A
Anonymous
Guest
Published by The New American (http://thenewamerican.com)
NY Times Misses the Real McCain Scandals
By Warren Mass
Created 2008-02-22 15:46
Speaking at a news conference from the campaign trail in Toledo, Ohio, on February 21, presidential candidate John McCain responded to a New York Times article that resurrected old "concerns about Mr. McCain’s relationship with Ms. [Vicki ] Iseman," a lobbyist whose connections with the Arizona senator had raised questions of a conflict of interest.
McCain denied having an improper relationship with the lobbyist, but with his victories in this year’s primaries making him the Republican nominee-apparent, interest in the New York Times story [1] has been high. ABC News online featured the report as its “Top Story” and the accompanying photo of Senator McCain before the microphone, his wife Cindy close by and offering obvious moral support, was rife with human interest, and hinted at more than the possibility of an incipient scandal.
The story that grabbed the headlines away from the ongoing sparring between Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton harkened back to events that occurred during McCain’s unsuccessful 2000 bid for the White House. Early on in the article, a quartet of Times writers stated:
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.
From the Toledo press conference, Senator McCain answered reporters’ questions about the Times article — about whether his staffers had met with him to express concern about his relationship with Ms. Iseman, about whether a meeting about the lobbyist had ever occurred, and whether he had had an inappropriate relationship with Ms. Iseman — with repeated “Nos.”
Cindy McCain steadfastly told reporters about her husband: "he's a man of great character and I'm very, very disappointed in the New York Times."
The Times article also revisited McCain’s involvement in the 1990 Keating Five scandal, in which the Senate Ethics Committee launched an investigation of five senators — including McCain — who were accused of improperly interceding with federal officials to help Charles Keating, the head of the failing Lincoln Savings and Loan. After a two-year investigation, on February 27, 1991, the Committee issued light rebukes to four of the five Senators investigated, including McCain. The four were deemed by the committee to have exercised poor judgment.
Scandal sells in today’s tabloid-dominated society, and it was that aspect that lead to the Times article and subsequent media commentaries about it. However, the impartial observer who wants to ascertain the truth about a potential future president must be able to weigh a number of factors, do a fair amount of reading between the lines, and form the best educated guess he can about events that will probably always be partially obscured. If past presidential scandals serve as any guide, the incidents receiving the most attention in the media are often the least important, and serve to distract the public from more critical matters.
Those who recall the Watergate break-in scandal remember months of media coverage about a petty crime committed by members of the Nixon White House’s Committee to Re-Elect the President. As some astute conservative political commentators noted at the time, the president of the United States was forced from office for the equivalent of chicken-stealing while he was not held accountable for unconstitutional policies that repeatedly diminished the sovereignty of the United States. Perhaps his most egregious official act was to lend credence to a communist tyranny in China — the economic consequences of which have become evident to every American in recent years.
An important lesson learned from Watergate (a lesson that others seeking high political office have undoubtedly learned) is that political power is subordinate to those who control the Establishment media (e.g., to a large extent the Washington Post and the New York Times).
More recently, the so-called Monica Lewinsky scandal was held to be the catalyst that brought President Bill Clinton to impeachment. As with Watergate and Richard Nixon, however, those managing Clinton’s impeachment focused on the equivalent of chicken stealing while ignoring the president’s truly impeachable offenses. While the media and Congress focused on Clinton’s assertion that he “did not have sex with that woman,” they ignored evidence that President Clinton accepted bribes from communist China in the form of illegal political contributions and in exchange made policy decisions that undermined our national security.
In both the Nixon and Clinton cases, however, the kingmakers who control public opinion through use of the major media proved that they can also be kingbreakers.
Is John McCain guilty of “improprieties” concerning Ms. Vicki Iseman? Did those improprieties lead to conflicts of interest? We have no way of knowing, and quite frankly, much more about John McCain troubles us.
Senator McCain has been among the most consistent and outspoken defenders of the undeclared war in Iraq. He has supported the president’s “guest worker” program that would allow illegal immigrants to obtain legal status. He has pushed for and achieved a campaign finance law limiting corporate and labor contributions and restricting independent issue ads, an attack on free speech. He has been calling for increased regulation to curb greenhouse gases — the alleged cause of so-called global warming — and has hamstrung America’s energy independence by voting against drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He voted for funding research that requires killing human embryos, and in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, said he is opposed to overturning Roe v. Wade.
A true internationalist, McCain said in an article he wrote for Foreign Affairs (the publication of the internationalist Council on Foreign Relations, of which he has long been a member): “[A]s president I will aggressively promote global trade liberalization at the World Trade Organization and expand America’s free-trade agreements to friendly nations on every continent.” He advocates “developing a common energy policy [with the European Union], creating a transatlantic common market [2] … and institutionalizing cooperation on issues such as climate change, foreign assistance, and democracy promotion.”
Despite a record that is not noticeably different from either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, McCain’s senior campaign aide Charlie Black had the audacity to tell “Good Morning America's" Robin Roberts on Thursday: "Unfortunately, the New York Times, the largest liberal newspaper in America, is running a false smear campaign against the integrity of the new conservative Republican nominee for president, John McCain, printing false news with no sources. This doesn't meet the journalistic standards of a third-rate tabloid."
It is a safe bet that the editors of the New York Times — and those with whom they break bread — know John McCain for just what he is, another internationalist-minded Republican posing as a conservative. In all likelihood the internationalist Establishment does not seek to ruin John McCain’s chances of becoming president, they are just serving notice on him that he is not his own man, but theirs. They are pointing to what could be called “chicken stealing” and ignoring the more substantive issues that show him for what he truly is.
If he does not toe the line for the Establishment, Barack Obama surely will. As for Hillary, her experience in the White House has long ago taught her who holds the cards, and she has already decided to sit at the table and play their game.
NY Times Misses the Real McCain Scandals
By Warren Mass
Created 2008-02-22 15:46
Speaking at a news conference from the campaign trail in Toledo, Ohio, on February 21, presidential candidate John McCain responded to a New York Times article that resurrected old "concerns about Mr. McCain’s relationship with Ms. [Vicki ] Iseman," a lobbyist whose connections with the Arizona senator had raised questions of a conflict of interest.
McCain denied having an improper relationship with the lobbyist, but with his victories in this year’s primaries making him the Republican nominee-apparent, interest in the New York Times story [1] has been high. ABC News online featured the report as its “Top Story” and the accompanying photo of Senator McCain before the microphone, his wife Cindy close by and offering obvious moral support, was rife with human interest, and hinted at more than the possibility of an incipient scandal.
The story that grabbed the headlines away from the ongoing sparring between Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton harkened back to events that occurred during McCain’s unsuccessful 2000 bid for the White House. Early on in the article, a quartet of Times writers stated:
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.
From the Toledo press conference, Senator McCain answered reporters’ questions about the Times article — about whether his staffers had met with him to express concern about his relationship with Ms. Iseman, about whether a meeting about the lobbyist had ever occurred, and whether he had had an inappropriate relationship with Ms. Iseman — with repeated “Nos.”
Cindy McCain steadfastly told reporters about her husband: "he's a man of great character and I'm very, very disappointed in the New York Times."
The Times article also revisited McCain’s involvement in the 1990 Keating Five scandal, in which the Senate Ethics Committee launched an investigation of five senators — including McCain — who were accused of improperly interceding with federal officials to help Charles Keating, the head of the failing Lincoln Savings and Loan. After a two-year investigation, on February 27, 1991, the Committee issued light rebukes to four of the five Senators investigated, including McCain. The four were deemed by the committee to have exercised poor judgment.
Scandal sells in today’s tabloid-dominated society, and it was that aspect that lead to the Times article and subsequent media commentaries about it. However, the impartial observer who wants to ascertain the truth about a potential future president must be able to weigh a number of factors, do a fair amount of reading between the lines, and form the best educated guess he can about events that will probably always be partially obscured. If past presidential scandals serve as any guide, the incidents receiving the most attention in the media are often the least important, and serve to distract the public from more critical matters.
Those who recall the Watergate break-in scandal remember months of media coverage about a petty crime committed by members of the Nixon White House’s Committee to Re-Elect the President. As some astute conservative political commentators noted at the time, the president of the United States was forced from office for the equivalent of chicken-stealing while he was not held accountable for unconstitutional policies that repeatedly diminished the sovereignty of the United States. Perhaps his most egregious official act was to lend credence to a communist tyranny in China — the economic consequences of which have become evident to every American in recent years.
An important lesson learned from Watergate (a lesson that others seeking high political office have undoubtedly learned) is that political power is subordinate to those who control the Establishment media (e.g., to a large extent the Washington Post and the New York Times).
More recently, the so-called Monica Lewinsky scandal was held to be the catalyst that brought President Bill Clinton to impeachment. As with Watergate and Richard Nixon, however, those managing Clinton’s impeachment focused on the equivalent of chicken stealing while ignoring the president’s truly impeachable offenses. While the media and Congress focused on Clinton’s assertion that he “did not have sex with that woman,” they ignored evidence that President Clinton accepted bribes from communist China in the form of illegal political contributions and in exchange made policy decisions that undermined our national security.
In both the Nixon and Clinton cases, however, the kingmakers who control public opinion through use of the major media proved that they can also be kingbreakers.
Is John McCain guilty of “improprieties” concerning Ms. Vicki Iseman? Did those improprieties lead to conflicts of interest? We have no way of knowing, and quite frankly, much more about John McCain troubles us.
Senator McCain has been among the most consistent and outspoken defenders of the undeclared war in Iraq. He has supported the president’s “guest worker” program that would allow illegal immigrants to obtain legal status. He has pushed for and achieved a campaign finance law limiting corporate and labor contributions and restricting independent issue ads, an attack on free speech. He has been calling for increased regulation to curb greenhouse gases — the alleged cause of so-called global warming — and has hamstrung America’s energy independence by voting against drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He voted for funding research that requires killing human embryos, and in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, said he is opposed to overturning Roe v. Wade.
A true internationalist, McCain said in an article he wrote for Foreign Affairs (the publication of the internationalist Council on Foreign Relations, of which he has long been a member): “[A]s president I will aggressively promote global trade liberalization at the World Trade Organization and expand America’s free-trade agreements to friendly nations on every continent.” He advocates “developing a common energy policy [with the European Union], creating a transatlantic common market [2] … and institutionalizing cooperation on issues such as climate change, foreign assistance, and democracy promotion.”
Despite a record that is not noticeably different from either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, McCain’s senior campaign aide Charlie Black had the audacity to tell “Good Morning America's" Robin Roberts on Thursday: "Unfortunately, the New York Times, the largest liberal newspaper in America, is running a false smear campaign against the integrity of the new conservative Republican nominee for president, John McCain, printing false news with no sources. This doesn't meet the journalistic standards of a third-rate tabloid."
It is a safe bet that the editors of the New York Times — and those with whom they break bread — know John McCain for just what he is, another internationalist-minded Republican posing as a conservative. In all likelihood the internationalist Establishment does not seek to ruin John McCain’s chances of becoming president, they are just serving notice on him that he is not his own man, but theirs. They are pointing to what could be called “chicken stealing” and ignoring the more substantive issues that show him for what he truly is.
If he does not toe the line for the Establishment, Barack Obama surely will. As for Hillary, her experience in the White House has long ago taught her who holds the cards, and she has already decided to sit at the table and play their game.