Dana Milbank of the Washington Post led the parade of puffery earlier this year when he declared McCain “the single greatest political leader of our time.” He followed up this week by declaring that McCain “never forgot that political opponents are not his enemies, and that there are things more important than winning elections.”
Even those who view McCain in iconic terms would find that statement preposterous. The media loved McCain’s being accessible at their beck and call, his willingness to leak about his Senate colleagues, and his apostasy on key GOP positions ranging from campaign-finance reform to global warming and Obamacare. His failings were forgiven by the media during his 2000 presidential campaign, during which political columnist Joe Klein described him as “a man on a white horse attempting to traverse a muddy field.”
During the 2000 Republican presidential convention in Philadelphia, I went to a tony restaurant to attend a reception. By accident, I stumbled into a room chock-full of top-shelf media types: Dan Rather of CBS, the late Peter Jennings of ABC, Tom Brokaw of NBC, Arthur Sulzberger of the New York Times. After a few minutes, I realized I was at the wrong event. It was a birthday party for John McCain. I recall telling Peter Jennings that it was a strange party for a politician to have. As far as I could tell, there were no family members present, no donors, no party officials. In a deadpan tone, Jennings told me: “Well, this is really the first meeting of John McCain’s next precinct-organizing committee.”
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