Stonewall, Jackson

I guess the first thing to do is go read the New York Times story about McCain's relationship with the blonde lobbyist eight years ago that everyone is buzzing about all over the net, in print, and you can bet it'll be in the number one slot on the evening news tonight. It's four pages long, and pretty sordid reading by everyday people standards, however typical of our nation's capital it might be.

Devastating as it is, the Polk-prize-winning journalist, blogger Josh Marshall at TPM, says it's watered down from what the Times was originally planning to run.

McCain is responding to this very badly, by stonewalling.

He's lamely saying "It's not true," meaning, none of it's true. That's a very inept and desperate response to such detailed bundle of charges, which are being made by people who were very close to him at the time. It bodes ill for him, and makes the situation worse than it already was.

He's gone into full "I've never once in my life done anything wrong" mode, which contradicts the admissions in his own autobiography of his culpability as one of the Keating Five back in the '80's. In other words, he's responding with a panic attack.

I feel kind of sorry for the guy, because the problem he's dealing with goes a lot deeper than just him. Washington D.C. is a sink of corruption, overrun with (as Carl Sagan might have said) "billions and billions" of lobbyists handing out cash, meals, rides on corporate jets, European junkets, donor banquets, and rolls in the hay. They do it, of course, to buy influence with lawmakers, the majority of whom are eagerly peddling that influence.

You can't go into the world's biggest whorehouse as a playa, as McCain has done, and give with a bunch of mealy-mouthed platitudes about "integrity" and a couple half-hearted campaign finance "reform" bills and get away with it forever. You can't play that game as long as he has without the truth coming out.

Barack Obama's biggest virtue may turn out to be his having been in D.C. such a short time.