As John McCain launches ridiculous attacks (but not an actual denial) against the Times for reporting that his campaign manager's lobbying firm was paid by Fannie Mae until last month, I wanted to take issue with an argument that both McCain and Ezra have made: that the media's refusal to pay attention to McCain's early-campaign attempts to offer a constructive, policy-based debate forced McCain into the negative, smear-based campaign we've come to know and hate. Jon Chait reminds us why that's wrong in his story this week on McCain's dishonest campaign:
McCain tried to run a high-road campaign, but was ignored by the press and rebuffed by Obama. McCain, complained his former aide, Dan Schnur, "had a poverty tour and nobody covered it." (McCain's tour did get some coverage, but not the commanding attention McCain hoped for, possibly because he had no actual poverty proposals to accompany it.)
This is exactly right. If McCain had offered a policy that differed substantiavely from those of the Bush administration, or even said anything about the subject that strayed from conservative conventional wisdom, there would likely have been more coverage. But McCain's decision to essentially use the poor as campaign props doesn't really make me sympathetic about his complaint. Here's some reporting from the tour:
Mr. McCain has seemed alternately moved and awkward this week, and at times defensive about his background. At each stop he offered mostly himself. Substantively, he had little to offer other than general outlines of programs for job training, better Internet access for isolated areas and government partnerships with private enterprise for a faster response to natural disasters.
Hmm. Let's not change the record so that poor John's poverty tour would have been an actual gesture toward addressing the issue of poverty, if only the mean press had let him. Yes, the press likes conflict, but they can also recognize a phony, and that, combined with the on-going Democratic primary, is what resulted in the lack of attention.
John McCain is responsible for his own campaign. He can say that Barack Obama's decision not to join him for debates is the reason he's sunk to such a low level, but at the end of the day he's doing what he thinks will gain him the White House, damn the consequences.
--Tim Fernholz
