MUST READ: The Maverick and the Media
March 26, 2008
In a column this morning in the New York Times, Neal Gabler exposes the myth behind John McCain's "maverick" image and the way he had used the press for his own gain. Though McCain has spent his career trying to cast himself as a "straight talker," Gabler details McCain's tendency to cozy up to the press to cover up his questionable record and doubletalk rhetoric. As Gabler describes it, "Off the ["Straight Talk Express"] …he plays to the rubes (us) by reciting the conservative catechism; on the bus he plays to the press by giving the impression that his talk is all just a ploy to capture the Republican nomination," Gabler says. By highlighting his relationship with the media, Gabler raises serious questions about McCain's integrity and his credibility.
The following are excerpts of the story:
The Maverick and the Media
New York Times
By Neal Gabler, Op-Ed Contributor
March 26, 2008
"Yet however much his accessibility, amiability and candor may have defined the news media's love affair with him in 2000, and however much they continue to operate that way in 2008, there is also something different and more complicated at work now. Joan Didion once described a presidential campaign as a closed system staged by the candidates for the news media -- one in which the media judged a candidate essentially by how well he or she manipulated them, and one in which the electorate were bystanders.
"What makes 2008 different -- and why I think Mr. McCain can be called the first postmodernist presidential candidate -- is his acknowledgment of the symbiosis between himself and the press and, more important, his willingness, even eagerness, to let the press in on his own machinations of them. While John McCain 2000 was praised for being the same straight talker off the bus as he was on it, John McCain 2008 is praised precisely because he isn't the same man. Off the bus he plays to the rubes (us) by reciting the conservative catechism; on the bus he plays to the press by giving the impression that his talk is all just a ploy to capture the Republican nomination.
"When Mr. McCain suddenly supports the tax cuts he once excoriated, or embraces the religious right, or emphasizes border security over a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, we are told by his press acolytes that he doesn't really mean it, that his liberal cosmology will ultimately best his conservative rhetoric."
