McCain will be in town today to talk with Gov. Bobby Jindal. I'm assuming McCain will tell him face-to-face that he won't be Veep, but that he'll get the consolation prize of keynote address at the GOP convention. That's what Bobby wanted all along, in my opinion. However, as the McCain camp grows more desperate, far-flung scenarios seem more possible. The chances of a McCain/Romney ticket have grown. The two camps hate one another but Romney has electoral strength in the Mormon Mountain west, is a "businessman", and can dish out sharp attacks with a 1000 watt smile. Jindal simply... can't. (I'm not sure if Pawlenty can, either.)
All these things interest and amuse me, but not as much as the following item. Yesterday, the McCain campaign sent me an email with the following information:
The media is in love with Barack Obama. If it wasn't so serious, it would be funny.
Then they linked to this edited video compilation of "media love" for Obama.
That is truly rich. I mean, what were the wizards on the Str8 Tawlk Express thinking? It's like they were partying with Jermaine Stewart and drank too much cherry whine. (Uh huh)The WSJ already had an account of their maneuver which began
John McCain used to jokingly call the media "my base." Now, he and his aides are becoming increasingly frustrated with what they see as a growing press infatuation with his rival, Barack Obama.
In terms of "media love", the bias towards Obama is real, but it would certainly rank well below the orgy of swoon that took place in 1999 during McCain's Str8 Tawlk campaign. (After Bush defeated Mac in the despicable S. Carolina primary, the media swoon transferred to Dubya, albeit somewhat diminished. However, the "war on Gore" continued, unabated, with maximum prejudice.)
In the past decade, Bob Somerby has chronicled and analyzed the lovely media narratives that McCain cultivated in '99. These narratives continue in the present day, but they've been overshadowed by Barack Obama. (This dynamic was foreseeable, btw.) And now jilted McCain is whining about the treatment someone else is getting. That's very rich.
Below, I'll link to quotes and excerpts from Somerby's incomparable Daily Howler archives, to refresh some of our memories about the press and McCain.
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Somerby:
During the Campaign 2000 affair, reporters clearly loved the fact that McCain let them ride around on his bus; answered their questions, including the dumb ones; gave them free doughnuts whenever they asked; and kept telling scribes they were smart.
Somerby:
Nancy Gibbs blurted an embarrassing truth, right in the pages of Time:
GIBBS (12/13/99): There is no entourage, no bubble of staff members around him...And then there are the stories he tells—to which, if there's a pattern, it's to exalt other people and deflate himself. A presidential candidate is not supposed to talk at length and on the record about the rules he broke or the strippers he dated, or the time he arrived so drunk that he fell through the screen door of the young lady he was wooing. The candor tells you more than the content, and reporters sometimes just decide to take him off the record because they don't want to see him flame out and burn up a great story.
...
KURTZ (12/8/99): "At one level, the press protects him," says Jacob Weisberg, political writer for Slate magazine. "He delivers these stupid lines all the time. The typical response from journalists is either not to report it or to congratulate him for being so blunt...”
...[T]his appalling press conduct worked quite well for McCain—until (in one example) a substitute New York Times scribe reported a few of his “candid” remarks, and the solon was forced to deal with public reaction to his wonderful “candor.” (To his use of the word “gooks,” for example—but that’s not the only example.)
Somerby:
KINSLEY: Journalists love him, of course. His frankness flatters us, and he flatters us more directly as well. Visiting a big convention of journalists last fall, McCain joined a group that was gambling at the hotel casino until the wee hours. In his speech the next morning, he cleverly nailed his audience and himself by declaring that he was happy to be among “my base.”
Somerby:
Frankel: It's easy to imagine that [McCain's melanoma scars] were inflicted by his North Vietnamese captors, not by a cancer surgeon.
Somerby
LEIBY (8/31/04): Sen. John McCain tended to his political base Sunday night: the entire national media. The maverick Arizona Republican, once (and future?) presidential aspirant and press secretary's dream hosted a hyper-exclusive 68th birthday party for himself at La Goulue on Madison Avenue, leaving no media icon behind. Guests included NBC's Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert, ABC's Peter Jennings, Barbara Walters, Ted Koppel and George Stephanopoulos, CBS's Mike Wallace, Dan Rather and Bob Schieffer, CBS News President Andrew Heyward, ABC News chief David Westin, Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons, CNN's Judy Woodruff and Jeff Greenfield, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, CNBC's Gloria Borger, PBS's Charlie Rose—pause here to exhale—and U.S. News & World Report publisher Mort Zuckerman, Washington Post Chairman Don Graham, New York Times columnists William Safire and David Brooks, author Michael Lewis and USA Today columnist Walter Shapiro. They and others dined on lobster salad, loin of lamb, assorted wines, creme brulee, lemon souffle and French tarts.
[...]
One guest, who asked not to be identified, described invitees as "the Journalistic Committee for a Government of National Unity." After singing "Happy Birthday" to McCain, many of the guests—Russert, Borger and Shapiro, among others—cabbed to Elaine's, where Zuckerman hosted a mob scene that included Fox's Bill O'Reilly, PBS's John McLaughlin and New York Gov. George Pataki, The Post's Mark Leibovich reports. By 11 p.m. the Second Avenue landmark—with red carpet outside—was elbow-to-elbow with martini-sipping guests. Thus commenced Campaign 2008 (we think).
Somehow, it was the singing of “Happy Birthday” which always struck us as most wrong: At any rate, free food! And plenty of pandering! And after they sang “Happy Birthday” to Mac, the gang cabbed it up to Elaine’s.
If you don’t understand the press corps’ coverage of McCain, perhaps you can find a hint or two in Leiby’s dispatch.
Somerby
Greider: In addition to old veterans, candidate McCain's greatest asset is the friendly press...McCain returns the affection..."Most reporters are smart people," he explains.
Somerby (1999):
And Fred Barnes, in a recent Weekly Standard, paints a truly remarkable picture of press corps incompetence and immaturity:
BARNES: Gathered in a pack they can be cruel and unfeeling, but not when they're on their own. They're softies, easily schmoozed, ever susceptible to being fooled by appearances... At the moment, the likability award is shared by George W. Bush and John McCain, rivals for the Republican presidential nomination. Bush is fun to be around, gives everyone, including reporters, a nickname, and is something of a wise guy, which gets him in trouble from time to time but appeals to journalists.
One's cheeks rouge for the press corps to hear this account, of people "cruel and unfeeling in a pack" but willing to pander if given a nickname. Barnes offers this portrait as an amusing aside. But if his remarkable portrait of the press corps is accurate, it is a disturbing account of a massive fault line in our debased public discourse.
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McCain and Bush took advantage of the media's friendly, insubstantial coverage in 1999. Bush and Mac were the fresh faces on the national scene then, unlike boring Gore, whom the press hated. Now the situation is different, and McCain's press coverage isn't uniformly glowing. The press isn't bending the rules for him quite like they did. They've found a better story in Obama, and probably shudder as the McCain campaign fashions itself more and more as Bush's third term.
The press still gives McCain too much of a pass on too many things. But they're being more critical of him this time around, and less critical of the Democratic opponent.
Times have changed, and McCain complains.
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Update: this post was edited slightly for clarity.
Labels: Big Al, Elections and Campaigns, Jindal, McCain
