Will McCain Story Hit New York Times Instead?
All last night the story unfolded, with the timing of the New
York Times story going online seemingly having more to do with what The New Republic
hand on them than what the Times had on McCain.
… .. Salter blamed the New York Times’ obsession with this sort of intramural
scorekeeping as the paper’s real motivation for going ahead with a story "they’d
already spiked." "They did this because the The New Republic was
going to run a story that looked back at the infighting there," Salter
said, "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."
Robert Bennett, a self-professed Democrat and the lawyer McCain hired to deal with this imbroglio back in December, did everything but laugh out loud at the Times on Fox last night.
Looking at this straight on, first, the sex side of the story both McCain and
the woman have denied. That doesn’t impress me, frankly, because everyone lies
about sex, though I’m also not saying it happened, but who cares? But the thin
sourcing and the heavy handed mentioning of Keating throughout the Times
piece smells to me. When you couple it with what The New Republic is
teasing, it’s quite possible that McCain isn’t going to be the story in the
end.
The McCain campaign is apparently blaming TNR for forcing the Times’
hand on this story. We can’t yet confirm that. But we can say this: TNR correspondent
Gabe Sherman is working on a piece about the Times’ foot-dragging on the McCain
story, and the back-and-forth within the paper about whether to publish it.
Gabe’s story will be online tomorrow.
Hmmmm.. a piece about the Times’ foot-dragging on the McCain story. Sounds
like trouble to me, not for John McCain, but for the Times.
If this hits the Times, it would mean not only does McCain come out
clean, but stronger and more dangerous to Democrats in November. We won’t know
until more is uncovered, which may come with The New Republic piece
later this morning, but the Times may have not only over shot on this one, but hit themselves instead. This
is all speculation, of course, but I think there’s been a lot of frothing in
hopes that this would mortally wound McCain. Last night when Olbermann interrupted
to bring "breaking news" of the Times piece, not only did
his panting over reporting seem heavy handed, but it also was obvious that what
Olbermann wanted to really do had less to do with the truth than trying to rev
up an anti McCain story to obviously help Obama. Who knows where this will lead,
but it shouldn’t be treated like a terrorist alert.
Proportionality is kaput.
Reread the opening line in the Times piece:
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.
Eight years ago? All this dust up, plus rehashing the Keating Five
again?
The Times could be the ones who end up with the mud on its masthead,
while conservatives finally rally ’round McCain.
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