Once on a charter fishing boat off Miami, I noticed a discreet sign on the topdeck:
Marriages performed by the Captain are valid only for the duration of the voyage.
I assume the same protocol holds true for a campaign bus such as the "Straight Talk Express." All the journalists who have fallen in love with John McCain — to the point of being blinded to his endearing faults, contradictions, blunders, and closet Bushism — will eventually go back to their wives, and husbands, but mostly wives.
In their post-traumatic sycophancy syndrome, they may begin to remember what their job was supposed to entail when covering a candidate. They can detoxify from excess consumption of free booze and spare ribs, get treatment for their busted moral compasses, and, one by one, recover feeling in the five w’s of a classic news lead – none of which stands for "Who cares about the actual facts?"
But their lovesick symptoms may get worse before they get better.
McCain just bought a Boeing 737 with a plush interview area, and his aides say that reporters will have to "earn their way in" to that privileged precinct – fair warning to any who have so far failed to be comprehensively unprofessional.
A similar band of groupies once traveled with George W, looked deeply into his eyes, and knew in their hearts that anyone who was fun to have a beer with, blithering idiot or not, would make a perfectly gorgeous president.
The Fourth Estate is currently running about eighth and is about to be lapped by the blogosphere.
In the current issue of The Nation, Eric Alterman and George Zornick chronicle just how blind love can be when it’s the love of a gaggle of mainstream media reporters in thrall to a charming shape-shifter running this way and that for the presidency.
On the question of flip-flops alone, here is their closing summary:
The anti-torture candidate supports torture.
The pro-immigration candidate opposes immigration.
The candidate who opposes tax cuts for the rich (now) supports them.
The pro-campaign finance reform candidate has a campaign that is run almost exclusively by lobbyists, and exploits loopholes in the law to skirt spending limits – even the laws the candidate wrote.
The candidate who opposes ‘agents of intolerance’ in the Republican party embraces them.
The candidate with the foreign policy experience frequently confuses Sunnis and Shiites and misreads Iranian influence in the region, but is proposing permanent war.
The candidate who claims to be a fiscal conservative wants to bust the budget.
The candidate who claims to take global warming seriously does not want to take any serious action to address it.
They can’t find a single issue on which McCain has stood his ground against his party’s extremists – including all of the above, plus judicial appointments, Roe v. Wade, and same-sex marriage.
But you would hardly know that from reading the fawning reports of the mainstream political journalists, on or off the bus. Alterman and Zornick quote "spontaneous testimonials" for McCain, untempered by facts, from Jake Tapper (Salon); Jacob Weisberg (Slate); Fareed Zakaria and Michael Hirsch (Newsweek); Terry Moran (ABC); Chris Matthews and Mika Brzezinski (MSNBC); David Nyhan (Boston Globe); Richard Cohen, Dana Milbank, and David Broder (Washington Post).
Candidates have always been a bit slippery (though McCain takes the cake). Journalists are supposed to keep them honest. Now that the major media reporters have gone over to the dark side, it’s up to a few unblinkered publications like The Nation and to blogs like DailyKos , TPM, and Andrew Sullivan to pick up the torch.
Still, one can always hope. For any of the big media managers who repent of their sins, here is the path to redemption:
Reassign your McCain reporter to Obama (ignore the tears and tantrums) and your Obama reporter to McCain.