Dean Reynolds explains. All you have to do is keep the buffalo wings warm and the blue cheese cool:
The McCain folks are more helpful and generally friendly. The schedules are printed on actual books you can hold in your hand, read, and then plan accordingly. The press aides are more knowledgeable and useful to us in the news media. The events are designed with a better eye, and for the simple needs of the press corps. When he is available, John McCain is friendly and loquacious. Obama holds news conferences, but seldom banters with the reporters who’ve been following him for thousands of miles around the country. Go figure.
The McCain campaign plane is better than Obama’s, which is cramped, uncomfortable and smells terrible most of the time. Somehow the McCain folks manage to keep their charter clean, even where the press is seated.
Reynolds concludes:
Maybe none of this means much. Maybe a front-running campaign like Obama’s that is focused solely on victory doesn’t have the time to do the mundane things like print up schedules or attend to the needs of reporters.
But in politics, everything that goes around comes around.
So all the powerful need to do to avoid scrutiny and garner sympathy from those with the responsibility to hold them accountable is to pamper them. This is a fascinating look into the mind of a prominent journalist, namely that there might be no more important decision a campaign makes other than to flatter the journalists covering them. Keep in mind that for all Reynolds complaints, the fact that Sarah Palin refuses to hold a press conference is not among them. This is less about access than the perks each campaign is expected to offer to reporters. There is no remorse or reluctance in this account about the idea that journalists’ favor should be bought with perks, no acknowledgment that this notion is inherently unethical.
It concludes with a actual threat from Reynolds that “what goes around comes around” namely that journalists might actually seek retaliation in their capacity as journalists.
These people wonder why no one trusts them.
–A. Serwer
