It appears that John McCain has put himself into situations suggesting that he had an sexual affair with a 40-year-old female lobbyist. This politically devastating information can’t possibly be relevant to the current presidential campaign, unless…
Unless McCain has long-supported a political party that has consciously decided to make sexual moral pronouncements a major and unrelenting part of its political existence, all-the-while conflating the U.S. Constitution with the Ten Commandments and spewing this mentally-stunted version of democracy in a holier-than-thou piss-on you-if-you’re-different-than-who-we-claim-to-be sort of way. McCain, of course, is also a prominent member of the Republican serial polygamy club, [1] another manifestation of Republican hypocrisy when it comes to alleged Republican sexual purity.
Those conservatives who get angry at seeing political smear tactics involving sexual innuendo need to shut up and take this medicine because they’ve all earned it by voluntarily associating with a political party that specializes in hypocritical villainizing (sexual, racial, immigration status, religious beliefs, you name it). If those who are upset by the release of this information regarding McCain and Iseman want these sorts of incidents to become irrelevant, they need to tell the Republican Party (by voting) to get government out of America’s bedrooms, for starters.
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[The General George Meade statute located in front of the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse [3]in Washington, D.C., created by Charles Grafley in 1927 [4], apparently in a cultural climate much different than our own. Posted here just for the hell of it – photo by Erich Vieth]
We’ll know that we’re cured of our obsession with the sexual practices of politicians when a politician’s private sexual choices are no more interesting to us than the private sexual choices of a sports celebrity or a famous movie director. Can you imagine refusing to go to a movie because the director once had a marital affair?
Incidentally, private sexual conduct has nothing to do with whether a person would be a competent president. Consider that each of the following presidents reportedly had affairs [5]: Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy , Dwight D. Eisenhower, Franklin Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland (who had a child with his mistress) and Thomas Jefferson. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, because extremely powerful men are highly likely to have sexual affairs. It’s a fact of life, though this information often doesn’t come out until 30 years after the man’s death. While that fact is not publicly known regarding a particular powerful living man, it is usually because he has a close-knitted circle of powerful comrades who keep that knowledge in check (for example, visit the above links and read about John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt).
The real dirt about McCain is not that he might have had sex with lobbyist Vicki Iseman, but that he spends so much time with lobbyists. McCain, the “anti-lobbyist,” is very comfortable with lobbyists. [6] For instance, consider with whom McCain huddles these days now that he’s essentially wrapped up the Republican nomination:
[W]hen McCain huddled with his closest advisers at his rustic Arizona cabin last weekend to map out his presidential campaign, virtually every one was part of the Washington lobbying culture he has long decried. His campaign manager, Rick Davis, co-founded a lobbying firm whose clients have included Verizon and SBC Telecommunications. His chief political adviser, Charles R. Black Jr., is chairman of one of Washington’s lobbying powerhouses, BKSH and Associates, which has represented AT&T, Alcoa, JPMorgan and U.S. Airways.
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