We will probably never know if John McCain had an affair with that pretty blonde lobbyist, as suggested by the New York Times today, and in my heart of hearts I don't give a damn. I know there are some out there who are still worrying about the sex life of Warren G. Harding and John F. Kennedy, but I am not among them. In the case of McCain and his lady lobbyist, they will both deny it and there is no way of proving it. It will probably remain more of a smudge than a stain on the McCain name. But, of course, as a committed Democrat I do care, in so far as it punches a hole in his egregious campaign as flag-bearer of Republican morality. Personally, I think his physical and political embrace of George W. Bush was the most lewd and obscene act this guy could commit, proving that it was easier for him to withstand years of torture by the Viet Cong than resist his own tortured political ambitions. I wouldn't care about McCain's sex life if he wasn't the soon-to-be nominee of the Republican Party; the party who cared more about the stains on Monica's blue dress than about Americans who couldn't afford a new dress or shoes for their kid's first day at school.
So, if, like McCain, you're the guy who knows better, but you turn your back on your own moderate beliefs and swallow whole the right's agenda on social, economic and foreign policy, indeed, if you contribute to that agenda, you leave yourself open to newspapers and ordinary folks like me saying, "John, we hardly knew ye!" Or did we know you? And do you know better? Weren't you one of the Keating Five, a politician who took big favors from and advanced the cause of a corrupt Savings and Loan company and barely escaped the fallout of its wreckage? Weren't you the guy who made ugly jokes about the looks of the young Chelsea Clinton? Weren't you the guy who left his wife to marry the beer heiress, Stepford Cindy, who is so proud to be an American that she was obliged to break her long vow of silence and take a whack at the words of Michelle Obama? As Henry Kissinger proved to us when he went about with beautiful starlets, power is a great aphrodisiac, and McCain, having reached great power in the Senate, should be allowed the usual senatorial hanky-panky as part of the perks that come with his arduous job: the free airplane rides, hot tickets to sporting events, and charming a gullible mainstream press on the campaign trail, while back-tracking on former political beliefs in the greater cause of making John McCain POTUS.