It's the Yak Butter Flu Remedy Gap Fest.

This is the Slate Political Gab Fest.

For Friday, February 22, 2008, I'm Dale Wilman.

John is back and joins David and Emily in Washington today.

On this week's agenda, McCain's Bad Day,

Obama and Hillary as plagiarists, and a wide world of foreign affairs. And now, to introduce the

discussion, here's John. Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest. I'm John Dickerson,

here with David Plotz and Emily Bazelon. I'm happy to be joining them this week because I haven't been.

Yeah, well, no, I was sick last week.

That's true.

I'm constantly sick.

People are sending me flu remedies.

I'd like to thank those of you who have sent in little remedies.

I thought the yak butter was a little much.

Republicans, Emily, John McCain had a very bad day on Thursday when the New York Times published a story about both improper lobbying, an improper relationship with a lobbyist, which also may have just been an improper relationship.

Your reaction to the story.

Well, two parts of the story.

There's this question of whether he was having an affair with this woman whose name is Vicki Iceman. And then there's a question of just forget about the affair. If she were a man, and McCain had no interest in her at all other than friendship. You're not saying it an affair with a man, though. No. No, opposite of that. If there's, you take the affair idea completely off the table and they just had this kind of very chummy intimate friendship. Is there something wrong with that? And the Times made some specific allegations about actions McCain had taken that benefited various clients of her lobbying firm. And I get sort of lost in this about whether this is just sort of, I mean,

lobbying is legal. Of course, senators vote in particular ways and take action. Or does this

cross the line over to the kind of, you know, sleazy influence that is troublesome in any senator,

but particular a senator who's running for president on this kind of Mr. Ethics platform.

John began by characterizing it as a bad day for McCain. I actually think quite the opposite.

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