Wampum

The Googling Monkeys ran across this March 3rd article by Joe Conason in Salon a few minutes ago, on their hunt for more McCain bananas. I tossed the link into Technorati, expect to see a host of blogs discussing Conason's analysis of McCain's latest good fortune, and was suprised to find only a handful.

Conason puts many of the pieces together, but falls flat in the end:

For the past two years, the Arizona senator has seen his institutional adversaries in the Republican establishment brought low, one by one, clearing away the obstacles to his likely presidential bid in 2008. In some cases, their well-earned misfortune can be attributed directly to him; in others, he has merely observed their fortuitous ruin. What matters is that his worst, most effective enemies are distracted, disgraced or endangered by criminal investigations, and will be in no condition to threaten him in the foreseeable future.

That list includes White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed, conservative activist and lobbyist Grover Norquist and a host of lesser Republicans in and out of elected office. The apparatus constructed by this group, which harnessed religious-right voters to corporate lobbyist cash, has been smashed. DeLay has been deposed from the leadership and is fighting for his congressional seat in Texas. Rove may be indicted soon by the special prosecutor in the Plame case for lying to the FBI and, even if he escapes that fate, will be exposed to public shame during the trial of Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Reed is sinking in the Georgia primary for lieutenant governor, and his formerly idolatrous followers in the religious right will never trust him again. Like Reed, Norquist is permanently tainted by his lucrative conniving with Abramoff.

...

To see them all brought low must delight McCain now. Did he foresee such pleasing developments back in early 2004, when he spurred the investigation of super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee? He may not have imagined that a probe of the huge payments to Abramoff and his sidekick Michael Scanlon by several Indian tribes would eventually embroil Reed, Norquist and DeLay, among others. But the Washington Post's first investigative article about the tribal gaming scandal mentioned Abramoff's long-standing ties with DeLay and Reed, and noted that some of the millions bilked from the tribes had gone into the coffers of organizations associated with Norquist.

For McCain, those tantalizing references indicated that he could do well by doing good. Within weeks after that initial Post story, he announced his intention to investigate.

Actually, it was within days.

This is where I part with Conason:

No doubt the greed and grossness of the Abramoff ring truly offended him, along with other politicians of both parties who supported the probe. His determination to expose a Republican scandal was certainly laudable and brave. And the spectacle of his enemies in distress could only have encouraged his persistence -- and his interest in promoting the story to his many admirers in the Washington press corps.

McCain wasn't "brave": His moves from the start were immensely calculated, his goals clear. We should remember that we're looking back now at two-years of facts and events, most of which we learned of in drips and drabs. When McCain first announced his investigation in early March, 2004, he promised hearings by summer. As time went along, and he "reconcilled" with and even campaigned for Bush, the hearings were pushed back farther and farther, into the Fall. When Abramoff and Scanlon finally appeared before the Indian Affairs Committee on September 29, 2004, both took the Fifth, and the remainder of the time was confined to hearing from representatives of tribes who were former clients of Abramoff. The testimony focused almost entirely on Abramoff and Scanlon's dealings with each other and the tribes, and the email exhibits cherry-picked for the most controverisal in terms of tone and language, e.g., the infamous "troglodyte" reference.

McCain managed to look appropriately outraged, a "champion" of Indians (ignoring the fact that some of the Indian actors were far from innocent of wrongdoing, including to their own tribes.) He was able to contain the damage to the GOP, Bush in particular, by keeping the focus of the hearings very narrow - people (and the media) hailed him for actually doing something, while in reality, that "something" was to protect those who really mattered to his 2008 ambitions - Bush and Rove.

During the past year, McCain has used a carrot and stick approach to keep the extorted GOPers in line. He threatened Norquist with a subpoena to testify before the committee, but pulled back when it looked as if Norquist's connection to the Oval Office were enough of a drag on Bush's favorables. Norquist and Ralph Reed, both highly implicated in Abramoff emails, have never testified before the Committee, and McCain has shown no inclination to continue the investigation, despite many unanswered questions. Only a leak from the DoJ to the Washington Post regarding its ongoing investigation into the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy seemed to push McCain back to the hearing table in November, 2005, after a four-and-a-half month hiatus. No testimony has been taken in the last five months.

McCain was not brave, and he wasn't merely vindicative: He's ambitious above and beyond all else, and has played the Abramoff scandal better than Jack himself played his tribal clients.