McCain’s Counteroffensive
The GOP front runner denies report of lobbyist tie.
They never stopped smiling. On Thursday morning John McCain, with his wife Cindy at his side, strongly denied a romantic relationship with a Washington lobbyist and declared published reports that his top aides had confronted him with concerns about his dealings with the lobbyist as "not true."
Speaking before reporters in a dingy hotel ballroom in Toledo, Ohio, where the senator is campaigning today, McCain described Vicki Iseman, a Washington lobbyist who represented companies with business before the Senate Commerce Committee, which McCain once chaired, as a "friend."
He denied a report in The New York Times that suggested he had done favors for one of Iseman's clients, Paxson Communications, which donated money to McCain's 2000 presidential campaign and allowed him to fly on its corporate jets at a cut rate. His campaign called the article, which the paper had been working on since last fall, a "smear."
"I am very disappointed in the article," McCain said. "It's not true. I have served this nation honorably for more than a half a century … and at no time have I ever done anything that would betray the public trust or make a decision which in any way would not be in the public interest and favor anyone or any organization."
The Times and a follow-up report in the Washington Post quoted anonymous former aides to McCain who said they had urged the senator to stay away from Iseman out of fear that their relationship would hurt his political career. "Some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself," the Times reported in Thursday's paper, citing anonymous aides as saying they had sought to block Iseman's access.
John Weaver, a longtime aide to McCain who dramatically split with the senator's campaign last year, told the Times and the Post that he had met with Iseman in 2000 and asked her to stay away from McCain after a "discussion among campaign leadership" about her—a charge that current campaign aides, including Mark Salter, McCain's longest serving aide, strongly deny.
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Member Comments
Posted By: Suzy Carmichael @ 02/24/2008 12:52:22 PM
Comment: I think that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. They publically humiliated Bill Clinton not to mention Hill, and talked about impeachment. Why is his name still on the ballad? May be had real sex may be "didn't have real sex" but more than liky he had something inappropiate with Iseman. American people don't have time to find out.
Posted By: douglassoileau @ 02/23/2008 6:54:36 AM
Comment: Of course Mccain didn't , "do it ". He wasn't taking viagra then........I would like to say i have respect for Senator Mccain, his patriotism just tugs ant my heart and his concern for humanity. I was really moved by his comment for Castro, that, Castro wold die soon and go on to meet Karl Marx. This statement had me in tears. I to have hopes, I hope that Mccain will get out of the Race for the White House and go on to his, Assisted Living Facility, Even though I am confident that his 30 some years of incompetence will change Washington..........our loss but I think we will survive...John.... I'm sure Vicki Iseman will find another "Friend", to replace you.
Posted By: clikdawg @ 02/23/2008 12:02:25 AM
Comment: bigbrewhaha -- At fifty-six and counting, I am well aware that I am on the wrong side of your generational divide; and that whether or not any individual on my side of that divide is guilty of the sins you enumerate, the generation as a whole most certainly is. At the very least, we have allowed the current sad state of affairs to flourish after fighting our own good fights in our youth; perhaps, like those who fought WWII, each generation has the stamina to fight one war and one war only, and is too exhausted by that one war to do more than take the easiest path offered thereafter. That is neither an apology nor an excuse -- it is just the way I think things go.
Naturally, our failures have rendered any lessons we think we have learned or advice we might wish to impart would be presumptuous -- we screwed the pooch, end of story.
So I personally will confine mself to one warning, for whatwhat it is worth, based on a lifetime study of history and the people around me in public and private life: If you let your genertion be talked into the shifting of a useless war in Iraq into a useless war in Afghanistan by anyone at all, no matter how charismatic or trusted, you will have been had; and it wiill be you, then, who preside over the destruction of whatever is left of this nation.
Best of luck to y'all -- believe I'll just go on out to pasture now ...
(Sorry about any typos. My little window here shows only five lines; after that it's by guess and by golly ... )