“I miss John McCain,” writes the Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank today (2/5/10). Milbank calls himself “an original McCainiac”–by which he means that he, like so many others in the corporate media, adored the so-called “maverick”John McCain of the 2000 presidential campaign.
As we’ve pointed out plenty of times before, McCain’s Senate record has staunchly conservative throughout his career–except for those anomalous years, just before and after his unsuccessful bid for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, when the press mostly fell in love with him. Wishing for that McCain to return is akin to wishing that politician would just lie to you one more time.
the thing that McCain has always done well in politics is cultivate good relations with the media.
right you are-a hero ain’t nothin’but a sammich,and”maverick”was ’50s tv western.the corporate media creates heroes and saviors to distract our focus,keep us knocking on the wrong doors,asking the wrong questions etc-by the time mccain’s pals on the straight talk express were done sanitizing the senator’s role in the keating 5 scandal,one would have thought that john had lost HIS life savings in that long ago financial debacle. the senator’s version of his work on behalf of keating simply does not jibe with various first hand accounts proffered by folks who have no reason to lie.the magnitude of what keating did to ordinary people,with the access to regulators provided by the arizonian was not covered with great precision and specificity in real time.mccain’s acolytes on the “straight talk express” turned the whole thing on its head,the press babbled on about how the scandal served to broaden john’s perspective,and make him a campaign finance reformer,voila,an even better maverick than ever.