Real issue is favors

“I’ve never done any favors for anybody – lobbyists or special interest groups. That’s a clear, 24-year record.”

—Sen. John McCain, presidential candidate, to reporters, after The New York Times broke a story last week that the senator and a lobbyist were linked by either business, romance or both.

First spins of McCain’s relationship with Vicki Iseman, 40, had it as a romance scandal. Not true, McCain insisted. It was business, and a friendship over a number of years. The McCain campaign knew the story was coming; the Times has been criticized for rushing it into print.

At the story’s core is lobbying. For McCain to publicly say he’s lily-white in regard to lobbyists and favorable treatment is incongruous at best.

McCain retired from the Navy in 1981, as a highly decorated captain and naval aviator who spent part of his military career in a Hanoi prison. Much of this has been documented and repeated in campaigns. In 1982, he ran for Congress for the Arizona’s first congressional district and served two terms before running for the Senate, which he also won. In the course of developing a political career, McCain made powerful friends and allies, like Sen. Barry Goldwater, the icon of conservative politics, and financial wheeler/dealer, Charles Keating.

McCain and four other U.S. Senators – Allan Cranston, Don Riegle, Dennis DeConcini, John Glenn – used their influence to get favorable regulation for Keating’s savings-and-loan empire, Lincoln Savings and Loan, which was based in Irvine, Calif. Keating once famously boasted that sure, he expected preferential treatment, because of all the money he was donating to the senators’ campaigns. When S&L regulators were bearing down on the burgeoning scandal and collapse, Keating sought relief through the senators to have the investigators, “back off” in 1989, according to records. The Lincoln debacle cost taxpayers more than $23 billion in a federal bailout. Some 21,000 elderly investors lost their life savings and $285 million in investments. Unrepentant, Keating did four years in prison. Cranston, a Democrat, was censured by the Senate. The other four Democratic senators were rebuked officially, with McCain being cited for using “poor judgment.”

That was a long time ago.

Since then, McCain, embarrassed and chastened for his Keating-related actions, has championed greater disclosure for lobbyists. In 2002, with Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, authored the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act, putting him at odds with members of the conservative wings his party

Most voters are going to give McCain, 71, a pass on this one, we believe, because primarily of the clock. His time with Iseman, a telecommunications lobbyist, dates back to the late 1990s; his time with the Keating Five is ancient history, by most political standards.

The real issue is lobbying and favors. Lobbying is a fact of life, and has been around since the days of Washington. Nonetheless, democracy is diminished each time influence is bought, or favors are granted.