Sunday Talk - Love Affair

The media loves John McSame.  Candidate bowling scores are more
interesting to these people than torture and the 4th amendment.

SusanG will be reviewing "Free Ride: John McCain and the Media" today.
Below the fold is the Sunday Talk interview with "Free Ride" co-author
Paul Waldman and other goodies...

The Lineup:

Meet The Press:  Roundtable on torture featuring Relic of the 90's James Carville, Mary Matalin, Mike Murphy and Bob "0-8" Shrum.  Oh wait, the roundtable isn't about torture...it is torture.

Tweety:  Stooge David Brooks, the beautiful Kelly O'Donnell, Clarence Page, Elisabeth Bumiller discuss McSame running on a 3rd Bush term, Obama and white women.

This Week with George:  National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley evades questions of torture.  Former President Jimmy Carter.  Donna Brazile, Torie Clarke, George Will and the Worst Political Journalist*** in the World Mark Halperin.

Face the Nation:  Speaker Pelosi talks about how to make John Boner cry.  Defense Secretary Robert Gates eyeing his upcoming retirement.

Faux News:  Hadley gets stroked, coddled.  Former Senator Tom Daschle (D-Obamamania).  Philly mayor Michael Nutter has to explain again why his city has just surpassed Santa Carla as the Murder Capitol of the World.

Late Edition with Wolf:  Senator Joe Biden (D-Wachovia) and Senator Dick Lugar (R-IN).  Joe Lieberman (I-liar).  Wonder if Wolf will ask him why he lied about his website crashing in '06?  Senator Bob Casey (D-Bland) and some minister from Iraq.

60 Minutes:  How militias in Iraq control the Iraqi government and use our taxpaying dollars to fund their attacks on our troops. A cancer-killing machine?  Venezuelan orchaestra.

***To be considered Worst Political Journalist, one has to be indistinguishable from an actual douchebag.  For example, try and pick Mark Halperin out from this lineup of actual douchebags:

Impossible.
________________________________________________________________________
"McSAME" spreading across the country!

Un error ortográfico!

McSame HATES when you bring up that he wants us in Iraq for 100 more years.
The full court press is on to tear that fact down,
but McSame and the gop are married to it.

Please buy my new book on media consulting,
so you too can have Chris Matthews lusting on your every word.

Elephant War image via seedsofdoubt.com
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SUNDAY TALK Interview - McCain Media Lust Edition:

                           

                                   FREE RIDE: John McCain and the Media

Having recently completed the highly recommended new book on John McSame, Free Ride, I asked co-author Paul Waldman to submit himself to a few questions for the Sunday Talk audience.  Below are his thoughts on the book, McSame and barbecue sauce.

Please be sure to drop in on the book review SusanG is posting today as well.

Sam: How did you come to join with the excellent David Brock in writing this exposé of the lusty slobbering the media has for John McCain?

Paul Waldman (PW): We started working on this book in 2006. At that point, no one knew who the Republican nominee in 2008 was going to be, but it was obvious that the relationship between McCain and the press was one of the most important media stories of our time, and long overdue to be told. It would have been an important story to tell even if McCain had not become the GOP nominee, because it reveals so much about the press -- what they find attractive and admirable, how they look at the political world, and how a smart politician who understands them can use them to his ends.

Sam: In your book, you cite a few examples of columnists and pundits that have written about McCain's media manipulation strategy. Contrast McCain's strategy to the "Talk Clock" that Senator Dodd used this season to argue for more debate coverage, or even the complaining Senator Edwards did about the media blackout on his campaign, save for his exquisite haircut. Trying to shame the media into favorable coverage doesn't seem to work. Why haven't other presidential campaigns adopted a media strategy more like the McCain campaign uses, as he has been so successful at it?

PW: As you point out, this is a strategy, not something that happened by accident. No politician in America has a better understanding of the press than John McCain. It was really after the Keating Five scandal (which came to a close in 1991) that McCain began to treat the press differently, making himself as open to them as possible. He returned their calls promptly, would invite them to his office (and later, his bus) and talk for hours without going off the record, and generally treated them as though he liked and respected them. As for Dodd and Edwards, complaining about the coverage you're getting can sometimes yield some short-term benefit, if you can convince reporters to set out to prove that you're wrong. But over the long term, nothing matches the love reporters have for McCain.

Most politicians see McCain's strategy of openness as too much of a risk. They're afraid they'll say something that will get them in trouble, so they'd much rather exercise more control, provide reporters less access, and serve up a carefully planned message. What McCain realized is that his actually isn't much of a risk at all, at least for him. He found that when he does say something that would get a different politician in trouble, the reporters have become so smitten that they give him a pass.

But there are other reasons that McCain gets the treatment he does. This relationship wasn't built overnight -- it took years of courting. And certain things about McCain, such as the fact that he was a POW in Vietnam, helped lay a foundation of admiration that made it possible. The image that he's fashioned for himself lines up with the way they like to think of themselves, as rebels who speak truth to power and stand on principle. The truth is that the image doesn't really apply to McCain, and often doesn't apply to reporters, either -- particularly those covering McCain.

Sam: The first part of your book contains a hilarious section on how the press will mention McCain's time as a prisoner in Hanoi for no real apparent reason, other than to just say it. You document how McCain repeatedly says he won't exploit his Vietnam captivity, yet in the same interview he will bring it up and not get called out on it. It is an amazing Jedi mind trick.  In Free Ride, you detail many other areas where he has blatantly flip-flopped but the media ignores it. Do you think that a confluence of these themes would be enough to expose the myth of McCain, or will it take a strong concerted effort on one singular message to pull back that curtain?

PW: It's hard to overstate how much of a role McCain's Vietnam story plays in reporters' view of him. In the book, we quote Chris Matthews, who responded to Roger Simon's observation that McCain gets lots of breaks from the press by saying, "Because he served in Vietnam, and a lot of us didn't." Nobody disputes that McCain suffered greatly as a POW and displayed admirable courage. But that doesn't mean reporters should claim, as they so often do, that McCain is reluctant to bring up Vietnam. His entire political career is built on his status as a former POW, and he has never showed any hesitation to use it whatsoever. He has every right to do that if he wants, but reporters shouldn't claim that McCain is above all that, because he isn't.

What is odd to us is that the topic of McCain's relationship with the press hasn't been explored at length before, despite the fact that many journalists admit the affection they and their colleagues have for McCain. And we have yet to hear anyone offer a refutation to our central thesis -- on the couple of occasions when someone has tried, for instance in the debates I've had on radio programs, by the time they get to the end of their answer, they've ended up agreeing that McCain gets treated differently (though they sometimes try to argue that he just deserves to be treated better).

Our hope is that the book will help spur a wider conversation about the favoritism afforded McCain, and the volume of that conversation will grow loud enough that the political press will no longer be able to ignore it. If that happens, some of them may be encouraged to take a step back and look at McCain with fresh eyes. It's easy to be in the tank for McCain, so long as all of your colleagues are as well. After all, there is a great pack mentality among the traveling campaign press corps. But once a few of them begin to offer more complete coverage that doesn't just rely on the same old McCain tropes -- he's a "maverick" delivering "straight talk" -- that will encourage more and more of them to do so.

And a good place to start peeling back that story is not only our book, but also the resources we've put together at www.McCainsFreeRide.com.

Sam: When John McCain was confronted with the NYT lobbyist story a few weeks ago, it was the worst press he had received in the campaign so far. Days later, he invited the media to his home for a weekend barbecue & housewarming party. He let them tour his house with his wife, and relaxed in his living room with the media while Frank Sinatra songs played softly as they all ate dessert together. That original lobbyist story couldn't be more dead right now. As an author who writes often about the political press, please tell me, are they really that easy? They can't be such cheap dates, right?

PW: That Times story didn't go anywhere because it contradicted something reporters have been saying for years about McCain, that he's the lobbyists' enemy, the guy who stands up to the special interests. But what it (and the rest of the record) shows is that that image is undeserved. McCain has received tremendous amounts of money from corporations he oversees on the Commerce Committee, which he chaired for many years. Most of his campaign's top people are corporate lobbyists. In the case The New York Times investigated, he got $20,000 from Paxson Communication and its attorneys, was being flown around the country on their corporate jet, and had a close relationship with their lobbyist. Then when Bud Paxson came calling and asked McCain to pressure the Federal Communications Commission on his behalf (to expedite approval of the sale of a television station), McCain did what Paxson wanted. He also initially denied that the meeting with Paxson ever took place, then was forced to admit that it had. What McCain did in this case was almost exactly what he did in the Keating Five scandal, despite his repeated pledges that such a thing would never happen again.

But almost no one has followed up on this story. It's one more way the rules are different for John McCain: When new information calls into question the storyline that has existed about McCain, instead of re-evaluating the storyline, reporters ignore the new information.

One can certainly criticize reporters for going to McCain's compound in Sedona for a private barbeque with the senator. But the real question is not whether they're hanging around with him, but what effect it has on their coverage. It's one thing to eat his ribs, but when you go to write your next story about McCain, the taste of barbeque sauce shouldn't still be lingering in your mouth.

Sam: McCain's campaign has recently tried to walk back from the infamous video of him stating he would be willing to keep troops in Iraq for 100 years. This is a narrative that the Democratic Party has stated it will pursue to hang around his neck like an anchor. Already people like Charles Krauthammer and Politico's Jonathan Martin seem to be giving him the assist with pushing back on this. How difficult do you think it will be for McCain's opponents to rebrand or redefine him?

PW: It certainly won't be easy, since the McCain brand is maintained not just by McCain and his allies but by the press as well. In practice, that means reporters are much more willing to hear the arguments of his defenders and incorporate those arguments into their own rhetoric. When people criticize McCain, they are implicitly criticizing the press, which has promoted him for so long. Often, they react with indignation -- see here, where, in response to the fact that Howard Dean called McCain an opportunist, Chris Wallace asked John Kerry, "Do you think John McCain was an opportunist when he refused to take early release from a North Vietnamese prison camp because he was the son of an admiral, because he said he was going to stay there for years as long as all the other Americans did?" The very idea that McCain might have a less-than-admirable personality trait is appalling to some in the media and can only be met with the fact that McCain was a POW in Vietnam.

All we are asking is for the media to hold McCain to the same standards it uses for any politician – this isn't about bashing McCain. If the press does that, the public will have been much better served than it has been by the coverage of the last couple of presidential elections. This is something we looking forward to working with the blogosphere on in the coming weeks and months.

*Thanks to Mr. Waldman for his great book and taking the time to respond to a schmuck like me.  Paul Waldman is also a senior fellow at Media Matters for America and the author of "Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success".