When a friend of mine first laid out the details of what was being reported in the New York Times about John McCain last week, I knew foul play was afoot.

The conservative factions within McCain’s Republican Party that the senator alienated had teamed up with its sworn enemy, the New York Times, to damage McCain’s reputation and help swing the election towards a more palatable, Manchurian candidate of sorts that they could control. Whether or not this candidate was Hillary Clinton was the only part of my conspiracy theory that I could not explain.

In the aftermath of the failed smear campaign, my conspiracy theory was permanently put to rest. The article however, still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It highlights allegations of Sen. McCain’s seemingly improper conduct with lobbyists and contributors throughout his 24-year career in public service. That the New York Times would write an article pin-pointing all the flaws of the likely Republican nomination is not a sufficient cause for uproar. No politician is perfect, nor should they be portrayed as such. Just last week, The Economist, a widely read, conservative-leaning publication spent as much time attempting to dampen the aura of optimism surrounding Democratic front-runner, Sen. Barack Obama. Articles detailing character flaws, voting records or other aspects of a candidate are an essential part of the way Americans will decide who to vote for in November.

What bothered me about the article was the underlying assumption of guilt in regards to whether or not McCain engaged in a romantic affair with a lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, whose appearance had become increasingly common around McCain’s campaign offices. The article couldn’t find anybody to go on the record and definitively say that a romantic affair occurred between the two. McCain and Iseman have since come out in staunch denial of a relationship that was ever anything more than friendly and professional. Nothing can irreparably smear a good man’s reputation like a sex scandal, and the New York Times knows it.

If anything, John McCain would be the last politician I would expect to be involved with a sex scandal. Men universally acknowledge that it takes discipline to remain monogamous. Well, if discipline was a monetary currency, John McCain would be sipping on Cristal, sailing on a yacht in a man-made lake filled to capacity with it. The man spent more than five years as a prisoner of war and even refused the opportunity to go free after a short time without his fellow prisoners; if there’s anyone Americans can trust to have the necessary discipline to keep it in his pants, it’s John McCain.

The Times article states that members of McCain’s staff had grown anxious regarding the influence Ms. Iseman seemed to have over McCain as she pushed him to act on a number of causes that her lobbying firm deemed prudent. The Times, however, in their inability to find someone willing to go on the record, makes a short-sighted accusation.

It’s inappropriate for the Times to presume that simply because Iseman was an attractive younger woman who started hanging around McCain and his 2000 presidential campaign, she was romantic with him. In the end, Iseman is guilty only of doing her job as a lobbyist, and perhaps doing it well. Now McCain will have changed trains from the straight to the smooth-talk express in order to preserve his reputation and most important, the nomination.