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By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in 2008 | Jon McCain | Smear Tactics — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

We are now fixated over the issue of whether John McCain met a few people a while back thanks to the efforts of a lobbyist (with whom it is alleged without any evidence whatsoever that McCain had an affair of some sort). The alleged meeting was concerning regulatory issues surrounding the sale of a television station in Pittsburgh. One lobbyist claims that he did indeed meet with McCain. Another thinks not:

A former Paxson Communications president said Saturday he never met with John McCain about the Arizona senator writing letters to the Federal Communications Commission regarding the regulatory delay of a Pittsburgh TV station sale.

Dean Goodman, who was in charge of the company's lobbying efforts in 1999, told The Associated Press he also doubts that chief executive Lowell W. "Bud" Paxson met with McCain over the issue, and said he doesn't recall such a meeting.

McCain's presidential campaign said the Arizona senator and then-chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee did not meet with Paxson or his lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, before sending the letters, which have drawn controversy in recent days. But Paxson told The Washington Post in a story published Saturday that he and "probably" Iseman met with McCain on the matter several weeks before the senator sent the letters.

Goodman, who left the company a year and a half ago, took issue with that account in a telephone interview from West Palm Beach, Fla.

"I never met with or discussed this with Senator McCain," Goodman said. "I don't recall Bud meeting with McCain. It would be extremely rare that there would be a meeting that I didn't attend, and I can tell you that I didn't have a meeting with McCain on this issue."

"Whether Bud discussed it with him or not, via some other mechanism, I can't rule it out," Goodman added. But, he said, "I don't think there was a meeting."

Efforts to reach Paxson and Iseman were not successful.

Read on . . .

The only allegation thus far is that McCain asked the FCC to consider the deal speedily and to rule on it one way or the other. True, this set off some alarms at the FCC, which apparently believed that it was being muscled by McCain, but there is no evidence of said muscling and it is entirely possible that those who objected to McCain's mere request that the FCC make a decision one way or the other were just a wee bit hypersensitive.

Look, John McCain was not my first choice for the Republican nomination and there are plenty of issues on which I disagree with him. But this is a bum rap. There is no evidence that McCain has acted improperly and every indication that this story is, indeed, a smear job. I know that we have better and more important things to talk about. Why we don't do so is a mystery.