When John McCain was having a hard time and needed help, he got a hand from his spouse, who lent him her company’s aircraft.   The New York Times figured this out with campaign and travel records, and its story relates how over a period of debilitating financial stress in his campaign, he depended heavily on the Cessna Citation Excel, owned by Hensley and Company, of which his wife is Chair.  For five months, “the plane was used almost exclusively for campaign-related purposes” and at a great financial advantage to Senator McCain, whose campaign availed itself of a special exemption for family-owned aircraft to pay only a fraction of the cost that would have been charged in the charter market.

     In other words, McCain was the beneficiary of an enormous corporate subsidy for campaign travel, and it was possible because of a “loophole” in the law that has been left wide open by the FEC’s inability to act in this period when it is (not) functioning with less than the full set of Commissioners.  McCain’s defense is that his compliance is technically defensible—a technical defense of the kind that, when tendered by others, McCain has become famous for denouncing.

     Two points of particular interest stand out in the New York Times story:  McCain’s failure to adhere to his own pledge not to use his wife’s wealth, and the reasons why he will not produce the information the New York Times requested on the specific flights on the Hensley craft. 

What John McCain Would “Never” Do

     McCain very much sees himself as a man of his word, and he would like to see others reflect a similar commitment.  It was a standard McCain production when, asked about the possible use of his wife’s wealth in his campaign to keep his ailing campaign afloat, he dismissed the very idea as beyond anything he could imagine.

I have never thought about it. I would never do such a thing, so I wouldn’t know what the legalities are.

     This is the key:  I would never do such a thing.  So unthinkable was this poaching on spousal wealth that he need not have consulted the “legalities.” 

     Of course, McCain has always made his moral positions clear without speaking clearly or coherently.  In this sentence, he states first that he had never “thought” about using his wife’s wealth to save his campaign, but having never thought about it, he knows he “would never do such a thing.”  That McCain can quickly reach these judgments without the effort of any thought is a mark of his belief that, in these matters, he operates on his own rugged, individual certainty of what is right.

     More important is that he wound up doing just that, the very “thing” that he would never do.  He did not say that he would not anticipate doing it, or that thought it highly improbable, or that he had trouble conceiving of doing it.  No, he would never do it—and he could say that with certainty, knowing that it would be wrong, even without having thought about it.

What John McCain Will Not Disclose

     Now it is done, and the New York Times had questions, having gone to great trouble to piece together the pattern of corporate flight use.  But we learn from the Times that:

The McCain campaign declined to release a detailed accounting of which trips had been made on the plane, the identities of the campaign officials who took those flights and how much the campaign had paid for each one. But it is unlikely that the campaign reimbursed King Aviation for the plane’s operating costs.

     This is a striking refusal of disclosure, since the information requested must be kept under the very rules that McCain claims to have followed.  The campaign is required to maintain a list of all passengers and those designated as campaign travelers; departure and arrival times; and the rate used for calculating the amount owed by the candidate.  11 C.F.R. § 100.93(i).  It will not give out this information. 

     Why?

1.  Who were the campaign travelers onboard? The information is relevant to the further and perfectly legitimate question of whether McCain paid what, even under his loophole, he was required to pay.  His campaign was to pay commercial airfare, on routes served by regularly scheduled commercial service, for each “campaign traveler,” and not for any other passengers.  And there is a definition provided in the rules for campaign traveler:  any passenger “traveling in connection with an election for federal office on behalf of" the candidate.  11 C.F.R. § 100.93(a)(3)(i).  McCain, without showing the records, cannot establish whether more money was saved by a narrow definition of who was a campaign traveler.

2.  What rate was charged?  Without knowing the rate used, it is impossible to know whether McCain’s campaign paid the lawful charge for the plane.  For trips for which first class airfare is to be charged, the required fare is “the lowest unrestricted and non-discounted first-class airfare”; for trips on which only coach is available, then the fare is the “lowest unrestricted and non-discounted coach air fare.”  11 C.F.R. § 100.93(c)(1), (2).  And for other trips….

3.  Were any charter rates owing but not paid?  The first-class airfare or any other commercial fare is not available, and the charter rate “for a comparable commercial airplane of sufficient size to accommodate all campaign travelers” is the price of travel, if service occurs between points on which regularly scheduled commercial service is not available.  11 C.F.R. § 100.93(c)(3).  It is not clear whether the New York Times had access to that data.  McCain did, and he is not telling, though the law mandates that he maintain this information and it is readily available for disclosure.

     It turns out, after all, that McCain did give thought to this question.  He consulted the “legalities,” but he is not yet ready to show that, having learned them, he followed them.  He just wants to be taken at his word.

 Bob Bauer