And he wasn't stupid--one letter simply asks for ACTION. It doesn't say "Do X" or "Do Y"--it simply says "Stop sitting on your hands. You normally act on these requests in four hundred days, you've been dicking around for over eight hundred."
And then the other letter, well, the clever bastard has covered his ass there, too:
On Glencairn, the campaign said Mr. McCain’s efforts to retain the loophole were not done at Ms. Iseman’s request. It said Mr. McCain was merely directing the commission to “not act in a manner contradictory to Congressional intent.” Mr. McCain wrote in the letters that a 1996 law, the telecommunications act, required the loophole; a legal opinion by the staff of the commission took the opposite view....“To the extent the F.C.C. shows itself incapable of following Congressional intent,” the letter said, “these issues will become part of our overall review of the commission’s functions and structure during the next session of Congress.”
Just because someone at Kos says "OOooooooooh!" doesn't mean the dog will hunt. The flip side of this is that it will help McCain by further "victimizing" him and portraying him as a 'good man under attack by LIB-RUL forces!"
McCain has left himself room to wriggle out of this business. Anything he doesn't want to say, his campaign says, and then, they can claim that they unintentionally or innocently "misspoke" on his behalf.
And every time the NYT goes after him, that crazyass fundy base gets MORE motivated to Get Out the Vote for him. It is rather perverse that the GOP considers an excoriation by the NYT as some sort of "badge of honor."