McCain Suspends Campaign

Republican presidential candidate John McCain suspended his campaign in a surprise announcement Wednesday afternoon. In a press conference John McCain stated his belief that because the Bush administration’s economic recovery plan would not pass in it’s present form it has become necessary to put partisan politics aside and return to Washington to work out a compromise before Monday. Additionally Sen. McCain said he would seek to suspend the first Presidential Debate currently scheduled for Friday evening.

In a press conference of his own Sen. Obama indicated that although his campaign had been in contact with the McCain campaign about making a joint statement he believed McCain was “mulling over” the possibility of a campaign suspension and had not made a decision. Obama said it was important “now more than ever” that the candidates remained visible and explain their plan for the economy. When questioned whether it would also be necessary for his campaign to take a similar step Obama stated “It is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once”. Obama also expressed his belief that the debates should proceed as planned.

Palin’s Silence

Sara Kugler reports for the Associated Press that aides to Sarah Palin initially would not allow print journalist to accompany their still and video camera crews into the vice presidential candidate’s first meeting with a foreign leader, but then relented after news agencies protested.

It appears, whether she knows it or not, that Sarah Palin agrees with the “Cheney Doctrine” of media loathing; or at least her aides do. Gov. Palin’s handlers informed the small press pool assigned to her that “no writers” would be allowed into her meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Wall Street Journal reporter Elizabeth Holmes apparently was “rudely” denied access to the event. Only when a CNN t.v. producer threatened to withhold the network’s cameras did aides decide that reporters would be allowed to briefly enter the meeting.

When questioned about the reason for the press shutout Ms. Palin’s spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt originally stated, ”The decision was made for this to be a pool spray with still cameras and video cameras only.” After the meeting, however, when pressed further she explained it was a “miscommunication”.

This explanation doesn’t hold water for me. A reasonable person (who isn’t a member of Gov. Palin’s personality cult) would have to ask: Does the McCain-Palin Campaign still believe that the media will not treat “Sarah” with “respect and deference”? Or could it be that they didn’t want the media to witness her asking President Karzai about baby names?

Whatever the case, they should be careful not to give the impression that they want Gov. Palin to be seen and not heard.

 

 

John McCain’s Celebrity

Proceeding Sen. Obama’s Middle Eastern/European trip the McCain Campaign opened a new offensive front against the Obama Campaign. While Obama was speaking before a crowd of 200,000 adoring Berliners McCain was dodging jars of applesauce in aisle 7. Something had to be done and quick. The idea was to attempt to turn one of Obama’s strengths into a weakness. This is a standard in the GOP’s current brand of Rovian Politics and had been used before when the McCain camp tried to turn Obama’s oratorical prowess into a disadvantage. This time they would use Obama’s wild popularity to paint him as merely an empty celebrity.

It is easy to argue that in the simplest sense of the word nearly all politicians are celebrities due to their visibility in the public eye. However it is clear that the McCain camp did not mean “famous” or “well-known” in their use of the word. Rather it wanted to make an association with other words like “empty” and “vacuous”. This tactic was used with alarming success in the pre-convention weeks and was abandoned only when economic turmoil forced a return to more serious issues.

What I found alarming wasn’t the tacit admittance that McCain could only win the Presidency by lowering the standards of the office. That is just what I have come to expect from Steve Schmidt (McCain Campaign chief strategist and Rove protege). The alarming aspect is that while this approach was doing real damage to Obama’s image his campaign did nothing to combat it. It seems like it would have been easy enough to turn the tables since McCain himself was in a major Hollywood movie.  

Here is Sen. McCain making a cameo in the 2005 movie “Wedding Crashers” alongside onetime strategist and longtime Clinton friend James Carville (strange bedfellows no doubt).

Also alarming is the fact that aside from one MSNBC show the national media seems to have almost completely overlooked this contradiction.