McCain adviser Mark Salter unloads on the media’s coverage of the race and its pro-Obama bias during an interview with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg. The whole thing is worth reading, and as Jason Linkins of the Huffington Post points out, is probably an interesting preview of the kind of things that are going to come out from the McCain campaign insider tell-all books after the election.
Posts Tagged ‘John McCain’
Beat the Press
Posted: October 20, 2008 in 2008 Elections, John McCain, MediaTags: 2008 Elections, John McCain, Media
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Quote of the Day
Posted: October 20, 2008 in 2008 Elections, John McCain, QuotesTags: 2008 Elections, John McCain, Quotes
“The most poorly run presidential campaign of the last 25 years. It’s truly Dukakis-like.”
– An unidentified Republican strategist advising the McCain campaign.
I Am Joe
Posted: October 18, 2008 in 2008 Elections, John McCain, MediaTags: 2008 Elections, John McCain, Media
Republicans have organized an online petition and movement to defend Joe the Plumber. They argue that Joe has been treated unfairly by the Democrats and, by extension, the media who put his life under the microscope.
Let me make one thing clear – the Joe the Plumber story would have been a one-day story if McCain had not pounced on him and made nearly two dozen references to him during the last presidential debate. But according to this account in the Politico, the McCain people simply didn’t do their homework on Joe before they embraced him.
NEW YORK – John McCain hung his final presidential debate performance on an Ohio plumber who campaign aides never vetted.
A day after making Joseph Wurzelbacher famous, referencing him in the debate almost two dozen times as someone who would pay higher taxes under Barack Obama, McCain learned the fine print Thursday on the plumber’s not-so-tidy personal story: He owes back taxes. He is not a licensed plumber. And it turns out that Wurzelbacher makes less than $250,000 a year, which means he would receive a tax cut if Obama were elected president.
McCain likes to say that he isn’t George W. Bush – and in this case of bungled public relations, it is clear he is not. The famously disciplined Bush campaign operation would likely have found the perfect anonymous citizen to illustrate a policy proposal, rather than spontaneously wrap itself around an unknown entity with so many asterisks.
While the arc of Wurzelbacher’s breakneck trip through the news cycle – from private citizen to insta-celebrity to political target – offers a curious insight into the political media culture, it also appears to offer a glimpse into the McCain campaign’s on-the-fly decision-making style.
A McCain source said Thursday that the campaign read about Wurzelbacher on the Drudge Report, while another campaign aide confirmed that he was not vetted. Senior McCain adviser Matt McDonald told Politico after the debate that Wurzelbacher was not aware that he would become central to the candidates’ third and final showdown, although Wurzelbacher told reporters Thursday that the McCain campaign contacted him earlier in the week to ask him to appear with the candidate at a Toledo rally scheduled for Sunday. (He may not make it, now that he’s scheduled to be in New York for TV interviews.)
By doing so, they brought the intense interest and scrutiny of the press and Democratic opposition researchers on Joe, who clearly had no idea what was about to hit him. They found out that he wasn’t a licensed plumber and that he hadn’t paid more than $1,000 in taxes, all from public records.
Was Joe asking Obama a legitimate question? Yes. Has the media coverage of him been obsessive to the point of ridicule? Yes. But the sad reality is that by drawing attention to him, the McCain campaign put him in this situation. If the situation were reversed and it were the Obama campaign embracing Joe, it would be Republican operatives and the media who would be vetting him after the fact.
A Tattoo for Your Votes
Posted: October 18, 2008 in 2008 Elections, John McCainTags: 2008 Elections, John McCain
Meghan McCain, stumping for her dad in New Hampshire:
NASHUA – If Sen. John McCain wins the presidency in a little more than three weeks, his daughter said she’ll tattoo “Live Free or Die” somewhere on her body.
Of course, he would have to win in New Hampshire, too, said Meghan McCain, who was in Nashua yesterday thanking volunteers at the McCain-Palin campaign office.
The tattoo, which would probably go on her wrist, would be her way of commemorating her father’s run for the presidency, she said. It was in New Hampshire that McCain revived his faltering presidential bid during the presidential primary in January.
“New Hampshire is so important to me and my family,” she said.
Earlier, McCain told a supporter that she would be “extremely depressed” if her dad loses in New Hampshire.
“More so than any other state,” she said.
Circular Firing Squad
Posted: October 16, 2008 in 2008 Elections, Beltway Drama, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Talking HeadsTags: 2008 Elections, Beltway Drama, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Talking Heads
A few days ago, I made note of the back and forth sniping going on between the McCain campaign and conservative pundit Bill Kristol. It’s gotten a bit personal lately, with McCain campaign manager Rick Davis personally taking Kristol out to the woodshed on national television. The key soundbite:
DAVIS: Yes, well, you know, it’s a good thing Bill Kristol has never run a political campaign because he’d probably have to fire himself at least two or three times.
This may be beyond standard political sniping. Scott Horton of Harper’s has written extensively about Bill Kristol’s role in promoting Sarah Palin for the VP slot. But in a recent interview with Glenn Greenwald, Horton reveals evidence of discontent behind closed doors at the McCain campaign.
SH: I’d say, of course the McCain campaign isn’t doing too well right now, and one of the consequences of that is we’ve got a lot of finger-pointing going on within the camp, and I’d say there’s a pretty broad agreement amongst a number of the senior-most advisors to McCain that the Palin pick is worse than disappointing. It’s a total disaster, as one describes to me. And there is a sort of blame game going on there.
Now, one of them described to me quite recently in some detail, who it was who introduced and pushed the Palin nomination, and he says it really boils down – there were a number of people behind the nomination, but there’s one person who was essentially the person who introduced her as a candidate and pushed her consistently and firmly all through the summer primary she was elected – and that person is Bill Kristol. And the interesting thing is of course, if we look across the whole horizon of conservative columnists, prominent conservative columnists, pretty much all of them are expressing reservations or concerns or they’re outright opposing Palin as a pick, with one really striking exception, and that’s Bill Kristol. And Bill Kristol, in none of his columns has acknowledged that he in a sense is the author of Sarah Palin. He discovered her, he promoted her, and he pushed her through to the vice-presidential nomination.
If this is true, that makes Kristol’s recent criticism of Palin much more self-serving. It’s become full-on cover your ass mode. When the post-mortem of this campaign is written, there will be a lot of people pointing fingers at each other, and I think quite a few of them will be pointed at Bill Kristol.
Quote of the Day
Posted: October 16, 2008 in 2008 Elections, Debates, John McCainTags: 2008 Elections, Debates, John McCain
“In politics it is generally not considered a good sign when voters are laughing at you, not with you. And by the end of the third and last presidential debate, the undecided voters who had gathered in Denver for Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg’s focus group were ‘audibly snickering’ at John McCain’s grimaces, eye-bulging, and repeated references to ‘Joe the Plumber.'”
– TIME Magazine’s Amy Sullivan
Update: Came upon this quote, which merits an honorable mention.
“Not since Nixon have we heard so much about plumbers, by the way.”
– CNN contributor Bill Bennett
Icepicks and Nukes 