About 3 p.m. Tuesday, Senator John McCain ducked off the Senate floor, entered the Republican cloakroom and took out his mobile phone. Just hours after accepting the resignation of his two top campaign aides, he was making a conference call to his top fund-raisers to urge them to keep up the fight.Actually, the difference is that Al Gore actually had a shot of winning the election. Some people say he really did.
The call, however, may only have exacerbated an already tough week for Mr. McCain. Senate ethics rules expressly forbid lawmakers to engage in campaign activities inside Senate facilities. If Mr. McCain solicited campaign contributions on a call from government property, that would be a violation of federal criminal law as well.
[...]
It was the kind of technical mistake that seasoned aides — like the ones his campaign is now letting go — are supposed to prevent.
Mr. McCain was well aware of the rules. Ten years ago he led Republican calls for an independent prosecutor to investigate accusations of violations of the same rules by Vice President Al Gore. Mr. McCain went on to make the episode a cornerstone of both his 2000 Republican primary campaign and his argument for the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.
Matt David, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, confirmed that Mr. McCain made the phone call from the cloakroom. Mr. David said Mr. McCain used his campaign cellphone and did not specifically ask the fund-raisers for campaign contributions, which would have been a crime. And the spokesman sought to distinguish Mr. McCain’s call, made as he was managing the Republican side of a fierce Senate debate over the Iraq war, from the accusations once made against Mr. Gore.
“This is very different than systematically abusing your office to raise money,” Mr. David said.
Of course, Sen. McCain could have been distracted because of all those gay sweaters he's been wearing.
