Is the media turning on John McCain? I wrote on Wednesday about Dana Bash's CNN piece that just ripped McCain for his many flip flops, a sentiment that was shared by CNN's Jack Cafferty in one of his excellent rants, which began like this.
If John McCain doesn't stop changing his position on the issues, he threatens to make John Kerry look like an amateur.
But today's AP "analysis" of the McCain campaign's "growing pains" is harsher still, even getting sarcastic. I didn't know The AP knew how to be sarcastic. The piece starts out:
Call it campaign growing pains. Or bad luck. Or a combination of the two.By any name, Sen. John McCain is hampered by missteps and self-generated controversy in the early days of the general election campaign for the White House.
It then goes on to list the various unforced errors McCain committed this week from:
...on Tuesday, he criticized his rival for proposing a windfall profits tax on the oil industry. The attack was complicated by McCain's earlier statement that he would consider the same thing.
to...
On Thursday, the Arizona senator flew to Iowa, a likely battleground state in the fall, where he expressed sympathy with victims of severe flooding and pledged support for federal recovery aid. The event was overshadowed by President Bush's appearance elsewhere in the same state on the same day.
Not to mention the fact that...
an aide to Gov. Chet Culver said the Democrat had privately relayed a request to McCain to cancel his plans to avoid diverting law enforcement personnel from recovery efforts.
But the piece de resistance had to be McCain's trip to Canada, about which AP Special Correspondent David Espo writes:
McCain arrived aboard his chartered campaign jet, yet told reporters at a news conference, "this is not a political campaign trip." The senator added he didn't feel it was appropriate to have the government to pay "while I am the nominee of my party."
Yet...
The centerpiece of the six-hour visit was a speech to the Economic Club of Canada that amounted to a cross-border political attack. McCain criticized Obama, without mentioning him by name, for his opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement.
And here comes the sarcasm:
McCain's schedule also included mention of an unspecified "finance event." While that is customarily campaign jargon for a fundraiser, foreigners may not donate to U.S. candidates, and one aide was quoted in advance as saying that money from $100-per-person event would simply defray the cost of the earlier luncheon.The non-fundraiser, which may or may not have cost $100 to attend, was held on the top floor of a building with a commanding view of the city skyline.
It is a different world, indeed, when the media can hardly disguise its contempt for the Republican candidate, but I suppose McCain makes it difficult for them to maintain their much heralded "objectivity" when both he and his campaign are as inept as they are. Despite the "mwuhahaha's" and twirling of moustaches by many on the right at what was looking like a very divisive Democratic primary just a month and a half ago, something tells me Republicans all over the country are secretly wishing McCain had had the sort of primary challenge that Barack Obama did because they know his campaign is the better for it...and McCain's is worse for not.
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