Douglas Turner: Handlers have muzzled McCain we once knew
WASHINGTON — The John McCain the nation once knew was the feisty, smiling, straight talker who appeared on Tim Russert’s “Meet the Press” show more than four dozen times.
The Arizona Republican used his hours with Russert to promote campaign finance reform, fight President Bush’s tax cuts for the rich and urge compassion for immigrants. McCain then was the bane of D. C.’s worst Republican crooks.
He seemed to love jousting with Russert, and with “Hardball” host Chris Matthews.
However, as McCain neared the Oval Office, his handlers moved the former populist to the powder room. Just after McCain appeared certain to be nominated, around mid-July, he stopped inviting the national press to quiz him
while riding the “Straight Talk Express” bus. McCain also stopped taking any questions from the traveling national press on Aug.
10. That is, until last week when he took “two or three.”
Now, McCain’s managers instead arrange huddles with local media. They’re every bit as professional and smart as the national reporters. However, they are rarely as equipped on national and international issues, which after all is what a presidential campaign is all about.
The new tactics fit well with McCain’s policy reversals crafted to win support from hard-right broadcasters. He dropped his immigrant amnesty program, and embraced Bush’s tax cuts. McCain has also become a strong advocate of Vice President Cheney’s hopes for military involvement in the Republic of Georgia.
Last Wednesday, some Washington journalists got a disquieting look at McCain’s new media strategy in a briefing hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. It was with one of McCain’s new pit bulls, Mike DuHaine, campaign political director.
DuHaine was a stand-in for McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis. He took a powder when the New York Times and others began
inquiring about the six-figure money Davis’ lobbying firm got for fighting federal regulators who wanted to crack down on big mortgage firms that lately went belly up.
Early in the week, McCain reacted by charging that the Times “is in the tank” for the Democratic candidate, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. Soon after, other outlets, including conservative Fox News, verified the Times’ findings.
In the briefing, DuHaine lifted the curtain on just how tightly McCain is tied to the most ultra-right extremist voices in America. Responding to a question by Monitor host David Cook, as to why McCain has changed his behavior, DuHaine said, “there is a fundamental belief . . . that there is a bias in the media. To pretend that it doesn’t exist would not be accurate at all.”
This bias, DuHaine theorized, opened a market for conservative talk radio. Market forces, and presumed left-wing bias of everybody else, have turned advertisers away from progressive voices, he suggested.
Actually, advertisers shunned liberal broadcasters even during the New Deal.
In reality, this pose is McCain’s attempt to impeach the integrity of every journalist who plays it down the middle and asks tough questions. More disquieting, this is an embrace of voices like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, who rage for more military spending, more foreign intervention, lower taxes on the wealthy and benefits cuts for the rest of us.
Ingraham’s station here, one of 1,200 owned by Clear Channel Communications, bills itself as “McCain 570 [AM].” So much for bias.
McCain’s press-bashing is a high-risk tactic. It didn’t help President George H. W. Bush in 1992 or Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N. Y., last spring.
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Oops! Last Monday I inadvertently referred to the 1979 nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, Pa., as happening at a Nine Mile Island, Pa.
