McCain's Scandal

[existentialist]

McCAIN’S SCANDAL


February 23, 2008


John McCain has recently been attacked in the New York Times for having appeared to have gotten a bit too close to a female lobbyist—at least close enough that some of McCain’s staff stepped in and asked the woman to back off, which she apparently did. There is nothing brought to light so far that seriously indicates any intimate affair. To focus on any such implications or allegations is to trivialize.

What is significant is not that McCain may have gotten uncomfortably close to a particular lobbyist who happens to have been female, but that McCain, a politician who has campaigned on being clean of influence from lobbyists and special interests, is clearly up to his neck in them. A follow up article pointed out that almost all of the inner circle of his campaign staff is composed of lobbyists, some of whom are donating their time to his campaign.

This does not necessarily indicate any illegality. It does not (at least so far) present any serious indication of any sexual impropriety—indeed, in the present context the closest thing to any indication of improper sexual influence shown is that the particular lobbyist was hindered in her occupation precisely because she was female by a campaign staff that was clearly uncomfortable that a female lobbyist had the type of close access to John McCain that a number of male lobbyists clearly do have, a type of gender discrimination by the good old boy’s club. This raises a not insignificant set of subissues, but they are not my focus.

What is most important about what has been raised is not any one specific allegedly improper influence, but that McCain, while campaigning as a maverick and outsider, and clean politician, is in fact surrounded by the lobbyists while presenting himself as being independent of them. This may be merely garden variety political hypocrisy and nothing illegal at all—but the very fact that it has become garden variety political hypocrisy is an excellent illustration of just what is endangering our democracy. In a sense this makes McCain no worse than most politicians with comparable power and influence, but it also makes him a poster boy for what is wrong with politics in general.