McCain allegedly has an affair... What does the publishing of this article by the New York Times say about gender (and sex) in our American culture?
The Long Run
For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Senator John McCain during his 2000 presidential bid. His campaign this year is not as focused on the corrupting power of money in politics.
comments (2430)
Sign In to E-Mail or Save This
Print
Single Page
Reprints
Share
By JIM RUTENBERG, MARILYN W. THOMPSON, DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and STEPHEN LABATON
Published: February 21, 2008
WASHINGTON — Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.
The Long Run
Honor and Influence
This is part of a series of articles about the life and careers of contenders for the 2008 Republican and Democratic presidential nominations.
Previous Articles in the Series »
Related
Times Topics: John McCain
Blogrunner: Reactions From Around the Web
Multimedia
Interactive Graphic
Milestones: John McCain
Blog
The Caucus
The latest political news from around the nation. Join the discussion.
Candidate Topic Pages
More Politics News
Stephen Boitano/Getty Images
The lobbyist Vicki Iseman, whose relationship with Mr. McCain troubled some of his aides.
Readers' Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
Read All Comments (2430) »
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.
When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.
Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.
It had been just a decade since an official favor for a friend with regulatory problems had nearly ended Mr. McCain’s political career by ensnaring him in the Keating Five scandal. In the years that followed, he reinvented himself as the scourge of special interests, a crusader for stricter ethics and campaign finance rules, a man of honor chastened by a brush with shame.
But the concerns about Mr. McCain’s relationship with Ms. Iseman underscored an enduring paradox of his post-Keating career. Even as he has vowed to hold himself to the highest ethical standards, his confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest.
Mr. McCain promised, for example, never to fly directly from Washington to Phoenix, his hometown, to avoid the impression of self-interest because he sponsored a law that opened the route nearly a decade ago. But like other lawmakers, he often flew on the corporate jets of business executives seeking his support, including the media moguls Rupert Murdoch, Michael R. Bloomberg and Lowell W. Paxson, Ms. Iseman’s client. (Last year he voted to end the practice.)
Mr. McCain helped found a nonprofit group to promote his personal battle for tighter campaign finance rules. But he later resigned as its chairman after news reports disclosed that the group was tapping the same kinds of unlimited corporate contributions he opposed, including those from companies seeking his favor. He has criticized the cozy ties between lawmakers and lobbyists, but is relying on corporate lobbyists to donate their time running his presidential race and recently hired a lobbyist to run his Senate office.
“He is essentially an honorable person,” said William P. Cheshire, a friend of Mr. McCain who as editorial page editor of The Arizona Republic defended him during the Keating Five scandal. “But he can be imprudent.”
Mr. Cheshire added, “That imprudence or recklessness may be part of why he was not more astute about the risks he was running with this shady operator,” Charles Keating, whose ties to Mr. McCain and four other lawmakers tainted their reputations in the savings and loan debacle.
During his current campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Mr. McCain has played down his attacks on the corrupting power of money in politics, aware that the stricter regulations he championed are unpopular in his party. When the Senate overhauled lobbying and ethics rules last year, Mr. McCain stayed in the background.
With his nomination this year all but certain, though, he is reminding voters again of his record of reform. His campaign has already begun comparing his credentials with those of Senator Barack Obama, a Democratic contender who has made lobbying and ethics rules a centerpiece of his own pitch to voters.
“I would very much like to think that I have never been a man whose favor can be bought,” Mr. McCain wrote about his Keating experience in his 2002 memoir, “Worth the Fighting For.” “From my earliest youth, I would have considered such a reputation to be the most shameful ignominy imaginable. Yet that is exactly how millions of Americans viewed me for a time, a time that I will forever consider one of the worst experiences of my life.”
A drive to expunge the stain on his reputation in time turned into a zeal to cleanse Washington as well. The episode taught him that “questions of honor are raised as much by appearances as by reality in politics,” he wrote, “and because they incite public distrust they need to be addressed no less directly than we would address evidence of expressly illegal corruption.”
A Formative Scandal
1
2
3
4
Next Page »
Barclay Walsh and Kitty Bennett contributed research.
More Articles in US »
Sunday, February 24, 2008
New Republic's analysis of NYT article on McCain
The New Republic
The Long Run-Up by Gabriel Sherman
Behind the Bombshell in 'The New York Times.'
Post Date Thursday, February 21, 2008
DISCUSS ARTICLE [411] | PRINT | EMAIL ARTICLE
Credit: Getty Images
John McCain
RELATED CONTENT
Jonathan Chait on McCain's secret political history (2/27/08).
S.V. Date on the inside story of how McCain secured his position as the GOP frontrunner (2/6/08)
"Neo-McCain": John B. Judis discovers the roots of McCain's hawkish tendencies (10/26/06).
Last night, around dinnertime, The New York Times posted on its website a 3,000-word investigation detailing Senator John McCain's connections to a telecommunications lobbyist named Vicki Iseman. The controversial piece, written by Washington bureau reporters Jim Rutenberg, Marilyn Thompson, Stephen Labaton, and David Kirkpatrick, and published in this morning's paper, explores the possibility that the Republican presidential candidate may have had an affair with the 40-year-old blond-haired lobbyist for the telecommunications industry while he chaired the Senate Commerce Committee in the late-1990s.
Beyond its revelations, however, what's most remarkable about the article is that it appeared in the paper at all: The new information it reveals focuses on the private matters of the candidate, and relies entirely on the anecdotal evidence of McCain's former staffers to justify the piece--both personal and anecdotal elements unusual in the Gray Lady. The story is filled with awkward journalistic moves--the piece contains a collection of decade-old stories about McCain and Iseman appearing at functions together and concerns voiced by McCain's aides that the Senator shouldn't be seen in public with Iseman--and departs from the Times' usual authoritative voice. At one point, the piece suggestively states: "In 1999 she began showing up so frequently in his offices and at campaign events that staff members took notice. One recalled asking, 'Why is she always around?'" In the absence of concrete, printable proof that McCain and Iseman were an item, the piece delicately steps around purported romance and instead reports on the debate within the McCain campaign about the alleged affair.
What happened? The publication of the article capped three months of intense internal deliberations at the Times over whether to publish the negative piece and its most explosive charge about the affair. It pitted the reporters investigating the story, who believed they had nailed it, against executive editor Bill Keller, who believed they hadn't. It likely cost the paper one investigative reporter, who decided to leave in frustration. And the Times ended up publishing a piece in which the institutional tensions about just what the story should be are palpable.
The McCain investigation began in November, after Rutenberg, who covers the political media and advertising beat, got a tip. Within a few days, Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet assigned Thompson and Labaton to join the project and, later, conservative beat reporter David Kirkpatrick to chip in as well. Labaton brought his expertise with regulatory issues to the team, and Thompson had done investigative work: At The Washington Post in the 1990s she had edited Michael Isikoff's reporting on the Paula Jones scandal, and in 2003 she broke the story that Strom Thurmond had secretly fathered a child with his family's black maid. Having four reporters thrown on the story showed just what a potential blockbuster the paper believed it might have.
From the outset, the Times reporters encountered stiff resistance from the McCain camp. After working on the story for several weeks, Thompson learned that McCain had personally retained Bill Clinton's former attorney Bob Bennett to defend himself against the Times' questioning. At the same time, two McCain campaign advisers, Mark Salter and Charlie Black, vigorously pressed the Times reporters to drop the matter. And in early December, McCain himself called Keller to deny the allegations on the record.
In early December, according to sources with knowledge of the events, Thompson requested a meeting with Bennett to arrange access to the senator and to discuss why the Republican presidential candidate had sought out a criminal lawyer in the first place. Bennett agreed to meet, and on the afternoon of December 18, Labaton, Rutenberg, and Thompson arrived at his Washington office. During a one-hour meeting, according to sources, Bennett admonished the Times reporters to be fair to McCain, especially in light of the whisper campaign that had sundered his 2000 presidential bid in South Carolina. He told them that he would field any questions they had, and promised to provide answers to their queries. Of the reporters in the room, Bennett knew Labaton the best. In the 1990s, Labaton had covered the Whitewater investigation, and Bennett viewed him as a straight-shooting, accurate reporter who could be reasoned with. Rutenberg he knew less well, and Bennett was miffed that Rutenberg had been calling all over Washington asking probing questions about McCain and his dealings with Iseman. The rumors were bound to get out.
Two days after that meeting, on December 20, news of the Times' unpublished investigation burst into public view when Matt Drudge posted an anonymously sourced item on the Drudge Report. "MEDIA FIREWORKS: MCCAIN PLEADS WITH NY TIMES TO SPIKE STORY," the headline proclaimed; the story hinted around the core of the allegations and focused on Keller's decision to hold the piece. "Rutenberg had hoped to break the story before the Christmas holiday," the item said, quoting unnamed sources, "but editor Keller expressed serious reservations about journalism ethics and issuing a damaging story so close to an election."
Immediately, the media pounced on the budding scandal. "If John McCain has hired Bob Bennett as his lawyer," one commentator said on Fox News, "that's a big--you don't hire Bob Bennett to knock down a press story. You hire Bob Bennett because you have serious legal issues somehow." On MSNBC, Pat Buchanan speculated that the Times newsroom was the source of the leak. "They've been rebuffed and rebuffed on this story, and they say we've had it, and they go around then and Drudge pops it just like he popped the Monica Lewinsky story first."
Initially, the McCain campaign refused to acknowledge the Drudge post. But by the afternoon of December 20, McCain denied the allegations at a press conference in Detroit, and his campaign released a statement deriding the Drudge item as "gutter politics."
Rumors of the unpublished Times piece swirled through the Romney campaign, then still locked in a tight dogfight for the Republican nomination. After the Drudge item flashed, Romney's traveling press secretary Eric Fehrnstrom went to the back of the campaign plane to ask New York Times reporter Michael Luo, who was covering Romney, if he had heard when the piece was running.
Inside the Times newsroom, the Drudge item sent the McCain piece into hiding, making it both tightly guarded and "a topic of conversation," as one staffer put it. "The fact that it ended up on Drudge pushed it into secrecy," added another staffer. "The paper gets constipated on these things," a veteran former Times staffer said, describing the editors' deliberations over whether to run the piece.
In late December, according to Times sources, Keller told the reporters and the story's editor, Rebecca Corbett, that he was holding the piece in part because they could not secure documentary proof of the alleged affair beyond anecdotal evidence. Keller felt that given the on-the-record-denials by McCain and Iseman, the reporters needed more than the circumstantial evidence they had assembled to prove the case. The reporters felt they had the goods.
The Drudge item didn't derail the investigation, however. By late December, the reporters had submitted several pages of written questions to Bennett for comment, and completed a draft of the piece before the New Year. But to their growing frustration, Keller ordered rounds of changes and additional reporting. According to Times sources, Baquet remained an advocate for his reporters and pushed the piece to be published, but sources say Keller wanted a more nuanced story looking less at personal matters and more at questions of Iseman's lobbying and McCain's legislative record. (The Washington-New York divide is an eternal rift at the Paper of Record: Baquet had successfully brought stability and investigative acumen to the Washington bureau; with the McCain piece, he was being sucked into his first major struggle with New York.)
In mid-January, Keller told the reporters to significantly recast the piece after several drafts had circulated among editors in Washington and New York. After three different versions, the piece ended up not as a stand-alone investigation but as an entry in the paper's "The Long Run" series looking at presidential candidates' career histories.
It was at about that time, amidst flurries of rumors swirling about the looming Times investigation, that the Times' McCain beat reporter, Marc Santora, abruptly left the campaign trail after covering the senator for four and a half months, frustrated by the McCain rumors. A rising star at the paper, Santora had been working grueling hours, joining the 2008 election coverage straight from a reporting assignment in Baghdad. As the campaign headed to South Carolina, the site of McCain's defeat in 2000, Santora e-mailed the Times' deputy Washington editor, Richard Stevenson, to vent about how the rumors were dogging him on the campaign trail, and left the McCain beat on January 10. "The last thing I wanted was to be a pawn in this thing," Santora told me. "I was exhausted, there were a lot of rumors flying around. I thought the best thing for me to do was take a break."
Santora wasn't the last casualty of the process. Two weeks ago, in early February, Marilyn Thompson, one of the four reporters working on the McCain investigation quit the Times. Thompson had been a staffer at The Washington Post for 14 years, until 2004. She had spent just six months at the Times and recorded only four bylines before accepting an offer to return to her former employer as an editor overseeing the Post's accountability coverage of money and politics. According to sources, Thompson became increasingly dispirited with the delays, and worked around the clock through the Christmas vacation on the piece, only to see the investigation sputter. Declining to comment on the investigation itself, Thompson told me her decision to return to the Post "was an opportunity to go back to the place that has been a home to me." (Thompson celebrated her byline during her last week at the Times. Her final day at the paper is tomorrow.)
Some observers say that the piece, published today, was not ready to roll. On Wednesday evening, much of the cable news commentary focused on the Times' heavy use of innuendo and circumstantial evidence. This morning, Time magazine managing editor Rick Stengel told MSNBC that he wouldn't have published such a piece. Since the story broke, the McCain campaign has been doing its best to pin the story on the Times and make the media angle the focus.
Indeed, when TNR started reporting on the whereabouts of the story on February 4th, all parties seemed intent on denying its viability. "There's absolutely no story there. And it'd be a mistake for you to write about a non-story that didn't run," McCain adviser Charlie Black told me last week. "Drudge shouldn't have put that up. He didn't know what the hell he was doing."
McCain communications director Jill Hazelbaker told me last week the campaign had no further comment beyond the December 20 statement assailing the allegations. According to McCain advisers, the Times reporters hadn't contacted the campaign about the investigation for several weeks before the piece ran, and only a few reporters from competing news organizations have put in calls on the matter. Two members of the McCain team had contacted TNR's editor to pressure him not to investigate the story.
Of course, each of these sources had reason to keep the story from breaking. But what actually pushed it into publication? The reporters working on the investigation declined to comment. In an e-mail to me on February 19, Keller wrote: "This sounds like a pointless exercise to me--speculating about reporting that may or may not result in an article. But if that's what Special Correspondents of The New Republic do, speculate away. When we have something to say, we'll say it in the paper."
Late in the day on February 19, Baquet sent a final draft of the Times piece to Keller and Times managing editor Jill Abramson in New York. After a series of discussions, the three editors decided to publish the investigation. "We published the story when it was ready which is what we always do," Baquet told TNR this morning. He added: "Nothing forced our hand. Nothing pushed us to move faster other than our own natural desire that we wanted to get a story in the paper that met all of our standards."
When the Times did finally publish the long-gestating investigation last night, the McCain camp immediately tried to train the glare back on the Gray Lady. In fact, McCain advisers stated that TNR's inquiries pressured the Times to publish its story before it was ready so this magazine wouldn't scoop the Times' piece. "They did this because The New Republic was going to run a story that looked back at the infighting there, the Judy Miller-type power struggles--they decided that they would rather smear McCain than suffer a story that made The New York Times newsroom look bad," Salter told reporters last night in Toledo, Ohio.
This morning, after the piece ran, and as TNR's article was about to be posted, Keller finally responded to repeated requests for interviews. In an e-mail, he defended the substance, and the timing, of the story. "Our policy is, we publish stories when they are ready. 'Ready' means the facts have been nailed down to our satisfaction, the subjects have all been given a full and fair chance to respond, and the reporting has been written up with all the proper context and caveats." Important as the story may indeed turn out to be, it may have provided the Times' critics with a few caveats too many.
Gabriel Sherman is a Special Correspondent to The New Republic.
© The New Republic 2008
DISCUSS ARTICLE [411] | PRINT | EMAIL ARTICLE
TNR TALKBACK [411 comments]
Interesting. I've been following the story all morning, and this article actually makes the NYT story much more credible, as it shows that the respected reporters - all 4 of them - thought they had "nailed" the story, including the extramarital affair - but were repeatedly blocked by higher-ups in New York.
Bostonian
New York Times scoops New Republic scoop about New York Times scoop! Meanwhile, life continues as normal on a small planet called Earth....
ratnerstar
No facts, just rumor and innuendo, with anonymous sources, about something that allegedly happened nine years ago. Yeah, let's print that story! If this is all the NYTimes has, they're going to find themselves in a world of trouble.
Jared
The Long Run-Up by Gabriel Sherman
Behind the Bombshell in 'The New York Times.'
Post Date Thursday, February 21, 2008
DISCUSS ARTICLE [411] | PRINT | EMAIL ARTICLE
Credit: Getty Images
John McCain
RELATED CONTENT
Jonathan Chait on McCain's secret political history (2/27/08).
S.V. Date on the inside story of how McCain secured his position as the GOP frontrunner (2/6/08)
"Neo-McCain": John B. Judis discovers the roots of McCain's hawkish tendencies (10/26/06).
Last night, around dinnertime, The New York Times posted on its website a 3,000-word investigation detailing Senator John McCain's connections to a telecommunications lobbyist named Vicki Iseman. The controversial piece, written by Washington bureau reporters Jim Rutenberg, Marilyn Thompson, Stephen Labaton, and David Kirkpatrick, and published in this morning's paper, explores the possibility that the Republican presidential candidate may have had an affair with the 40-year-old blond-haired lobbyist for the telecommunications industry while he chaired the Senate Commerce Committee in the late-1990s.
Beyond its revelations, however, what's most remarkable about the article is that it appeared in the paper at all: The new information it reveals focuses on the private matters of the candidate, and relies entirely on the anecdotal evidence of McCain's former staffers to justify the piece--both personal and anecdotal elements unusual in the Gray Lady. The story is filled with awkward journalistic moves--the piece contains a collection of decade-old stories about McCain and Iseman appearing at functions together and concerns voiced by McCain's aides that the Senator shouldn't be seen in public with Iseman--and departs from the Times' usual authoritative voice. At one point, the piece suggestively states: "In 1999 she began showing up so frequently in his offices and at campaign events that staff members took notice. One recalled asking, 'Why is she always around?'" In the absence of concrete, printable proof that McCain and Iseman were an item, the piece delicately steps around purported romance and instead reports on the debate within the McCain campaign about the alleged affair.
What happened? The publication of the article capped three months of intense internal deliberations at the Times over whether to publish the negative piece and its most explosive charge about the affair. It pitted the reporters investigating the story, who believed they had nailed it, against executive editor Bill Keller, who believed they hadn't. It likely cost the paper one investigative reporter, who decided to leave in frustration. And the Times ended up publishing a piece in which the institutional tensions about just what the story should be are palpable.
The McCain investigation began in November, after Rutenberg, who covers the political media and advertising beat, got a tip. Within a few days, Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet assigned Thompson and Labaton to join the project and, later, conservative beat reporter David Kirkpatrick to chip in as well. Labaton brought his expertise with regulatory issues to the team, and Thompson had done investigative work: At The Washington Post in the 1990s she had edited Michael Isikoff's reporting on the Paula Jones scandal, and in 2003 she broke the story that Strom Thurmond had secretly fathered a child with his family's black maid. Having four reporters thrown on the story showed just what a potential blockbuster the paper believed it might have.
From the outset, the Times reporters encountered stiff resistance from the McCain camp. After working on the story for several weeks, Thompson learned that McCain had personally retained Bill Clinton's former attorney Bob Bennett to defend himself against the Times' questioning. At the same time, two McCain campaign advisers, Mark Salter and Charlie Black, vigorously pressed the Times reporters to drop the matter. And in early December, McCain himself called Keller to deny the allegations on the record.
In early December, according to sources with knowledge of the events, Thompson requested a meeting with Bennett to arrange access to the senator and to discuss why the Republican presidential candidate had sought out a criminal lawyer in the first place. Bennett agreed to meet, and on the afternoon of December 18, Labaton, Rutenberg, and Thompson arrived at his Washington office. During a one-hour meeting, according to sources, Bennett admonished the Times reporters to be fair to McCain, especially in light of the whisper campaign that had sundered his 2000 presidential bid in South Carolina. He told them that he would field any questions they had, and promised to provide answers to their queries. Of the reporters in the room, Bennett knew Labaton the best. In the 1990s, Labaton had covered the Whitewater investigation, and Bennett viewed him as a straight-shooting, accurate reporter who could be reasoned with. Rutenberg he knew less well, and Bennett was miffed that Rutenberg had been calling all over Washington asking probing questions about McCain and his dealings with Iseman. The rumors were bound to get out.
Two days after that meeting, on December 20, news of the Times' unpublished investigation burst into public view when Matt Drudge posted an anonymously sourced item on the Drudge Report. "MEDIA FIREWORKS: MCCAIN PLEADS WITH NY TIMES TO SPIKE STORY," the headline proclaimed; the story hinted around the core of the allegations and focused on Keller's decision to hold the piece. "Rutenberg had hoped to break the story before the Christmas holiday," the item said, quoting unnamed sources, "but editor Keller expressed serious reservations about journalism ethics and issuing a damaging story so close to an election."
Immediately, the media pounced on the budding scandal. "If John McCain has hired Bob Bennett as his lawyer," one commentator said on Fox News, "that's a big--you don't hire Bob Bennett to knock down a press story. You hire Bob Bennett because you have serious legal issues somehow." On MSNBC, Pat Buchanan speculated that the Times newsroom was the source of the leak. "They've been rebuffed and rebuffed on this story, and they say we've had it, and they go around then and Drudge pops it just like he popped the Monica Lewinsky story first."
Initially, the McCain campaign refused to acknowledge the Drudge post. But by the afternoon of December 20, McCain denied the allegations at a press conference in Detroit, and his campaign released a statement deriding the Drudge item as "gutter politics."
Rumors of the unpublished Times piece swirled through the Romney campaign, then still locked in a tight dogfight for the Republican nomination. After the Drudge item flashed, Romney's traveling press secretary Eric Fehrnstrom went to the back of the campaign plane to ask New York Times reporter Michael Luo, who was covering Romney, if he had heard when the piece was running.
Inside the Times newsroom, the Drudge item sent the McCain piece into hiding, making it both tightly guarded and "a topic of conversation," as one staffer put it. "The fact that it ended up on Drudge pushed it into secrecy," added another staffer. "The paper gets constipated on these things," a veteran former Times staffer said, describing the editors' deliberations over whether to run the piece.
In late December, according to Times sources, Keller told the reporters and the story's editor, Rebecca Corbett, that he was holding the piece in part because they could not secure documentary proof of the alleged affair beyond anecdotal evidence. Keller felt that given the on-the-record-denials by McCain and Iseman, the reporters needed more than the circumstantial evidence they had assembled to prove the case. The reporters felt they had the goods.
The Drudge item didn't derail the investigation, however. By late December, the reporters had submitted several pages of written questions to Bennett for comment, and completed a draft of the piece before the New Year. But to their growing frustration, Keller ordered rounds of changes and additional reporting. According to Times sources, Baquet remained an advocate for his reporters and pushed the piece to be published, but sources say Keller wanted a more nuanced story looking less at personal matters and more at questions of Iseman's lobbying and McCain's legislative record. (The Washington-New York divide is an eternal rift at the Paper of Record: Baquet had successfully brought stability and investigative acumen to the Washington bureau; with the McCain piece, he was being sucked into his first major struggle with New York.)
In mid-January, Keller told the reporters to significantly recast the piece after several drafts had circulated among editors in Washington and New York. After three different versions, the piece ended up not as a stand-alone investigation but as an entry in the paper's "The Long Run" series looking at presidential candidates' career histories.
It was at about that time, amidst flurries of rumors swirling about the looming Times investigation, that the Times' McCain beat reporter, Marc Santora, abruptly left the campaign trail after covering the senator for four and a half months, frustrated by the McCain rumors. A rising star at the paper, Santora had been working grueling hours, joining the 2008 election coverage straight from a reporting assignment in Baghdad. As the campaign headed to South Carolina, the site of McCain's defeat in 2000, Santora e-mailed the Times' deputy Washington editor, Richard Stevenson, to vent about how the rumors were dogging him on the campaign trail, and left the McCain beat on January 10. "The last thing I wanted was to be a pawn in this thing," Santora told me. "I was exhausted, there were a lot of rumors flying around. I thought the best thing for me to do was take a break."
Santora wasn't the last casualty of the process. Two weeks ago, in early February, Marilyn Thompson, one of the four reporters working on the McCain investigation quit the Times. Thompson had been a staffer at The Washington Post for 14 years, until 2004. She had spent just six months at the Times and recorded only four bylines before accepting an offer to return to her former employer as an editor overseeing the Post's accountability coverage of money and politics. According to sources, Thompson became increasingly dispirited with the delays, and worked around the clock through the Christmas vacation on the piece, only to see the investigation sputter. Declining to comment on the investigation itself, Thompson told me her decision to return to the Post "was an opportunity to go back to the place that has been a home to me." (Thompson celebrated her byline during her last week at the Times. Her final day at the paper is tomorrow.)
Some observers say that the piece, published today, was not ready to roll. On Wednesday evening, much of the cable news commentary focused on the Times' heavy use of innuendo and circumstantial evidence. This morning, Time magazine managing editor Rick Stengel told MSNBC that he wouldn't have published such a piece. Since the story broke, the McCain campaign has been doing its best to pin the story on the Times and make the media angle the focus.
Indeed, when TNR started reporting on the whereabouts of the story on February 4th, all parties seemed intent on denying its viability. "There's absolutely no story there. And it'd be a mistake for you to write about a non-story that didn't run," McCain adviser Charlie Black told me last week. "Drudge shouldn't have put that up. He didn't know what the hell he was doing."
McCain communications director Jill Hazelbaker told me last week the campaign had no further comment beyond the December 20 statement assailing the allegations. According to McCain advisers, the Times reporters hadn't contacted the campaign about the investigation for several weeks before the piece ran, and only a few reporters from competing news organizations have put in calls on the matter. Two members of the McCain team had contacted TNR's editor to pressure him not to investigate the story.
Of course, each of these sources had reason to keep the story from breaking. But what actually pushed it into publication? The reporters working on the investigation declined to comment. In an e-mail to me on February 19, Keller wrote: "This sounds like a pointless exercise to me--speculating about reporting that may or may not result in an article. But if that's what Special Correspondents of The New Republic do, speculate away. When we have something to say, we'll say it in the paper."
Late in the day on February 19, Baquet sent a final draft of the Times piece to Keller and Times managing editor Jill Abramson in New York. After a series of discussions, the three editors decided to publish the investigation. "We published the story when it was ready which is what we always do," Baquet told TNR this morning. He added: "Nothing forced our hand. Nothing pushed us to move faster other than our own natural desire that we wanted to get a story in the paper that met all of our standards."
When the Times did finally publish the long-gestating investigation last night, the McCain camp immediately tried to train the glare back on the Gray Lady. In fact, McCain advisers stated that TNR's inquiries pressured the Times to publish its story before it was ready so this magazine wouldn't scoop the Times' piece. "They did this because The New Republic was going to run a story that looked back at the infighting there, the Judy Miller-type power struggles--they decided that they would rather smear McCain than suffer a story that made The New York Times newsroom look bad," Salter told reporters last night in Toledo, Ohio.
This morning, after the piece ran, and as TNR's article was about to be posted, Keller finally responded to repeated requests for interviews. In an e-mail, he defended the substance, and the timing, of the story. "Our policy is, we publish stories when they are ready. 'Ready' means the facts have been nailed down to our satisfaction, the subjects have all been given a full and fair chance to respond, and the reporting has been written up with all the proper context and caveats." Important as the story may indeed turn out to be, it may have provided the Times' critics with a few caveats too many.
Gabriel Sherman is a Special Correspondent to The New Republic.
© The New Republic 2008
DISCUSS ARTICLE [411] | PRINT | EMAIL ARTICLE
TNR TALKBACK [411 comments]
Interesting. I've been following the story all morning, and this article actually makes the NYT story much more credible, as it shows that the respected reporters - all 4 of them - thought they had "nailed" the story, including the extramarital affair - but were repeatedly blocked by higher-ups in New York.
Bostonian
New York Times scoops New Republic scoop about New York Times scoop! Meanwhile, life continues as normal on a small planet called Earth....
ratnerstar
No facts, just rumor and innuendo, with anonymous sources, about something that allegedly happened nine years ago. Yeah, let's print that story! If this is all the NYTimes has, they're going to find themselves in a world of trouble.
Jared
Race & Gender debate in Christian Science Monitor
Gals: Don't know if any of you read the Christian Science Monitor... I know the name can throw one off... That said, it is a terrific, respectable newspaper... Here's some of their reporting on race and gender in the Pres. election.
As Obama gains, he whittles Clinton's lead among baby-boomer women.
from the February 21, 2008 edition
E-mail Print Letter to the Editor Republish del.icio.us digg
Page 2 of 2
Page 1 | 2
Reporter Alexandra Marks interviews Linda Purdy about her decision-making process, choosing between Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama.
Ms. Purdy, who was born at the end of the baby boom, finds the idea of the first female president very appealing, and she admires Clinton. But so is the idea of electing the first African-American president, and she finds Obama inspiring. She likes Clinton's healthcare plan and Obama's stance against the war.
"I finally realized that I didn't want to look at gender or race. I wanted to vote for the person who was the most capable of running the country," she says. But Purdy admits to looking at national polls – and in that analysis, gender did end up playing a role in her decision.
"I've come to the conclusion that this country isn't ready for a female president," she says. "I think Barack Obama has a much better chance of winning in the general election, and so I've decided to vote for him."
Baby boomer Davia Temin, a management expert in New York, is just as adamant that Clinton has the best chance of defeating the Republican nominee and is better prepared to lead the country.
"I run a company, and before that I was a very senior executive in corporate America, and I respect what it takes to run large and small institutions – not just to inspire them but to lead them and manage them in the right way," she says. "From all of Hillary's accomplishments and intelligence and track record, she's the only one out there capable of doing this."
But for Chela Sullivan, a social worker in her late 20s who lives in Phoenix, the Iraq war was a deciding factor, not experience. She says she didn't like Clinton's vote on the war or the way she's handled her explanation for it.
"I would absolutely want a woman president if I felt like they were the best choice," she says. "But I just don't think Hillary is the best choice. For me it's just not about gender."
Such diverse and strong opinions among women show, according to political analysts, that the choice of a candidate remains a personal and complex matter.
"It's more complicated than early projections indicated, because there's more to people's political world view and how they view others than race and gender," says Margie Omero, founder of Momentum Analysis, a Democratic polling firm. "Those are big, obviously, but there are other things."
It's those other things, as well as race and gender, that are making this political race a win-win proposition for Clinton supporter Cory Atkins.
"As a Democrat, I am just so proud of our field this political season," she says. "It's always better to have too many choices of wonderful people than not a good candidate at all. As a party, I think we can't lose."
1 | Page 2
As Obama gains, he whittles Clinton's lead among baby-boomer women.
from the February 21, 2008 edition
E-mail Print Letter to the Editor Republish del.icio.us digg
Page 2 of 2
Page 1 | 2
Reporter Alexandra Marks interviews Linda Purdy about her decision-making process, choosing between Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama.
Ms. Purdy, who was born at the end of the baby boom, finds the idea of the first female president very appealing, and she admires Clinton. But so is the idea of electing the first African-American president, and she finds Obama inspiring. She likes Clinton's healthcare plan and Obama's stance against the war.
"I finally realized that I didn't want to look at gender or race. I wanted to vote for the person who was the most capable of running the country," she says. But Purdy admits to looking at national polls – and in that analysis, gender did end up playing a role in her decision.
"I've come to the conclusion that this country isn't ready for a female president," she says. "I think Barack Obama has a much better chance of winning in the general election, and so I've decided to vote for him."
Baby boomer Davia Temin, a management expert in New York, is just as adamant that Clinton has the best chance of defeating the Republican nominee and is better prepared to lead the country.
"I run a company, and before that I was a very senior executive in corporate America, and I respect what it takes to run large and small institutions – not just to inspire them but to lead them and manage them in the right way," she says. "From all of Hillary's accomplishments and intelligence and track record, she's the only one out there capable of doing this."
But for Chela Sullivan, a social worker in her late 20s who lives in Phoenix, the Iraq war was a deciding factor, not experience. She says she didn't like Clinton's vote on the war or the way she's handled her explanation for it.
"I would absolutely want a woman president if I felt like they were the best choice," she says. "But I just don't think Hillary is the best choice. For me it's just not about gender."
Such diverse and strong opinions among women show, according to political analysts, that the choice of a candidate remains a personal and complex matter.
"It's more complicated than early projections indicated, because there's more to people's political world view and how they view others than race and gender," says Margie Omero, founder of Momentum Analysis, a Democratic polling firm. "Those are big, obviously, but there are other things."
It's those other things, as well as race and gender, that are making this political race a win-win proposition for Clinton supporter Cory Atkins.
"As a Democrat, I am just so proud of our field this political season," she says. "It's always better to have too many choices of wonderful people than not a good candidate at all. As a party, I think we can't lose."
1 | Page 2
Thursday, February 21, 2008
More for you Obama fans...
Friends,
This note from my father-in-law, who met Barack Obama in Grand Rapids, Michigan. My FIL is a former television reporter-turned-Democratic activist. (Yes, I know I'm getting off topic from the gender/race dialogue, but I thought his comments were really interesting.)
Julie,
Enjoyed your "dispatch" on the Obama rally. I met Obama last summer at a fundraiser here in G.R. It was organized by Patrick Miles, Jr., who Jim knows, and was held at the home of a retired, black OB-Gyn, Ralph Mathis. At the time, I was open to whatever Democrat I thought could win. So, I had not committed to any of them. I was blown away by Obama. Not only was he an inspiring speaker. He was a careful and considerate listener. He didn't simply participate in conversation, he completely engaged in discussion. He didn't let you get away with simply asking him what he thought, he insisted on knowing what you thought.
It was one of the most fascinating gatherings I have ever attended. As we walked away we looked at each other and said to each other, he could really do this. Been involved in his campaign ever since.
Jim
This note from my father-in-law, who met Barack Obama in Grand Rapids, Michigan. My FIL is a former television reporter-turned-Democratic activist. (Yes, I know I'm getting off topic from the gender/race dialogue, but I thought his comments were really interesting.)
Julie,
Enjoyed your "dispatch" on the Obama rally. I met Obama last summer at a fundraiser here in G.R. It was organized by Patrick Miles, Jr., who Jim knows, and was held at the home of a retired, black OB-Gyn, Ralph Mathis. At the time, I was open to whatever Democrat I thought could win. So, I had not committed to any of them. I was blown away by Obama. Not only was he an inspiring speaker. He was a careful and considerate listener. He didn't simply participate in conversation, he completely engaged in discussion. He didn't let you get away with simply asking him what he thought, he insisted on knowing what you thought.
It was one of the most fascinating gatherings I have ever attended. As we walked away we looked at each other and said to each other, he could really do this. Been involved in his campaign ever since.
Jim
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Julie's Dispatch from Obama Rally
Friends,
(Since so many of you asked for a report when we got
back...)
Well, we did it. My mom and I went downtown Dallas
today to "Barack"
the vote. It was just amazing. Honestly. I was
literally brought to tears...but not by the stump
speech (very good and filled with new details) but by
the people who turned out. There were about 18,000 of
us...some of whom had been waiting in the que since 4
a.m. Fellow Blue Moonie Jane Jooset, an ex-pat from South Africa
energized by the thought of a real democracy, met us
on the roof of a parking deck where the line to enter
Reunion Arena snaked more than two hours long... We
were sandwiched behind a pack of cute frat boys from
TX Christian University, several Muslims in head
scarves, young black professionals, granola grannies,
a suburban Republican gone "Obamlican," freaky
teenagers with spiked hair and Hockaday prep school
girls in plaid kilts. While I was observing all this,
my 67-year-old liberal mother (who should be Hillary's
vote) was prattling on about the merits of a new
antique china cabinet Jim and I recently purchased...
It was just SURREAL. God Bless Texas...and Obama for
bringing so many different types of people in the Lone
Star State together. I really think he just might win
this thing...and do right by ALL of us.
JULIE
Suburban Mama for Obama
(Since so many of you asked for a report when we got
back...)
Well, we did it. My mom and I went downtown Dallas
today to "Barack"
the vote. It was just amazing. Honestly. I was
literally brought to tears...but not by the stump
speech (very good and filled with new details) but by
the people who turned out. There were about 18,000 of
us...some of whom had been waiting in the que since 4
a.m. Fellow Blue Moonie Jane Jooset, an ex-pat from South Africa
energized by the thought of a real democracy, met us
on the roof of a parking deck where the line to enter
Reunion Arena snaked more than two hours long... We
were sandwiched behind a pack of cute frat boys from
TX Christian University, several Muslims in head
scarves, young black professionals, granola grannies,
a suburban Republican gone "Obamlican," freaky
teenagers with spiked hair and Hockaday prep school
girls in plaid kilts. While I was observing all this,
my 67-year-old liberal mother (who should be Hillary's
vote) was prattling on about the merits of a new
antique china cabinet Jim and I recently purchased...
It was just SURREAL. God Bless Texas...and Obama for
bringing so many different types of people in the Lone
Star State together. I really think he just might win
this thing...and do right by ALL of us.
JULIE
Suburban Mama for Obama
Monday, February 18, 2008
Backgrounder #6: Newsweek, "Barack's Rock" on Michelle Obama
Gals: Check out Newsweek's compelling cover story this week on Michelle Obama and her take on race/gender in America as well as in her personal life experience. I can't cut and paste it, but it is available on newsweek.com.
Backgrounder #5: Obama making sexist comments?
Obama's Sexist Dog Whistle
Barack Obama brought up Hillary Clinton's period! "I understand that Senator Clinton periodically,'' (See? He said it!) "when she's feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal." Clearly, he was saying his rival ought to look into hormone replacement therapy.
What, this sexism is too subtle for you? Not for pro-Clinton blogger Taylor Marsh, who accused Obama of "demeaning women,'' or even straight-down-the-middle Andrea Mitchell, who said on MSNBC, "When you start describing a female candidate as being 'down' and 'striking back,' I don't know, that's a little edgy, don't you think?" Karen Stabiner, the author of well-received books about single-sex education and breast cancer, wrote that when she heard what Obama had said, "That was the moment when I, and other women of a certain age, all over the country, winced. The change candidate had embraced one of the oldest clichés in the book—that women are held hostage by emotion, that we can't be trusted with the big decisions because, depending on our age, we're either on the rag or having a hot flash.''
Beyond this accusation itself—so ludicrous my eyes might twirl right out of their sockets—what makes me wince is how such claims undermine actual affronts to women: One in six American women has been raped or endured an attempted rape, and stories about pregnant women killed by their boyfriends are commonplace. Female employees in this country made 77 cents for every $1 a man earned—in 2007, for heaven's sake—and the workplace has not, alas, been utterly transformed since as a college kid, three male supervisors at my summer job in a Texas bank called me in to say I should be wearing a real bra instead of camisoles. Then there was the boss who guessed my weight every time I walked by his office—with such accuracy that, had the whole newspaper thing not worked out, he could always have joined the circus. So far be it from me to say women should declare victory in the war on stuff that shouldn't happen but does, still, all the time. Yet I'm not sure that Clinton supporters who read sexism into Obama's recent remarks are helping her candidacy. And wouldn't we hate to look back on this presidential race as the moment feminists themselves undid some of the progress that has been made—by reviving the defunct stereotype of the hysterical female, strategically overreacting to imagined offense?
Posted Monday, February 18, 2008 2:07 PM by Melinda Henneberger
Filed under: Barack Obama, women, feminism, Hillary Clinton, Democrats, gender issues, '08 election, stereotype threat, gender stereotype, work
Barack Obama brought up Hillary Clinton's period! "I understand that Senator Clinton periodically,'' (See? He said it!) "when she's feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal." Clearly, he was saying his rival ought to look into hormone replacement therapy.
What, this sexism is too subtle for you? Not for pro-Clinton blogger Taylor Marsh, who accused Obama of "demeaning women,'' or even straight-down-the-middle Andrea Mitchell, who said on MSNBC, "When you start describing a female candidate as being 'down' and 'striking back,' I don't know, that's a little edgy, don't you think?" Karen Stabiner, the author of well-received books about single-sex education and breast cancer, wrote that when she heard what Obama had said, "That was the moment when I, and other women of a certain age, all over the country, winced. The change candidate had embraced one of the oldest clichés in the book—that women are held hostage by emotion, that we can't be trusted with the big decisions because, depending on our age, we're either on the rag or having a hot flash.''
Beyond this accusation itself—so ludicrous my eyes might twirl right out of their sockets—what makes me wince is how such claims undermine actual affronts to women: One in six American women has been raped or endured an attempted rape, and stories about pregnant women killed by their boyfriends are commonplace. Female employees in this country made 77 cents for every $1 a man earned—in 2007, for heaven's sake—and the workplace has not, alas, been utterly transformed since as a college kid, three male supervisors at my summer job in a Texas bank called me in to say I should be wearing a real bra instead of camisoles. Then there was the boss who guessed my weight every time I walked by his office—with such accuracy that, had the whole newspaper thing not worked out, he could always have joined the circus. So far be it from me to say women should declare victory in the war on stuff that shouldn't happen but does, still, all the time. Yet I'm not sure that Clinton supporters who read sexism into Obama's recent remarks are helping her candidacy. And wouldn't we hate to look back on this presidential race as the moment feminists themselves undid some of the progress that has been made—by reviving the defunct stereotype of the hysterical female, strategically overreacting to imagined offense?
Posted Monday, February 18, 2008 2:07 PM by Melinda Henneberger
Filed under: Barack Obama, women, feminism, Hillary Clinton, Democrats, gender issues, '08 election, stereotype threat, gender stereotype, work
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
