Scandalgate

By now, you probably know all about the New York Times story that insinuates (but never actually comes right out and says) that John McCain had an affair with a lobbyist and then did favors for her clients. The piece itself is pretty odd. It starts out with this paragraph:

A female lobbyist [Vicki Iseman] 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.

Then the article pivots to McCain's history of somewhat questionable relationships with lobbyists and special interest groups. When the piece does come back around to McCain's potential affair with Vicki Iseman, it doesn't offer much more detail of their relationship. It's an odd piece.

What's the back story here? Well, first of all, the Drudge Report had this story three months ago, so I'm pretty sure it's been kicking around Washington since for at least that long. According to other blog posts, it seems several news outlets were preparing stories on this, but were holding off for some reason. Maybe they were waiting for confirmation of the affair, maybe they were feeling too much pressure from the McCain camp, maybe they just didn't have enough to run a whole story. Whatever it was, the barn doors are open now, and the horses are running free.

So what does it all mean? Well, if McCain really did have an affair with a lobbyist and then steer favors her way, that would be absolutely devastating to his campaign. However, unless there's some smoking gun out there (like, say, an incriminating e-mail or voice message) or unless Ms. Iseman "tells all," it's unlikely that we'll know for sure. In that case, this story plays out in one of two basic ways.

1. More and more details come out in dribs and drabs, making McCain respond every time, dragging this thing out for weeks and seriously weakening McCain as a candidate in the long run. Remember, voters are just now beginning to think of McCain as the GOP nominee, and if that thought is connected to scandal and favor peddling, that perception will last the whole campaign.
2. There aren't more details, McCain squashes it by overwhelming denials and the story goes away after a week or two. Scandal stories like this need oxygen to keep going, they need the dirt to come to light slowly. If the news media can't find more details, or more corroborating evidence, then this story dies, goes away, and McCain can basically put it behind him.

Could this scandal imperil his shot at the nomination? Possibly. No one's really talking about that now, but if the story starts looking like it's gonna go the number 1 route, then there could be a serious movement to anoint some other candidate (Huckabee or even Romney could jump back in--remember, his campaign is only "suspended"). If McCain loses two weeks from now in Texas and Ohio, that could be the start of more serious effort to find ABM (anybody but McCain).

So it looks like Texas and Ohio now mean something for the Republicans too.