McCain and the Lobbyist

[lollardfish]

I really don't care whether or not McCain had an affair with the lobbyist. What I care about is the favoritism he showed to her clients in trying to bully the FCC.

That's the scandal here, and I'd really like the media to focus on it, not whether or not there was an affair.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Undue influence is complicated and subtle; who slept with whom is easy.

And I know I sent this to you, but I'm going to put this link here so that others can follow it: it's a discussion of how McCain would win the election. Interesting, but I don't think he's going to do it.

B

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Except that in this case, undue influence was noted and condemned by the FCC who told McCain to knock it off.

It's an interesting thought experiment, but all signs point to McCain heading to the right and hoping that if he can say all the Republican things, but keep his maverick meme going, he'll win.

McCain

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I have a question. Even though they've said that "it's not about the sex, it's about the lying," these are Republicans and it's about the sex. Assuming it has legs, this scandal has the potential of doing serious damage to McCain. Given that it's out now, and not after the convention, is it possible that the Republican establishment is going to ditch McCain in favor of someone else? Did the scandal break too early?

B

Re: McCain

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Well apparently the Times was convinced not to run the story in December, before the primaries.

Pipe dreams

[(Anonymous)]

Unless they resurrect St. Ronnie again, I don't even think the rabid repugs will elect an ancient man in time o' war. Both his, and I hope, Hilary's time has passed, and it's time for them both to sail off into the sunset to the west.

Re: link

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's hysterical! Basically, this guy is saying the only way McCain can win is to run on a Democratic platform!

McCain

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

And the defenses are just pathetic.

B

Re: McCain

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

When the facts are incontestable, attack the process.

But again, the left needs to focus not on the alleged affair, but on the influence that McCain provably tried to exercise on her behalf.

I'm interested in favoritism too...

[regularpapi.livejournal.com]

As in the 16th and 17th centuries (!), the sex angle is a way of making vivid and personal the individual moral weakness involved in arrangements that might otherwise seem systemic and for which the politician might therefore be excused.

To take a meta position, which I know is not the whole story even though I'm a lit type: I'm interested in the shapes various stories of corruption take at different cultural moments, and I think certain angles hit certain nerves for reasons that have partly to do with shifting menus of cultural stereotypes. I'm interested in tracking this McCain story because so many other recent-ish sex scandals with legs have been about dems, and they have therefore had the Kennedy quality of associating sex with youth and progressivism. There were muted rumors about Bush senior having affairs (maybe there are such rumors about all rulers), but they never had traction in part I think because they didn't fit the Kennedy pre-script. This one is interesting because it is about favoritism instead of being about youth and morally lax progressives. Given all the corruption (and prostitution) stories we've had about lobbyists in the last few years, maybe this narrative about political cronyism will hit a nerve now.

Re: I'm interested in favoritism too...

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Hah. You need to write something up as an expert in favoritism in literature.

Re: I'm interested in favoritism too...

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Sexual access to women has always, always been one of the standard perks for men with power. If there's a senior Congressman of either party who hasn't had at least one affair, I'd be absolutely stunned. It's not about "corruption", it's about the assumptions made in a patriarchal system.

Re: I'm interested in favoritism too...

[regularpapi.livejournal.com]

I agree with the idea that everybody does it. But that doesn't explain why sometimes it catches fire as a story more than other times. Every time it becomes a hot story, it becomes about more than one thing.

As for always, always: there are plenty of rumors about historical women in power having lovers too (Catholics in the 16th century accused Queen Elizabeth of either being a slave to her male lovers or of having boy toiys all around her). And there are plenty of stories about politicized sex in history that are not true too (as is likely the case with some of the ones around Elizabeth, and maybe even with this one about McCain), which means that the gossip has a life separate from the facts. The facts, though, may be as you describe them.