“Never get into a wrestling match with a pig.” John McCain told reporters in New Hampshire in January when asked about Mitt Romney. “You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.”

          Despite his distaste for all-things pork (including barrels), Sen. McCain had no choice last week but to jump in the ring and face the swine. However, the pig in question was not another mudslinging presidential candidate, but a supposedly credible news organization, the New York Times. On January 21, Jim Rutenberg, Marilyn W. Thompson (who has since resigned), David D. Kirkpatrick and Stephen Labaton ran an article titled “For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Own Risk.” According to the article, several of McCain’s top advisors attempted to distance the Senator from Vicki Iseman, a Washington lobbyist, during his early campaign for the 2000 presidential election after they became “convinced the relationship had become romantic.” After Ms. Iseman was increasingly seen at fund-raising events and around Sen. McCain’s office, two “former associates” warned the Senator about the risks he posed to his campaign by associating with her. McCain reportedly admitted his behavior was inappropriate, and promised to avoid the female lobbyist. John Weaver, McCain’s former top strategist and current informal campaign adviser, claims he met Iseman at Washington Station to discuss “her conduct and what she had allegedly told people,” presumably about her relationship with Sen. McCain. To make matters worse for McCain, the article presents the alleged affair as part of a greater character problem, one fraught with dishonesty and hypocrisy. The Times claims that McCain wrote to the Federal Communications Committee and introduced legislation that directly benefitted several telecommunication companies that Ms. Iseman represented and even accepted a free flight with Vicki and one other campaign aid on a corporate jet owned by Paxson Communications, one of Iseman’s clients. For a man who has forged a career out of fighting soft money and special interests, such as the creation of the landmark 2002 McCain-Feingold Act, the accusation of an adulterous relationship with a female lobbyist is bad. Like Miss-Piggy-in-a-String-Bikini bad.

          However, John McCain was not the one to come limping out of the mud pit in this wrestling match. Not only was he not hurt by the accusations, but actually moved up in the national polls. According to the Gallup Daily Election Poll, McCain had 58% of Republican support on February 20^th, but rose to 63% the day after the Times article was published, and peaked at 65% on the 23^rd – his highest approval rating yet in the race. Perhaps more interesting are the results from the Rasmussen Reports General Election Match-Up Poll. Before the “Self-Confidence on Ethics” article was published on February 20, John McCain led Hillary Clinton by a 4% margin in a presidential match-up, but trailed Barack Obama with 42% to Obama’s 46%. However, after the adultery allegations were aired, it seems that McCain actually improved his standings nationally. By February 22,McCain had managed to tie Obama with 44% of the voters polled, and then passed him on February 23 with 46% of the vote to Obama’s 43%.  

          In the end, it was the New York Times that came out with its snout dirty. John McCain managed to come off as a bewildered innocent, while the Times looked more like Wilbur in Charlotte’s Web when he realizes he’s to become Canadian bacon. Publications, pundits, and politicians alike reacted violently to the New York Times article, accusing the paper of running an unsubstantiated and slanderous story. For a story of such great political consequence and with such potentially damaging effects on Sen. McCain’s career and candidacy, it seemed irresponsible of the Times to base their entire argument on the inconclusive information from a couple unnamed “former associates.” Steve Adubato, an analyst at MSNBC, railed back against the New York Times for using lurid, sexual copy to lure readers into a baseless article. “You can’t go with a story on the front page, potentially destroying the reputation and possibly the marriage of the presumptive GOP nominee, based on the ‘concerns’ of two unnamed former campaign aides.”

          But why didn’t any of the mud stick to McCain? Even if the accusations were false, why didn’t the mere suggestion of infidelity cause a greater political crisis (or one at all)? After all, McCain doesn’t exactly have a spotless marital track record. He married his current wife Cindy Hensley (17 years his junior) in 1980 only a month after his divorce to his first wife Carol was finalized. In a 1999 interview with CNN’s Bernard Shaw, McCain indirectly admitted to having an extra-marital affair during his first marriage. Shaw posed the question, “You had an affair your first marriage. The sitting president is been impeached for his conduct with Monica Lewinsky. Should a politician's private acts be part of public discourse?” McCain simply responded with, “Let me say that I am responsible for the break-up of my first marriage. I will not discuss or talk about that any more than that. If someone wants to criticize me for that, that's fine. I believe that the standards of morality of conduct will be determined, not by the politician themselves, but by the media and the American people. I will leave that judgment to them.” In Robert Timberg’s book John McCain: An American Odyssey, an admission by John’s first wife Carol gives weight to the adultery claim. "The breakup of our marriage was not caused by my accident or Vietnam or any of those things….I attribute it more to John turning 40 and wanting to be 25 again than I do to anything else." Interestingly enough, Cindy Hensley was exactly 25 when she met the 43-year-old John McCain at a military reception in Hawaii, when he was still married to his wife of 14 years, Carol Shepp.

          The most important question here is: can we see history repeating itself in Victoria Iseman? Vicki is successful, attractive, blond, and 31 years younger than the Arizona senator. When you consider her looks also bear a sharp resemblance to Cindy Lou You-Know-Who, the possibility of an affair occurring between Iseman and McCain gains credence.  So why aren’t voters more alarmed? After all, adultery is not something the public takes lightly when voting for elected officials. In an April 1007 Gallup poll measuring the most “Essential Characteristics for the Next President,” 37% of those polled said it was “essential” that the next President had been faithful to his or her spouse, and 40% said it was “important, but not essential.” Another Gallup poll conducted in May of 2001 found that 91% of Americans consider it to be “always wrong or almost always wrong for married people to have sexual relations with someone other than their spouses.” In the same survey, 89% of those polled considered “married men and women having an affair” to be morally unacceptable.

          If most Americans still consider infidelity to be important or essential to a Presidential candidate’s character, and a vast majority of Americans still view adultery as immoral, than why hasn’t there been more speculation and criticisms of the Arizona senator following the New York Times’ accusations? Former presidential candidates suffered great media speculation at the surfacing of adultery rumors, like in 2004 when John Kerry was accused of having an affair with Alexandra Polier. In contrast, not only did McCain slip out of the Iseman scandal with no visible wounds, but also actually enjoyed a jump in the polls. It seems any attempt at sullying McCain’s character or opening the discourse on his fidelity were killed by the Times’ irresponsible handling of the story. The very dubious nature of the article doomed the adultery accusation from the start, and served only to discredit the publication rather than discredit the senator. Timothy Noah of Slate argued that the Times’ lack of hard evidence was ultimately their Achilles ’ heel. “Regardless of whether he had the affair, McCain wins. If he was Vicki Iseman's lover, the Times and New Republic have now discredited the story by failing to produce much in the way of evidence. If he wasn't Vicki Iseman's lover, then he has shamed the press with his righteous indignation.” Michael Gerson of the Washington Post underscores the popular sentiment that the only party to come out of this scandal embarassed– is the New York Times. He argues that the American public is willing to forgive a presidential candidate for extra-marital affairs as long as the candidate is “completely forthright about their past.” It is this very question of honesty that Gerson believes the Times should be held accountable for. “Americans, it turns out, will forgive most things -- except for self-serving deception…It is the Times and not the candidate that should be mortified. If this is all the Times has -- sexual innuendo and anonymous sources -- it really is a scandal.” 

          But blogsters and reporters weren’t alone in their criticism. Readers posted nearly 2,500 comments regarding “For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Own Risk” on the Times website, many of them angrily questioning the timing and substance of the article. Adultery accusations have never been taken lightly, and if the New York Times expected to pass this story off with any semblance of respectability, they would