McCain and the New York Times

Ok so this is so last Thursdays news but I'm just getting up to speed here on this one. Thursday the New York Times reported this article about a possible chink in John McCain's armor.I did want to comment on this because of a few bits I've read about this just today. One was from a local newspaper columnist Mark Patinkin from the Providence journal who even thought the New York Times could have done a better job of reporting.

A quote from the Times article states that

"Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity."

and a couple of paragraphs down from that we get..

"even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity."

That my friends is the extent of the evidence of an inappropriate relationship. I fail to see any smoking gun or proof that he had done something wrong. At worst it was some advisor's looking out for their boss.

Another commentary from radio talk show host(WTKK 96.9 Boston) Michael Graham compared them to a high school newspaper or should I say reporting not worthy of a high school paper. Their is only the innuendo of wrong doing rather that hard facts. The rest of the story goes on to give us a history of John McCain without any more supporting evidence.

Mark Patinkin's column takes an example from the story of Woodward and Bernstein's book(which I'm in the process of reading) "All the President's Men" when both reporters submit a story to their editor Ben Bradlee. Bradlee then looks over there work and says “You haven’t got it.”. Maybe similar judgment should have been used in this case.