Saint McCain

StraightTalkerMaverickReformer™ John McCain evidently can do no wrong in the eyes of the media, even when he does something wrong.

In a column for CNN.com today, Roland Martin said the following:

McCain can now call himself the candidate who is prone to keeping his word and not making the politically smart move.

Don't be surprised to see McCain make this decision a significant part of his campaign, and he and his surrogates will hammer Obama repeatedly between now and November on the one issue that the senior senator from Arizona has made his calling card.

The first sentence, incidentally, appears to have been edited out of the story now, though it was in there when I checked a few hours ago. I wrote Mr. Martin an email:

Given the above passage from your article today, I have inferred that you are unaware of the shenanigans the McCain campaign has gone through with the public financing in the primary season. For starters, I recommend reading this Washington Post article.

To summarize, when McCain's campaign was struggling last year, he opted into the public financing system so that he would get $5.8 million in public funds in March. But, by February, when it became clear that McCain would be the Republican nominee, he decided to back out of the system because it would have limited his spending to $54 million through the end of August. According to the Post, he had already spent about that much through February.

So, McCain sent the FEC a letter informing them that he was opting out of the public financing system. But there was a problem. FEC Chairman David Mason informed McCain that it may not be legal for him to opt out of the financing system because he had already received benefit from the public monies. (as collateral for his bank loan) Unfortunately, four of the six FEC board seats were empty because the nomination process had stalled in the Senate. McCain's lawyers argue that, because the FEC had no quorum, the campaign is not obligated to follow its decisions. So, McCain pressed forward and has now spent well over the $54 million limit, ignoring the Chairman of the FEC.

Further complicating matters are ethical concerns about his bank loan. Ostensibly, McCain would have paid his loan back in one of two ways: 1) either his campaign would take off and he would be able to raise money from standard GOP sources, or 2) his campaign would flop and he would pay the loan back in March after receiving the public funding. Under the later scenario, McCain would have artificially kept his campaign going, long after he was politically dead, so that he could receive the $5.8 million to pay his loan back.

Certainly, the law did not intend for public monies to pay back bank loans for dead campaigns. McCain may be able to argue that his actions were technically legal, (though Chairman Mason apparently believes they may not be) but they sure don't jibe with his reputation as a straight-talking reformer -- and campaign finance reform, as you say, is McCain's "calling card".

So, given that, how exactly can McCain honestly call himself "the candidate who is prone to keeping his word" with respect to campaign finance?