Driving the Davis story

Obama's campaign pushes on the report that Rick Davis's firm was on Freddie Mac's payroll:

“It is now clear that both John McCain and Rick Davis did not tell the truth about Davis’s continuing financial relationship with Freddie Mac, one of the actors at the center of this financial crisis. It’s troubling not only that Davis’s firm—with which he is still associated and which the McCain campaign paid directly last year—continued to be compensated by Freddie Mac until as recently as last month, but that the firm did little work and apparently was being paid simply to provide access to the McCain campaign," says communications director Dan Pfeiffer. “The question that now needs to be answered is this: did Freddie Mac or any other special interests buy access to John McCain by compensating top officials, including Rick Davis?”

There's hasn't been any strong evidence so far to suggest Davis's client list has influenced McCain's decisions. Perhaps his firm's most troublesome client -- the pro-Putin, anti-American side in Ukraine -- got no love from McCain. The Times suggested that McCain wasn't as outspoken a foe of Freddie Mac as some others in the Senate, but he certainly wasn't an ally.