Ignore the uproar; there's a genuine problem with John McCain, and it's not Vicki Iseman

I wasn't going to comment on the McCain story, but my friend Howard Owens has pulled my chain by dismissing it as "nothing but gossip from either unnamed sources or pure speculation." He aims that charge at the lead, but implies that there isn't any substance to the story. There is.

I am as puzzled as anyone by the construction of the NYT story. The focus on the Iseman anecdote obscured the point for many people instead of illustrating it.

The nut graf is here:

"Even as he has vowed to hold himself to the highest ethical standards, his confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest."

This is a legitimate story because the candidate, who has created his own public brand as that of a maverick, a reformer, and a champion of ethics, has surrounded himself with lobbyists, some of whom are actually running their lobbying operations out of McCain's own campaign bus.

He flies on corporate jets, intervenes in public affairs on behalf of his lobbyist friends, and then denies that he does it.

In the current campaign he has borrowed money against public funding, then tried to back out of public funding, which could put him in a position of having committed bank fraud.

As the Times and others continue to follow this story, it will become clear that this is not a story about sexual innuendo but rather a story about a candidate with real problems that voters will have to evaluate in making their decisions in November. The story is going to continue to come out, and it's going to require real reporting that will include some anonymous sources.

At every turn there's going to be a chorus of politically motivated protest. The protests can be fierce, and journalists and their institutions have to stand up to them.

When I was at the Star Tribune in 1990, the newspaper was approached by legal counsel for some teenage girls who said they had been swimming nude with Jon Grunseth, the Republican candidate for governor. Publication of that story -- which first was checked out by an investigative team -- prompted a storm of accusations from the right far worse than anything I've heard in the McCain case.

But it wasn't sensationalism. It was a story of substance, because Grunseth had positioned himself as the "family values" conservative. He was part of a fundamentalist religious right-wing effort to take over the Independent-Republican party.

Over the next few weeks other facts emerged, other women came forward, and there turned out to be a broad pattern of inappropriate behavior by Grunseth that included three-way sandwich sex in his Ecolab office.

Grunseth was forced off the ballot. At the last minute the centrist wing of the party was able to get Arne Carlson, a moderate, on the ticket. Carlson narrowly won the election and in my opinion turned out to be one of the state's better governors in his two terms.

I'm not suggesting that anything like this is going to happen to John McCain. But it's entirely appropriate for the New York Times -- and others -- to inquire and report about who the real John McCain is, and not accept at face value the image he's crafted for himself.

We should not rush to write off reporting that includes anonymous sources or jump to the conclusion that the New York Times is part of some left-wing conspiracy. There's going to be a lot of screeching from the right-wing blogosphere and talk-radio blowhards but it's meaningless. Let the process run its course.