Umps working the umps: Lefties complain about “President McCain”

posted at 6:05 pm on October 11, 2009 by Patrick Ishmael
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Consider their indignation if he was appearing once a fortnight. You’d think Sen. McCain was forming some sort of shadow government.

Steve Benen opines:

A couple of days ago, Atrios tweeted, “Huzzah! President John McCain will be on my teevee on Sunday.” I hoped he was kidding. He wasn’t.

On today’s episode of CNN’s “State of the Union,” viewers can tune in to find yet another Sunday interview with last year’s unsuccessful presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). For those keeping score, this will be McCain’s 14th Sunday morning appearance since President Obama’s inauguration in January. That’s 38 Sundays, for an average of a McCain appearance every 2.7 weeks.

At that rate, John McCain — the former Presidential candidate and eternal darling of the media — gets an interview scattered a little more than once a month onto one of the half-dozen or so Sunday talk programs.

Meanwhile, back in the land of actual over-exposure, Mark Knoller reports:

By my count, today’s address on consumer protection was the 300th speech, statement or formal remarks Obama has made as Pres.

That Tweet was made Friday, the 263rd day of Obama’s presidency, meaning that the President has on average given more than one speech a day since taking office, with dare I say most of those speeches and statements covered by all of the networks in one form or another.

John McCain on one network, once or so a month = government in waiting. Barack Obama pulling an unprecedented full Ginsburg and making daily “as I have always said” speeches = teh obvious. Whether Benen (or for that matter, conservatives) likes it or not, McCain is in many ways the de facto head of the GOP until another Presidential candidate is nominated, and if he were making his party’s case on the issues less than once per month on one of these programs, I’d be concerned.

To reiterate: Fourteen Sunday appearances by sitting Senator John McCain = crazy. Three-hundred speeches in fewer than three-hundred days by President Let Me Be Clear = teh duh.

My gut feeling isn’t that Benen and Atrios don’t appreciate the scale of the disparity between the actual President and his Republican counterpart. It’s that even with the relative dearth of McCain appearances versus those of the President, McCain is still held in high esteem by many Americans and media-types and in comparable ways to that of Barack Obama, and he arguably gets more bang for his appearance buck despite having fewer high profile occasions to make his case. The objection isn’t unlike how the Administration has complained that Fox doesn’t provide enough fawning media coverage to the President… that the White House messages aren’t being fully Xerox’d… but here it’s in a media-on-media context; if a compelling, high profile voice of dissent — and in this case, a compelling, high profile, and amiable voice of dissent — doesn’t bow to the full court media press of this Executive branch or adequately marginalized, whine will be served by the President’s supporters.

Because it can’t be emphasized enough, here’s Chris Wallace’s take on the Administration’s continual working of the umps:

Now, even the umps are working the umps.

Update: Don Surber disagrees.

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