One of McCain's problems is that the knee-jerk conservative right, his base as a GOP nominee, doesn't like him.
The NYT knows people think they are liberal, but as their war coverage and other recent history shows, they seem just as much an establishmentarian neo-con tool as the rest of the "liberal media".
They knew that by printing the story, as vague as it is, they'd inflame conservatives who think the NYT and the media are all just liberals out to get conservatives. And the NYT had to know that doing this after McCain was decided as the nominee would make conservatives think conspiratorially about it. Conservatives think the media "picked" McCain as the nominee (hell, no doubt the media loves him so for once I can't disagree with conservative media analysis), so they think the "bait and switch" is that they got conservatives to pick the guy they had dirt on. As if there isn't dirt on all of these corrupt bastards that the media is usually happy to ignore. At any rate, one result of the story is that the far-right talkers are finally coming to the Saint's defense.
Perhaps the real bait and switch is something like this:
- The NYT knows that their reputation is liberal, and that anything they do will be considered a liberal conspiracy by the conservatives who dominate the American media and tell the people what to think.
- The NYT is part of the corporate establishment and wants the GOP nominee to win, just like the media establishment as a whole obviously has the last few cycles.
- The NYT therefore knows that if they print such a story, it will make conservatives mad at the lightning-rod NYT, causing conservatives to finally unite behind McCain in backlash and increase his chances.
- Since the rest of the media is even more dominated by conservatism than the NYT and always assumes the NYT liberal, the NYT knows that printing this story will help further the "liberal bias" narrative about the media. The rest of the media will propagate this narrative by using the NYT "smear" of St. McCain as an example. I see this happening already. Again, helping the conservative cause by distracting people from the real bias.
- Although being used as an example of "bias" could hurt the NYT's reputation and therefore would seemingly be against their business instinct, they further corporate goals by helping Republicans, and they probably don't hurt their reputation among their New York liberal subscriber base by printing the story.
So before you call me a crazy conspiracy theorist remember:
This is the paper of prowar reporters like Judith Miller.
-The media has pulled off crazy twists before such as enabling the swiftboaters while simultaneously making Dan Rather out to be the bad guy for spouting proven facts with a "bad" document.
-Ad infinitum bait and switch media bias examples where Rovian tactics were used willingly by the media to convince everyone up was down, i.e. Bush is a straight shooter and Gore is a serial liar.
I realize there are other arguments that may validly explain other reasons why they broke this story now, and why they broke it in the vague way they did, i.e. the Saint's legal team. I just couldn't help but entertain this theory, because I don't put any level of bias and trickery past the media establishment after living through the Bush years and the Gore, Dean, and Kerry campaigns.