Yesterday, the New York Times released a front-page article about John McCain's potentially romantic relationship with a lobbyist for his campaign, forty-year-old Vicki Iseman. Both McCain and Iseman emphatically denied any romantic relationship, but the question isn't really whether or not a romantic relationship exists but whether America thinks it does.
With Romney out of the race, I don't think there's any real danger that McCain won't win the conservative ticket (I'm definitely hoping not, because I would probably break down and weep if Mike Huckabee were running for president). The real danger for McCain is if the winner of the Democratic ticket manages to damage McCain's "straight talk".
On January 26, 1998 Bill Clinton uttered his famous and damning words "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" referring to Monica Lewinsky. Partially due to his false denial, Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives on December 19 of that year (the Senate later acquitted him). Even today, ten years after Clinton's denial, that moment is probably the most famous of his presidency. If an alleged (although in this case it turned out to be true) affair was so damaging in 1998 that an extremely popular and successful president was actually impeached because of it, McCain's alleged affair with Iseman could prove devastating for his campaign, which is largely founded on McCain's "straight talk" and moral values.
In the end, we're going to have to wait and see how the media, and most importantly, voters respond to this new development in the McCain campaign. My advice to future candidates: stay away from the opposite sex until you're well out of office.
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I hardly think that this is the same situation. In the incident with Lewinsky, they had a confession, yet here, the “evidence” is purely circumstantial.