Sunday, November 09, 2008
The old John McCain?
In this period of election postmortems, there's a lot (too much!) chatter about what happened to the "old" John McCain - the one everyone respected. To this I can only say "Get a clue, people!" That John McCain never existed - he was a creation of savvy marketing and a sympathetic press-corps.
Senator McCain was always the same creepy guy we saw this time around - the difference between then and now is that this year, he was THE candidate instead of 2000's the OTHER candidate, so the press was forced to look at him with a more critical eye. When they did (as in Tim Dickinson's damning Rolling Stone article), he responded both by withdrawing from them and by becoming bellicose. Without the day-to-day mutual wanking McCain and the press had enjoyed, reporters started to be able to see the character flaws and mean-spiritedness that had always been there.
Senator McCain was always the same creepy guy we saw this time around - the difference between then and now is that this year, he was THE candidate instead of 2000's the OTHER candidate, so the press was forced to look at him with a more critical eye. When they did (as in Tim Dickinson's damning Rolling Stone article), he responded both by withdrawing from them and by becoming bellicose. Without the day-to-day mutual wanking McCain and the press had enjoyed, reporters started to be able to see the character flaws and mean-spiritedness that had always been there.
