How lame was* that*?
Yes, it’s “surprising” indeed how anybody could misinterpret the point of a story that starts like this:
They *might * have credibily claimed they simply did an incredibily poor job of both writing and editing by burying the lede back in the fourth graf. But instead they’re blaming the readers. Pathetic.
If he wasn’t in bed with this lobbyist he certainly was in bed with lobbyists. They run and fund his campaign.
To a markedly different degree than other Senators? You would never know that from the Times’ reporting.
Way to miss the point, Elvis. If you’ve built your entire reputation on your honesty and being above reproach when it comes to lobbyists’ influence, the stories, your denials, and your denials’ immediate exposure as falsehoods do not redound to your benefit. It’s similar to Hillary vs. Barack. Which one of them would be hurt more by a story that they did favors for a lobbyist?
Nope, the point is that the Times is supposed to be doing objective reporting, not campaign advocacy. An objective story would do the comparisons I suggested. A campaign press release would not. This story did not.
Whose campaign were they advocating?
Merely showing that lobbyists are ‘hanging around’ a Senator is completely meaningless. EVERY Senator has lobbyists hanging around. Every Senator gets a good chunk of campaign funding from various organization and lobby groups. This is the way Washington works. And in fact, that’s the way it *should work. One man’s ‘lobbyist’ is another man’s ‘representative of the people’ or ‘representative of the state’s industry’. These people have every right to be heard and to attempt to convince politicians that certain policies are right or wrong.
What you need to show before you can slime someone as dirty is that a quid-pro-quo has taken place - that a Senator changed his vote or pushed for some policy because he was bought. It’s not even enough to show that a Senator votes the way the lobbyists around him want him to vote, because it’s entirely possible that the cause and effect is backwards. For example, let’s say Senator Bob believes that there should be no drilling in ANWR. Senator Bob receives 100,000 from an environmental lobby group. Did that Senator get paid off? Or is that lobby group simply providing funds to a Senator that they see as being a fellow traveler, in order to help him get re-elected?
Showing true corruption and conflict of interest is not easy, because the nature of power and the relationship of lobbyists is very complex. Usually, you actually have to catch someone in the act of taking cash in exchange for a vote or something like that to prove anything.
A quick note about the Keating 5 - John McCain has said that he was disappointed in himself for his (minor) role in it, but McCain (and John Glenn) were both victims of politics. It was really a ‘Keating 3’. McCain and Glenn were absolved by the special counsel, who recommended that they both be dropped from the investigation before it went public. But that would have left only Democrats in the Keating scandal, so there was much pressure to keep McCain in the bunch. And since the Democrats kept McCain, the Republicans demanded that Glenn also be kept in the investigation. Those two guys got screwed over. So while he may have violated his own sense of honor, he broke no laws and what he did was probably commonplace among other Senators.
Here’s what the Special Counsel in the Keating Investigation says, in a new book about McCain:
The Special Counsel was none other than Bob Bennett, who is now defending McCain against the NYT (Bennett is a Democrat). He seems satisfied enough with McCain’s honor.
I think that’s basically right Sam Stone, but I also agree with McCain when he said, “[Q]uestions of honor are raised as much by appearances as by reality in politics.” To my mind, the influence of lobbyists is pretty much an unknown for all the reasons you expressed above, especially the difficulty in accounting for causality. But I have a hard time believing that they spend millions of dollars only to gain access to politicians with whom they already agree. It would be good for our political system to avoid even the appearance of impropriety because it rests so heavily on citizen involvement. That doesn’t mean kicking lobbyists out of government, or whatever euphemism is used. It does mean more transparency, less lobbyist cash in campaigns*, and avoiding some of the things McCain was criticized for in the article.
So was Watergate.
No, by the Times.
Didn’t you just get finished saying the main story was about iinfluence peddling? I believe you said “99.8 percent”? :dubious:
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Her influence peddling, which would be over the top even without an affair.
Have a cite that Paxson was paying so much more than anyone else? In any case McCain is the guy saying he doesn’t play that way.
So they’re pathetic because they say something you don’t like? David Brooks had an interesting column about how there was a war in McCain’s staff about who would love him the most. Brooks, who is not privy to the sources, thought it plausible this had something to do with this struggle. That explains why they would reveal it, not that they made it up independently.
I wasn’t talking about the hooker scandal. I’m talking about day to day gayness. You are right, it is the hypocrisy which is what is important here, in this case McCain going on about never doing anything for a lobbyist, when he wrote a letter to the FCC chair saying that unless they found that Paxon’s loophole was operative, he’d have to think about using his committee to restructure the FCC. We don’t know for sure that McCain wouldn’t have written this anyhow, but it sure smells.
I’ve never been to journalism school, but I’m pretty sure that objective reporting doesn’t involve throwing away things that are uncomfortable for the supporter of a candidate to swallow. Keller also goes into why they ran the part about the aides’ concerns.
Sam, the level of proof you talk about is required for charging someone with influence peddling in a court, but rightly or wrongly not for mentioning it in a newspaper. The story itself might bring out additional evidence of wrongdoing, if there is any. Don’t you think we should know about impropriety even done by those smart enough to maintain plausible deniability? That is how US libel laws work.
In all the ethics classes I’ve taken you are told not only not to do anything wrong but avoid the appearance of doing something wrong. It certainly doesn’t sound like McCain did anything out of the ordinary, so there would be no story if he hadn’t claimed to be cleaner than anyone else.
I think you know who McCain’s opponent is likely to be, or at least from which party.
Did anybody say it did?
Don’t know - I was offering a possible answer to your question as to why he might have been spending so much time with Paxson’s lobbyist, if not as part of an affair with her.
Nope, for tawdry scandalmongering and refusing to accept responsibility for it when caught out. Did I not make that sufficiently clear? :dubious:
So who is McCains opponant most likely going to be Elvis? I just had to ask when I saw that. 
A Democrat.
Sure, but the Times never actually advocated for Clinton or Obama or Huckabee or Paul or Nader in the story now did they?
Seems to me that it’s unfair to accuse the paper of doing something it did not do. Don’t you agree?
You don’t think undermining one candidate helps the other realistic candidates? But you *do * think Huckabee or Paul or Nader *are * realistic candidates?
Right. Whatever.
Yeah, and when you say we screwed the pooch in in Iraq, you’re advocating the terrorists!
You’re making a logical connection that isn’t there, ElvisL1ves.
That made no sense whatever, Squink. Not even grammatically.
I’d respond to you if I had any idea what you meant.
McCain: The 'Anti-Lobbyist' Who Works With Lobbyists | HuffPost Latest News We have a dispute. Bud Paxson says they had a sit down meeting .He disputes the straight shooting McCain.
Does dissing Microsoft make you an Apple advocate?
Does dissing apples make you an advocate of papayas?
Of course not.
It is quite possible to suggest that one thing sucks, without even referencing the quality of other things, much less implicitly advocating other things.
Show me where the New York Times advocated one of the other candidates in their story, or admit your error.