Who Or What Is A Friend In Washington: John McCain and Iseman

In response to reporters, McCain referred to the lobbyist Vicki Iseman as his "friend." But what, exactly, is a friend in Washington? Journalists are friends with their sources to get them to leak information. Politicians are friends with journalists to spin them. Lobbyists are friends with politicians to get them to support legislation that helps clients. Politicians are friends with lobbyists to get campaign contributions. "If you want a real friend in Washington," goes the old saying, "get a dog."

It's often more complicated than that. Iseman, who was a 32-year-old, attractive, single woman when she began lobbying McCain in 1999, may have enjoyed flirting with a war hero who is fun to be around. If McCain, a married man who was 63 at the time, wasn't a little flattered by the attention, he would be unusual. But that doesn't mean they were sleeping together or that he was performing legislative favors for her.

Still, The New York Times implied as much. In a front-page article reviewing McCain's long history with lobbyists, but zeroing in on Iseman's ties to the Arizona senator when he was preparing to run for president in 1999, the Times wrote: "Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself—instructing staff members to block the woman's access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity."

Physics of Surviving a Fall

Credit: Getty Images
by Charles Euchner for Newsweek:

It's a modern-day miracle. An Ecuadoran native who fell 500 feet from the upper reaches of a New York City skyscraper--and survived. By the time Alcides Moreno hit the alley behind the black-glass luxury apartment building, he was traveling upward of 124mph. Only about half of the people who fall off a four-story building make it. So how is it possible that Moreno is alive?

The answer has a lot to do with physics, luck and a 16-foot plank.

Post Debate Bounce for Mike Huckabee: Howard Fineman

In a breakout performance, Huckabee matched his surge in the Iowa polls, and elsewhere, with a confident, easygoing performance at the CNNYouTube debate. He shrewdly stayed out of the Rudy-Romney eye-scratching ("You never try to stop a dogfight," he said afterward), eloquently defended his support for college scholarships for illegals ("we are a better country than that"), and, when asked "what Jesus would do" about the death penalty, came up with the laugh line of the evening. "Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office," the ordained Baptist preacher said.

Tongue in cheek, Huckabee even offered Rudy help on whether each word of the Bible is literally true. (The former New York mayor, who once considered the priesthood, did fine.)

Huckabee is no rube; he is a practiced, focused politician with communications skills that are equal to or exceed those of any of his rivals, Republican or Democrat. His serious weakness—and it is a big one—is his utter lack of foreign policy or military experience or exposure. In the end that may be fatal. In the meantime, he is complicating the calculus of the race.