I woke up early this Sunday morning and was greeted with three headlines from my two local dailies that brightened up my day:
Tampa Tribune:
"McCain Could Be In For A Stormy Convention"
(That's the headline on the website; in the print edition the headline is almost as good: "Storms Could Overshadow McCain's Pitch")
"'Troopergate' Puts Gov. Palin's Ethics Under Scrutiny"
St. Petersburg Times:
"McCain Makes Risky Choice"
Folks, I couldn't think of a worse start for McCain's VP pick and convention kick-off that was supposed to re-energize his campaign heading into the fall.
I won't spend much too time on the Troopergate story, since that's already been covered here. The Tribune article comes from the Washington Post, which has a more detailed story of Troopergate today. If you haven't read it, the WaPo story is a good even-handed summary of the case, and it certainly puts some immediate tarnish on what was apparently supposed to be one of Palin's strengths: ethics reform. Here's a snippet from the Tribune story:
John Cyr, chief of the troopers' union, said he was "shocked and disappointed" at McCain's selection of Palin. "It goes well beyond the fact that she is under a cloud of ethics investigations. She's fired the only commissioner who dared to stand up and say we need to do more to make Alaska safe."
This is not the kind of coverage you want right out the gate for your VP pick, particularly when it is someone totally unknown to most of the country. The funniest thing in the story to me is how the McCain campaign tries to blame Obama for the media coverage of Troopergate:
"The governor did nothing wrong and has nothing to hide," the McCain/Palin campaign said in a statement, blaming the talk on the campaign of the Democratic nominee, Sen. Barack Obama. "It's outrageous that the Obama campaign is trying to attack her over a family issue.
Yes, Obama must have convinced the Alaska Legislature to spend 100 grand to investigate Palin's ethics, more than a month before anyone knew she would be McCain's VP pick. That Obama has some clairvoyant powers!
And I love how McCain is trying to frame repeated hardball attempts by Palin and many of her staffers in the Governor's office to fire the trooper as a "family issue." In fact, that's really the whole point of this. Palin got the state government's resources involved in something that should have remained a family issue within the family.
The convention story in the Tampa Tribune points out the many challenges that McCain faces in trying to unify his party and win the election. I am not going to express any glee at the fact that Hurricane Gustav is approaching; I pray that nobody is harmed. But from a communications standpoint I have to recognize that the "stormy" metaphor is a really awful one for McCain, in that it serves to highlight some of the biggest problems with Republicans and McCain:
Terrible luck involving two storms, particularly Hurricane Gustav, threatens to distract America from a Republican National Convention in which John McCain hopes to convince voters he's the one ready to lead the nation.
Even without weather issues, McCain faced some distractions in making his pitch to the nation.
First, he must accommodate a goodbye to an unpopular president as part of festivities intended to cement his own relationship with voters.
Second, just as the Democrats had to deal with divisiveness between supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama in Denver last week, McCain - with his newly announced vice presidential pick, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin - must try to unite the conservative and moderate sides of his party and answer questions about how his stances on some crucial issues differ from the Republican Party platform.
But as Republicans fly into Minneapolis from across the nation, Hurricane Gustav is bearing down on New Orleans, in an unfortunate reminder of the Bush administration's response, widely perceived as a failure, to Hurricane Katrina's devastation there.
Not a good way to start off convention coverage, particularly after the Democrats' incredibly successful convention (especially the last day). As if Gustav isn't reminder enough of Republican failures and corruption, there are plenty of signs right there in the Twin Cities: the Larry Craig bathroom, for example, and the bridge that collapsed under Tim Pawlenty's watch.
Lastly, the St. Pete Times editorial is quite critical of McCain's pick of Palin, and questions his judgment on this all-important decision:
John McCain can forget about trying to make a campaign issue out of Barack Obama's relatively thin foreign policy resume. In an effort to blunt Obama's postconvention momentum, McCain made history Friday by choosing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, the first woman to be nominated for vice president by the GOP. It is a risky move that stunned even some party leaders who fear that voters will have trouble imagining the former beauty queen as commander in chief, if it should ever come to that.
The Times goes on to take digs at McCain's head-spinning flip flops, which have been the death knell for his "maverick" image:
If there is any suspense in Minnesota this week, it is watching to see which McCain will show up: The straight-talking maverick willing to oppose ethanol subsidies in Iowa, forge a reasonable compromise on immigration, pass campaign finance reform and embrace a troop surge in Iraq despite war fatigue among most Americans? Or the candidate who has gone conventionally conservative since wrapping up the Republican nomination, talking up school vouchers, tax cuts and free-market fixes for a broken health care system that does not respond to conventional market pressures?
You can spare me any concern trolling about how all this bad local media coverage right before the Republican Convention might actually be good for McCain. Trust me, it ain't.