On the morning of February 21, David Perel, the editor-in-chief of the National Enquirer, was sitting in his Boca Raton office when he pulled up The New York Times website. Scanning the screen, he was surprised by one particularly opaque headline--for mccain, self-confidence on ethics poses its own risk--that topped the Times' now infamous front-page investigation suggesting John McCain had carried on an affair with telecommunications lobbyist Vicki Iseman while he ran the Senate Commerce Committee during the 1990s.