Hard Days For The Symbionts

Matt Yglesias once noted that the media's excessively gentle treatment of John McCain and his ability to give them nice quotes on the campaign bus were mutually supporting.  Since they like him, he can speak easily with them with the confidence that they'll set aside his mistakes, which makes him schmooze them better and makes it easier for him to give them good quotes, which makes them like him.  It's a good thing for a candidate to have going, but a fragile one.  If McCain gets dissatisfied with his press coverage and his schmoozing and quipping suffers, it could all come crashing down. 

We've still got some ways to do before it collapses, but seeing this from Politico, via newly re-Pandagonned Jesse Taylor, I wonder if it's close: 

Openly frustrated by what they see as an ongoing double standard in the press’s treatment of his campaign, Sen. John McCain and his aides have been aggressively denouncing unfavorable stories as “smear jobs” and “scurrilous attacks,” while the candidate himself has launched a series of stinging attacks on Sen. Barack Obama.

It’s a dangerous posture for a candidate whose political success is intimately tied with his image as an irrepressible happy warrior — equal parts President Ronald Reagan and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, with a dash of his old Arizona buddy Rep. Mo Udall’s sharp sense of humor — and whose appeal to independents owes nearly as much to character and personal narrative as to issues and ideology.

Apart from the war hero stuff -- and the candidate with the better military record has lost, what, the last 4 presidential elections? -- McCain's unusually favorable media treatment has been the only difference between him and any other politician.  If that goes down, it's hard to see how he beats a charismatic, well-funded Democrat whom the public happens to agree with on every major issue. 

Comments

[Sir Charles]

Neil,

I also wonder if at some point the press has to have its equivalent of a thermidorian reaction -- many of them know to some degree that they have been in the tank for McCain -- do they feel the need to show their bona fides by getting tougher on him. As you suggest, I suspect that a little unexpected tough treatment may make McCain blow his stack in a damaging way.

[Corvus9]

Yeah, it's all a house of cards. Chris Matthews even straight up said that they are his base, and eons ago to.

I don't think it is necessarily that the press will becoem self critical, it is that it will soon become impossible to ignore that fact that McCain lies all the time. This will probably be because Obama is going to keep to saying that McCain gets all the facts wrong and is wrong wrong wrong, and pointing out times where he contradicted past statements. I mean, McCain doesn't just mispeak, he makes unequivocal statements that are flatly contradicted by past statements. And there is video. In the age of Youtube, it will be very easy for Obama to just sink McCain, and eventually the media will have no choice but to join in. And when the media "turns" on McCain, McCain will call someone—a reporter, Obama, an Obama staffer—a "fucking jerk," and there will be a camera, and that will be the end of the McCain campaign.

At least that's how I dream it.

[Stephen]

Apart from the war hero stuff

War hero my ass. McCain was a POW - so what? Lots of people have been POWs. My Great-uncle was captured by the Germans, and got out before WWII was over, and you know what he did? He went right back to the front and started fighting again, because that's how it was done then.

He didn't come back and expect everyone to bow down and lick his boots for it. He never expected to win high political office simply because he was a vet, and he absolutely never demanded that his status as a vet and ex-POW release him from the ethical demands of regular people, like McCain did when asked about his involvement with the Keating Five.

So McCain can take his bogus "war hero" shtick and shove it.