85,000 to McCain campaigns since 2000, according to records at the Federal Election Commission.
<%
dim done
done = request.form("done")
if done = "" then
done = "No"
%>
Tell a friend
<%
Else
if request.form("done") = "Yes" then
'sets variables
dim email, sendmail
email = request.form("email")
Set sendmail = Server.CreateObject("CDONTS.NewMail")
'put the webmaster address here
sendmail.From = "webmaster@aspbasics.com"
'The mail is sent to the address entered in the previous page.
sendmail.To = email
'Enter the subject of your mail here
sendmail.Subject = "Check out this website"
'send a specific page or send a site url
dim url
'url = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
url = "http://www.aspbasics.net"
'This is the content of the message.
sendmail.Body = "Site recommendation from a friend!" & _
vbCrlf & vbCrlf & "A friend has sent you this email and thought you would should check out this site." & _
vbCrlf & url & vbCrlf
'this sets mail priority.... 0=low 1=normal 2=high
sendmail.Importance = 1
sendmail.Send 'Send the email!
response.redirect Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
'Response.write ("Sent to ") & email
End if
End if
%>
"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
