With Friends Like These ...

Other news organizations, including NEWSWEEK, began poking around. Bennett, meanwhile, organized a massive document search and met with Times editors and reporters to show them that there were no smoking guns—that, indeed, McCain had on numerous occasions rebuffed lobbyists who were angling for favors. The campaign could find no record of either Iseman or her client, Paxson, meeting with McCain to ask for those letters to the FCC requesting a decision on the Pittsburgh TV station.

They seem to have overlooked sworn testimony by McCain himself in a lawsuit seeking to overturn the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law. Lawyer Floyd Abrams, who was representing Sen. Mitch McConnell (a foe of campaign-finance restrictions), asked McCain in a deposition if Paxson had contacted him about the TV station. McCain replied: yes, he had. He agreed to write a letter prodding the FCC to decide—though he had added, "I can't ask for a favorable disposition for you." Abrams asked, "Did you speak to the company's lobbyist about these matters?" McCain said he couldn't recall "if it was Mr. Paxson or the company's lobbyist or both." The company's lobbyist was Iseman.

All winter long, reporters seeking to find out more about the relationship between Iseman and McCain tried to track down Mark Buse, who had been the commerce-committee chief of staff in 1999. Buse had become a lobbyist for a time but appeared to have left that job and gone to ground, or at least avoided the press. In recent weeks, however, Buse re-emerged. He had just been hired by McCain to run his Senate office. Buse tells NEWSWEEK that he recalled Iseman's coming by his office and leaving briefing material that was used by Buse to help draft letters under McCain's signature. Nothing unusual here, he says: "That's Lobbying 101."

The rumors about the Times story spread to Mitt Romney's campaign advisers, who began speculating about how the story might affect the campaign. Last week a leading Republican strategist, who did not wish to be identified expressing regret, hypothesized that if the McCain story had come out five weeks ago, before Super Tuesday, McCain would not be the presumptive nominee. What finally persuaded the Times to run the story? McCain spokesman Steve Schmidt told reporters that the Times was trying to stay a step ahead of The New Republic, which had assigned a reporter to look into why the Times was holding back. But Frank Foer, The New Republic's editor, said that he had no idea how he would have gotten his own magazine's story into print. The New Republic couldn't very well write about the Times's decision without mentioning the sex angle, Foer said, and TNR had no independent corroboration of the accusation. Indeed, the day after the Times story appeared, The New Republic ran its own story criticizing the Times for printing a salacious story thinly and anonymously sourced.

Keller, the Times's executive editor, somewhat blandly declared that his paper had run the story when it was "ready." His statement appeared aimed at rebutting speculation that the Times had been reluctant to run such a potentially game-changing story while the Republican race was still in doubt. McCain's advisers made a virtue out of necessity, and tried to turn the Times story into a way of winning back conservatives who had been doubtful about McCain—but hate the Times much more. From his radio studio, Rush Limbaugh wagged his finger while declaring that McCain, who is seen on the right as a darling of the "liberal" media, should learn his lesson: "A snake is a snake … The New York Times is The New York Times." McCain's adviser, Charlie Black, reveled: "For the first time in history, John McCain won talk radio." The campaign even used the Times story to craft a fund-raising appeal to help McCain fight back against the scurrilous press. The liberal media-bashing world of conservative talk radio is an odd alliance for McCain to make. But in Washington, the enemy of one's enemy can be one's friend—for a while, anyway.

With Holly Bailey, Suzanne Smalley, Richard Wolffe, Pat Wingert and Eve Conant

© 2008