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Down the up staircase
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Jan. 21, 2000 |
Sappy notions about a particular candidate may persist for a while at the beginning of a presidential campaign, but sooner or later the mundane truth emerges: Politicians are human beings, not heros, and their rise to power and their will to succeed always involves compromise as well as principle. Thus is the shiny varnish stripped away by the same media that applied it so recently and so assiduously, leaving candidates denuded and voters disappointed.
Joe Conason Joe Conason's column appears in Salon News every other Tuesday.
That seems to describe the situation of McCain, whose blustery charm can no longer conceal the more dubious aspects of his record in the Senate. The Arizona Republican enjoyed a long, happy ride courtesy of the national press as the champion of campaign finance reform, but on closer examination he has turned out to be a prime example of the abuses he set out to expose. Why so many reporters and pundits came to adore the charismatic McCain is easy to understand. He apparently likes them and courts their favor, treating them as the important people they know themselves to be. He sometimes sounds too candid for his own good, and perhaps he is. Those personal qualities combined with his dramatic war record make McCain a conservative Republican who is irresistible even to many liberal Democrats. Indeed, in a presumably unconscious imitation of his own semi-confessional style, more than a few of the journalists covering the maverick senator have been compelled to admit that they no longer feel entirely objective about the man. Aside from his personality, however, the most attractive aspect of McCain has been his record on campaign finance reform, which could now be his downfall. On an issue of paramount importance to pundits and editorial boards, he has distinguished himself from the gang of greedy hacks who control Capitol Hill. He has repeatedly defied the Republican leadership on that question, lonely and heroic in his defense of public integrity, even at the risk of his own standing in the party. How unedifying, then, to learn that McCain -- the very powerful chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee -- is just as vulnerable to accusations of trading influence for campaign funds as his more obviously villainous adversaries. The stories began to trickle out after the Boston Globe reported that he had written letters to the Federal Communications Communication on behalf of a corporate contributor from Pittsburgh. Other news outlets started scrutinizing his relationship with U.S. West, the telecommunications firm that has long been his most generous supporter. The Arizonan's many favors to contributors in the rail, airline, liquor and gambling industries are already chronicled in "The Buying of the President 2000" by the Center for Public Integrity. According to legend, McCain embarked on his crusade for reform a decade ago, after being burned in the Keating Five scandal, when he and four other senators were caught assisting savings-and-loan crook Charles Keating in his travails with federal regulators.
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