The McCain Rules

[babylonsister]

The McCain Rules

The press has been reasonably kind to Barack Obama. But this is nothing compared with its eagerness to adopt any argument even mentioned by the McCain campaign.


Paul Waldman | July 8, 2008 | web only



"Sure, reporters have a soft spot for John McCain. But they've been pretty kind to Barack Obama, too. So what's going to happen now that two politicians they like are running against each other?" As I've been out promoting the book I co-wrote about McCain and the media, I've been asked some version of this question dozens of times. The premise is partly true, in that Obama has enjoyed some periods of positive coverage over the course of this campaign, but there was never any comparison between Washington reporters' feelings for the two presidential contenders. What happened last week with Gen. Wesley Clark made that all too clear, as do some emerging narratives that are moving right from the McCain campaign's mouth to reporters' pens.

When Clark made the obvious point last Sunday that the fact that McCain was a prisoner of war in Vietnam does not necessarily qualify him to be president, the reaction of the elite media was swift and sure. Watch this amazing video compilation and see all the shocked shaking of heads and flabbergasted faces, starting with that of CBS' Bob Schieffer, who conducted the original interview with Clark. They simply could not understand how anyone would even suggest that McCain's POW experience is not particularly relevant. After all, for so long they have been saying that what happened in Hanoi 40 years ago makes McCain the moral yardstick against which all politicians must be measured, the walking definition of integrity and character, no matter what he may have done in the decades since.

To justify their outrage, many in the media found it necessary to charge that Clark had actually attacked McCain for what he endured in Vietnam, though he did nothing of the sort. The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz said, "Clark used an appearance on 'Face the Nation' Sunday to strafe John McCain over his Vietnam War record." ABC's David Wright waxed poetic, in a tone with which we've become familiar: "John McCain campaigned in Pipersville, Pennsylvania, where, to this day, he can't raise his arms above his shoulders because of injuries he suffered in Vietnam. Shot down in combat and tortured relentlessly for five and a half years as a POW, the experience shaped the core of his character. And that makes this comment by Obama supporter Wesley Clark especially provocative."

Perhaps we can forgive Wright's strange assertion that McCain can't raise his arms in Pipersville (but presumably can in other places), because two days later, Wright mustered up the courage to ask McCain just how his Vietnam experience prepared him for the presidency. You might think it was a fair query, but McCain, as Wright described it, "recoiled back in his seat at the very question." He never actually gave an answer, and Wright didn't ask again.

But McCain need not answer that question, as far as most of the press is concerned. Like so much when it comes to McCain, it is merely to be accepted, not questioned. McCain's integrity dwarfs that of ordinary mortals, McCain understands foreign policy, McCain is a maverick, McCain is the one politician who never does anything for political reasons. These ideas are simply to be memorized and repeated; the allegedly wise and jaded reporters subject them to about as much scrutiny as the most ardent fundamentalist gives to the Ten Commandments.

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http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_mccain_rules

[ihavenobias]

1. K & R. McCain IS getting a free ride. Also...