McCain Campaign Blasts NY Times

Presumptive presidential nominee John McCain's campaign is levelling complaints against the NY Times for rejecting a draft he submitted for an Op/Ed piece. The Times reportedly rejected it. Big whup.

McCain's been published in the liberal East Coast daily seven times over the last decade, while Obama saw his first piece published recently.

McCain isn't saying anything new. I know it may not be fair and it's certainly not giving McCain an equal voice, but the paper is not obligated to do so. Obama has been saying the same things, too. Why print his opinion and not McCain's?

The reason is this: Obama's opinions are, for the most part, "newsworthy" due to their propensity to change the status quo. Proposing change is going to get more attention than saying "Let's just keep doing what we've been doing until we know exactly what we need to be doing based on what we know now, and when things change we'll decide if we need to do something different."

I don't want to get into the debate over whether or not withdrawal timetables are appropriate or not. I don't believe either candidate wants to endanger the lives of service men and women on the ground in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

The point is McCain's campaign is not putting him in the news. The campaign process is going to be contentious: it always is. People are going to get tired of hearing both candidates saying the same thing over and over, but all McCain is really saying is "Obama is wrong and a flip-flopper".

Okay. I can hang with that. Name me a politician who doesn't change their mind about certain issues? (Particularly if their original stance is liable to impede their progress toward election/re-election.)

McCain is never going to be the darling of the media. He doesn't have it in him and it isn't what he should be hoping for. His attempts at being more "humanized" and humorous have mostly failed and (like it or not) he is the candidate running on the idea of times being hard for everyone, but if we stick to our guns, we'll make it through. The other problem he's got is people seeing him almost as an incumbent running for re-election.

This is, of course, preposterous. He has substantive differences from the current president, but those differences are not disparate enough for him to be seen as "fresh".

Obama is riding high with the media. There are plenty of people telling us that this is a "media conspiracy" to push Obama down the public's throat. I don't subscribe to theories like this, in general.

The conservatives always hold the trump card in such a situation: if Obama is getting too much press and the media are in love with him, they'll take it to the pulpit. James Dobson is already hinting he may endorse McCain. Conservative spiritual leaders and social groups will rally behind McCain, even if he's not their ideal candidate. So far, their response is luke warm, but when push comes to shove, you can bet they'll be all about McCain and not about Obama.

It's going to be an interesting campaign you can bet on it. If you think McCain is going to attract the amount of attention from the media Obama is garnering, however, you're going to be disappointed.