Two days after D.C. super-lawyer Bob Bennett released his new memoir, yet another VIP client landed in trouble -- John McCain, with the New York Times' controversial story about his friendship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman-- and suddenly Bennett was on every TV channel holding forth.

Fortunate timing for a new author? Actually, the opposite: The well-connected Bennett said he had already scored the airtime to flack his book; he then used his moments on camera to defend the GOP front-runner and shift the debate to media ethics.

"I've always said: It's better to be lucky than good," he said with a laugh at a party in his honor Friday night at the Hay-Adams.

He's the Other Bennett: Big brother to conservative pundit Bill and a former federal prosecutor turned go-to guy for bigwigs in peril -- Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones case, Paul Wolfowitz in the World Bank ethics scandal, Judy Miller in the CIA leak investigation. In "In the Ring: The Trials of a Washington Lawyer," he writes: "I have often felt that being born in Brooklyn and having a few hundred street fights under my belt was better preparation for practicing law here than receiving law degrees from Georgetown and Harvard."

But he was a big softy Friday night, doting on wife Ellen, his daughters and new grandchild, greeting a crowd heavier on friends and neighbors ( Esther Coopersmith, Steve Trachtenberg, Mac McLarty, a whole lotta lawyers) than former clients. He told us that all trial lawyers are deeply superstitious (in court, he always makes a point of mentioning his girls and their favorite storybook character, Alice in Wonderland) and that he was reluctant to write about his childhood. But then he realized how much his parents' divorce, his mother's drinking and his role as a big brother molded him as a lawyer: "What really turns me on in the law is when I have an individual to protect."