I am sorry if I am beginning to sound like a broken record on Sen. John McCain, (D-AZ). His denial notwithstanding, this is not the first time he’s found himself under the glare and his response was almost typical. I said ‘almost’ because McCain himself would have put this story out himself and run with it.
McCain’s best Washington trick is media manipulation. He gets seasoned journalists, who should know better, to eat right out of his hands.
McCain quickly fessed up and reaped rewards for candor when he was outed as a chronic philanderer in his first marriage. He then dumped his first wife to marry money, Cindy, who, as luck would have it, came complete with a drug addiction. The McCain team went into overdrive and got in front of the story when it came out in 1994 that Cindy McCain had been stealing Percocet, Vicodin, and other drugs from a charity she was supposed to be running.
She granted semi-exclusive interviews to one TV station and three daily newspaper reporters in Arizona, tearfully recalling her addiction, which came about after painful back and knee problems and was exacerbated by the stress of the Keating Five banking scandal that had ensnared her husband. To make matters worse, McCain admitted, she had stolen the drugs from the American Voluntary Medical Team, her own charity, and had been investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration.
This little performance for the media had an additional benefit. It deflected attention from the Keating Five controversy that was threatening John McCain’s career.
McCain did it with the Keating Five, and with the story of the failure of his first marriage (Cindy is his second wife). So what you recall after the humble, honest interview, is not that McCain did favors for savings and loan failure Charlie Keating, or that he cheated on his wife, but instead what an upfront, righteous guy he is.
Maybe that’s why the people who know him best, Arizona voters, have always been lukewarm toward their United States Senator.
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