Senate experience has its downside

HOW SHE SEES IT

Senate experience

has its downside

By MARSHA MERCER

Media General News Service

WASHINGTON — Many hear the call, but few sitting senators actually make the move to the White House. Last week, we saw why.

Whatever your opinion of The New York Times’ report about John McCain’s relationship with a female lobbyist, the incident illustrates the pitfalls of Senate experience for a potential president.

Senators have voting records that can be picked over by opponents. A senator may vote reluctantly for a bill because he supports its intent, even if it contains other provisions he opposes. Try explaining that in 15 seconds.

Senators have to compromise, which can smack of deal-making. They wield power, which can appear to — and does — corrupt. And, of course, people talk.

Voters tend to like uncomplicated, executive types — governors — as the country’s chief executive. The last incumbent senator to move directly to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. was John F. Kennedy in 1961. The only other was Warren G. Harding in 1921. This year, the likeliest nominees in both parties are sitting senators -- but only one has decades in the Senate.

Democratic rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama came to the Senate in 2001 and 2005, respectively. Republican McCain was elected to the House in 1982, to the Senate in 1986 and has been chairman of one of its most powerful committees.

Lobbyists

The Commerce Committee has wide-ranging jurisdiction over the nation’s communications and transportation industries as well as science and consumer affairs. Legions of lobbyists try to influence the decisions of the man who leads the committee. McCain headed Commerce from 1997 to 2001 and 2003 to 2005.

The article in The New York Times last week reported that early in McCain’s 2000 run for president, his campaign staff became so worried about the appearance of his relationship with a telecommunications lobbyist that they tried to keep her away. The article said McCain, 71, and Vicki Iseman, 40, both deny a romantic relationship, and McCain did so again in a news conference in Toledo, Ohio.

McCain called Iseman a friend he had seen at receptions, fund-raisers and in appearances before his committee. She’s one of his many friends who represent various interests, he said, adding, “I had meetings with hundreds of them.” There’s nothing wrong with that, he maintained, unless they exert undue influence or get special treatment. He emphatically said they did not.

McCain may believe the people currying his favor were his friends. If so, he needs to brush up on Harry Truman: “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” Even if there was no romance -- and there’s no evidence there was -- his campaign was right to be sensitive to the appearance of favoritism. A Senate chairman’s chumminess with someone who had business before his committee may be the way of Washington, but it doesn’t look right to the very voters McCain has courted as a foe of money in politics.

The incident may blow over. The Times’ allegations were from anonymous sources. McCain insisted he has done nothing wrong, and his wife Cindy said she trusts her husband. Still, such allegations have a way of changing the conversation.

Just 36 hours or so before his Toledo news conference, McCain had a very different view of how he’d spend his time.

“I will fight every moment of every day in this campaign to make sure that Americans are not deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change,” he said, referring to Obama.

Instead, there was McCain, who has made fighting corruption and money in politics his hallmark, forced to spend precious moments defending his good name.

An ‘investigation’

While his allies dismissed the reports as quick-and-dirty hits by the liberal news media, McCain said he’d been responding to questions from the Times for months. He called the paper’s work an “investigation.” According to news reports, he hired Atty. Robert Bennett, who defended Bill Clinton, as his lawyer.

The incident underscores one of Obama’s crowd-pleasing speech lines. Some folks, he says archly, say he hasn’t been in Washington long enough.

“So we need to season and stew him a little bit and boil all the hope out of him ... Twenty years from now, when he talks and acts like us, maybe he’ll be ready” to be president.

The line works every time. The crowds boo at the thought of more Washington experience.

X Marsha Mercer is Washington bureau chief of Media General News Service. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.