"Sen. John McCain of Arizona is the only Republican who promises to end the George Bush style of governing from and on behalf of a small, angry fringe. With a record of working across the aisle to develop sound bipartisan legislation, he would offer a choice to a broader range of Americans than the rest of the Republican field."
That's The New York Times endorsing McCain for the Republican nomination. It was written on Jan. 25.
A month earlier, it was reported that The Times was working on a story about an allegedly inappropriate relationship between the senator and a young female lobbyist. The information in the story, which The Times ran last week, seems no different from what was rumored to be in the piece when The Drudge Report learned of it two months earlier and The Washington Post investigated The Times' decision not to run it.
The "female" adjective is the supposed heart of the matter -- the suggestion being that McCain traded political favors for nonpolitical ones. Wink, wink.
McCain denies any wrongdoing. The anonymous staffers used as sources in the piece, portrayed as disgruntled, offer no proof beyond their suspicions. The woman herself has neither confirmed any inappropriate relationship nor alleged any other improper behavior.
What I'm confused about is why The New York Times splashed this story on page one as if it were of blockbuster importance. First of all, The Times is not known for its Comstockish disapproval of marital infidelity. Second, the Times would never have credited allegations of favoritism like this if the lobbyist in question were, say, the son of an old Navy buddy.
Really. Imagine if some fired former campaign aides came to The Times and said that McCain's poker buddy cajoled the senator into writing a routine letter to a regulator about something or other. Would that have risen to the level of a front-page story worthy of capsizing the presumptive nominee's presidential bid and ruining his reputation?
Would it have even been a story at all⢠Of course not. Ah, but sex sells, some will say.
But why McCain⢠After all, somewhat similar allegations about recent Democrat nominees were precisely the sort of thing The Times scrupulously avoided as trash journalism. And The Times' attitude toward Bill Clinton's various sex scandals was hardly one of unbridled enthusiasm.
During those years, the Gray Lady published many, many articles lamenting the fever of "sexual McCarthyism" in American politics. It seems that such concerns are unwarranted if the subject is a Republican.
But the most curious thing remains that endorsement. The editors of The Times argued that the best Republican in the field was John McCain. Those same editors knew of these allegations. They clearly did not think such innuendo was important enough for them to hedge their support. McCain was their choice, even though they knew of these allegations and, given what we know about what went on behind the scenes, believed they were true.
Presumably the argument went something like this: There's no direct proof that the sexual relationship ever existed and, even if it did, marital infidelity isn't our business. And besides, if true, the underlying implied impropriety -- writing a routine letter to the FCC -- is hardly a serious transgression. In short, his overall qualifications dwarf the allegations in this story.
It's telling that this was a strong enough argument for picking McCain as "the best choice for the party's presidential nomination," but nowhere near strong enough to prevent The Times from using the same information to destroy that same Republican once he'd all but sewed up the nomination.
Jonah Goldberg is the author of "Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning" (Doubleday).
