Yay. TNR gettin their's.

Noam:

I know you don't want to blow Gabe's scoop...but can you tell us if this is really a bimbo eruption? Did bimbos erupt?

Oh Noam, you tease!  

Very interested to read about this back story, though.  Looks like the campaign has had plenty of time to prepare for this inevitable "bombshell," so I'd expect their initial response to sound pretty scripted.

The GOP will likely dismiss the story as *another NYT Republican hitjob* (indeed the McCain campaign already has, apparently).  But given McCain's historically cozy relationship with the press, the shock of a genuinely negative McCain piece may give the story a chance to stick around longer.  

If this arrow won't pierce his sanctimonious armor, I don't know what will.

"Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his...

I don't expect you to answer this, Noam, but I have to wonder out loud what sort of allegations TNR could make that would prompt the Times to release a clearly-redacted story prematurely.

I guess the Democrats won't have to use the phrase "in bed with the lobbyists" as a euphemism this time around! Bazzing!

Here's to O '08

Caaaaaaaaaan't wait, Noam.  Can't wait.

Be proud.

JOHN McCAIN AND THE TELECOM LOBBYIST....OK, let's dive into the John McCain story. According to a heavily padded story in the New York Times, several of Mr. Straight Talk's aides became concerned during the 2000 campaign that he was spending...

What's the story, again? That _eight years ago_ McCain was diddling a gorgeous blonde of a certain age?

You guys are really going overboard with the Obama lovefest.

Tep is very inartfully (and kinda uncharacteristically retardedly) making an interesting point.

McCain is human, he's SO human, the guy pretty much ends his night chugging down whiskey.

What are the human details of Obama? Even his youthful drug indiscretions seem almost too perfect (and now rumors they are overstated). I think he sneaks a cigarette on occasion? Of course Bill Clinton's poison is clear to all, and we know that George W. Bush drank so much booze and snorted so much cocaine he nearly destroyed his brain, but what about Obama?

I wonder if the nation feels a bit relieved when they discover the human side of their top (male) politicians.

It's a tough balance though, McCain's already walking a tightrope between 'human' and 'too flawed.'

Yes, I confess to a form of mild retardation, in American eyes, re. political sex scandals. I never gave a flying f*** about Monica and I couldn't care less about McCain's or Hillary's girls or anyone else's. None of our business, thanks.

Imagine how much better off this country would be today if our press over the last 12 years had preserved the attitude toward pols' private lives that they maintained in JFK's day, and that every normal democracy preserves to this day.

I have a feeling the only people who will really care about this will be the press and the bible thumpers (not to mention poor Cindy) not small or uninfluential groups admitedly, but I bet most nomral people are just going to be offended at the Times, not McCain.  

It's gossip, that's it - a fun read but anyone who decides their vote on that alone is stupid.  McCain never claimed to be a saint or dmands that anyone else be one either.  I wish the press would give this crap a rest.

My girlfriend is a lobbyist and according to her, this is par for the course. Her exact quote was "who cares? They all do it."

That reminds me...she was out pretty late last night.

This story will help McCain.  It will create a sympathy backlash.  If only the WaPO story had run, McCain would be more damaged.

I don't care about the sex.  I care a lot about those pesky ethics questions.

But then, a person who's willing to throw his views about the use of torture under the bus to boost his political standing raises all manner of questions, doesn't he?

Hooo boy! The Times really opened up a box of bees when they published their insinuating John McCain story late last night. If you haven't seen it, it concerns McCain's high-horse attitude toward ethics, which may have been compromised in part by a close

mpatrickhendri: that was not me you smelled on her last night I swear. I never met her, that video is fake, those were not my underwear you found in your glove compartment.

Libs and Dems won't care about this, but anything that keeps the bible thumpers at home this cycle is a good thing for the Dems. I don't like it, but that is the way it is. Bay Buchanan was screaming why didn't the NYTimes release this before Florida, and this is because republicans will reflexively dismiss it.

The story that will set the political agenda over the next week is about whether John McCain is really

Why is everybody assuming the sex-or-no-sex part is what should be damaging?  Mr. Straight Talk himself, the Grand Ethical Poo-Bah of the campaign, can get used by a looker lobbyist and be too dang clueless to know for eight years...please, folks, let's push the angle of the story that's actually useful.

If you can't sleep with the good looking lobbyists, why would you want to be in the Senate?

The big joke here is that the legislation in question involves revising ** media ownership ** regulations that everyone, ESPECIALLY the suits at Times Co, agrees are dumb, antiquated, and (in the words of a leading Manhattan district judge) "Alice in Wonderland" absurd.

With tep on TNR's Obama love-fest.

How 'bout a cover story on Obama of similar gravity to the one Chait did on McCain?  How about an interview where somebody asks Obama how he plans to "protect Social Security benefits" without raising the retirement age, as he has promised? How does his contention that he'd work across party lines square with his purely partisan behavior in the Senate that Karl Rove noted in today's WSJ?

I like Obama, have given him money, voted for him in the California primary, and will likely vote for him again in November. But I also fully expect to feel my share of the communal pain in coming years from climate change, Islamist intransigence, Chinese and Indian economic triumphs, and what looks to be a nasty case of stagflation descending as we speak. Not sure everyone swooning over Obama sees the same clouds I do. Obama, if elected, will be the messenger of pain as well as of hope. Not quite sure he's articulated that, as of yet.

Meanwhile, y'all are devoting a lot of pixels to eight-year-old McCain/NYT/lobbyist porking and lobhyist pork.  Remind me again why?

The New Republic might think this is hot stuff. It would be in keeping with the depths to which the rag has sunk in the last couple of years. So instead of attacking the NYT for its slovenly journalistic standards, TNR seeks to embarrass the NYT for not publishing an 8 yr old baseless rumor. Good job, TNR. That whirring sound is Walter Lippmann rolling over in his grave. I may cancel and demand a refund instead of waiting for my subscription to run out.