. . .from here? He’s coming off his most effective week of the campaign so far and into an entirely new political atmosphere. For once, the press is actually talking about him — albeit in largely hostile tones — rather than his opponent. The tone of his press coverage at this point is less important than the fact that he is finally, after months of chasing journalists and reporters down streets and through alleys with a bag of candy in one hand and free iTunes cards in the other, finally getting some attention. No sober Republican presidential candidate goes into a general election expecting anything approaching even-handedness anyway.
But, some semblance of balance with regard to actual airtime and ink doesn’t seem to be an unreasonable expectation. So, when the press aren’t forthcoming in that regard, it falls to the candidate to give them no choice. And, that’s precisely what McCain did this week when he launched two ads aimed at ripping his opponent’s lovingly nurtured image away the bossom of its media nursemaid.
Now come the howls of anguish and scowls of disapproval. The tongues and fingers will wag for some time over this, and with a vigor not seen since Lawrence O’Donnell’s morning paper last landed in the hedges. Already, Bob Herbert of the New York Times and Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post have attempted to sink their fangs into John McCain, apparently unaware that they’ve both been rendered practically toothless by the very fact that Barack Obama was able to arrive at the station at which he finds himself today. But, there will be more. It takes the left a long time to work a good scolding out of its system.
Surprisingly, though, McCain received a fair amount of criticism from his right, as well. Ramesh Ponnuru — a writer whose name I sometimes utter with a hint of unseemly reverence — came out squarely in John Weaver’s camp, and against the “Celeb” ad, as well as all of the more confrontational ads that preceded it. Marc Ambinder wasn’t too thrilled with the ad, either. Citing the distinction between short term gains and long term losses, he questions the wisdom of the optics used in the ad.
Lookit. Let’s make a distinction between short term and long term. In the short term, to those low information voters whose opinion swings from day to day or week to week, Obama’s had the rougher go of it. The Britney ad sold. Even if the optics were bad for McCain in the long-term, the conversation was about Obama’s presumed presumptuous and riskiness. In the long-term, who knows?
Aside from the fact that I love it when people start out a post with “Lookit”, (How many chiding emails did he read before posting that?) I’m surprised that Ambinder is even thinking about these ads in long term context. Already, I’m struggling to remember what the two ads that preceded “Celeb” were about. And how long ago was it that the McCain camp was “reeling” as a result of Phil Gramm’s monstrous gaffe? It simply does no good to think of individual campaign ads in any context beyond week-to-week.
Instead of fretting over whether or not McCain’s “brand” has been diminished by the tone of particular ads, pundits should look at the underlying theme that runs through them collectively. What the McCain camp has been able to do over the past three weeks is to raise legitimate questions about the image that Obama and his surrogates have so carefully cultivated ever since he entered the race. And, given the fact that it had existed within a media vacuum for the majority of that time period, the McCain campaign had little choice but to grab the camera and focus it on its candidate.
The truth is, McCain’s brand carries no cachet with the media, now that he’s running against a Democrat. It carries even less than it otherwise would now that he’s running against this particular Democrat. For all the tut-tutting and tsk-tsking from McCain’s former advisers and the loftier elements of conservative punditry, no one is able to point to any tangible benefit that he has drawn from simply being John McCain — at least not since he captured the nomination. That’s because, as long as McCain is competing against someone who is preferred by the more conservative elements of the electorate, he’s considered “a special kind of Republican”. But, when he’s competing against someone who is preferred by the more liberal elements, he’s considered, “still a Republican at the end of the day.”
All the lamenting over McCain supposedly tarnishing himself with his most recent series of ads is just a bit too precious to begin with. If one takes a look at some of the campaign ads that have been employed in the past and compares them to the ads McCain has successfully used to reinsert himself into the discussion over who is going to be in the White House next year, “Celeb” and “The One” look like highbrow cultural fare. Take a look at Lyndon Johnson’s “Daisy ad” or the James Bird murder ad that was run against Bush in 2000. The idea that someone would shake his head in dismay at the unseemliness of it all upon viewing the “Troops” ad by McCain is laughable when it’s stacked up against those moral horrors.
And, yet, McCain will be on the receiving end of a media backlash that will rival anything President Bush has been subjected to. We can fully expect to hear Keith Olbermann launch into one of his trademark jeremiads in which he so kindly reminds McCain of the esteem in which he was once held by Democrats and Republicans alike, only to squander it in his Machiavelli-meets-Vlad Dracul lust for political blood and quest for whatever the hell Keith Olbermann decides McCain is after. We can expect to hear Chris Matthews, in his patented manic diction, pepper whichever unfortunate GOP operative draws the shortest straw with interrogatory declaratives along the lines of, “Do you think McCain regrets all the puppies that died last week when he put out those ads?”
And, when it comes right down to it, McCain couldn’t ask to be in a better place than that, right now. There is nothing to be gained by some naive conviction to stay above the fray when the fray is closing in on his candidacy. And the best that he can hope for from a media so plainly taken with his opponent is to have them shrieking at him for daring to try to win this election. Otherwise, they can be expected to simply ignore him as they have since Obama secured his party’s nomination. And, as long as a Republican candidate is actively hated by the press, he stands a chance.
But no candidate stands a chance in hell as long as the press dismisses him. And right now, the last thing the press is doing to John McCain is dismissing him.
