Redstate

I can understand and even sympathize with your sentiment but allegations like this must be immediately and strenuously addressed. If not, they have a habit of festering. John McCain is doing the Right thing; double entendre intended.

By the way, I was an original FredHead. However, he is at home with his sick mother, young son, and gorgeous trophy wife. You may be correct about how he would have addressed this issue but that's not a slap against McCain. That's an unfortunate slap against Thompson.

______________________________________
Donate to the Rs in Close Senate Races through Slatecard

... not responding to them only encourages them to repeat it over and over again, until, at some point, a large enough mass of people have heard and absorbed it that it automatically becomes part of conventional wisdom.

Not defending himself is what has brought Bush down to a seemingly permanent 30% in approval polls. Not defending himself and trying to skip past "macaca" is what led George Allen's loss in 2006.

But then again, I suspect you already know that. It would be so much easier (for Democrats) if Republicans were to decide to just lay back and take it when the Press attacks them, wouldn't it, moby?

Romney/Pace 2008

McCain not only needs to respond, he needs to take the fight to the Times in a viscious way. He has to draw a line in the sand with them, to the effect that "NewTone" is over.
____
CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.

Have you read the NYT? They haven't been McCain fans. Even their "endorsement" read more like "wow, Rs suck, but we always pick one, I guess this McCain guy might not destroy everything like that Rudy guy will."

I expect McCain will get a bit more sympathetic news coverage because he is so open to the media, but I don't expect that from partisan sources like the NYT.

Then again I still believe most media bias is from people who are trying to do their job well but have not interacted with people outside of NY and DC enough (and thus underestimate the number of social conservatives and misunderstand their thought process). This type of bias won't be as harsh on McCain as Bush although they will fawn about Obama.

The NYT is different. It has affirmatively taken stances as a news vehicle on issues and politics. They don't inadvertently take sides; they purposefully do so.

______________________________________
Donate to the Rs in Close Senate Races through Slatecard

I think this is going to be the nightly news on all three networks tonight, along with CNN and Fox, especially now that McCain has held a press conference to respond to it.

I'll give 70/30 odds that it has now been "launched" as an Official Subject that will stay in the media for weeks. It may never go away. The New York Times still sets the agenda for many, many news outlets in this country. This piece was just the opening salvo.

Is that this story was so scurrilous that if the Times had the chutzpah to publish it in the first place -- as the first negative story of its kind, after endorsing him as the Republican nominee -- imagine what they're giving themselves license to do once they really get rolling.

I mean, the election is nine months away and this is their opening shot, and I wouldn't be surprised if it sets the tone for the next three quarters of a year. Whether other news organizations will beclown themselves by following the Times' lead is an open question...can they resist?

McCain's friendliness with the press certainly doesn't immunize him from the occasional hatchet job, particularly from the NYT and others that are openly partisan. And it doesn't mean that the media in general will forsake their Democratic bias during the fall campaign. Nonetheless, McCain's press strategy will likely pay dividends in the long run. Ryan Lizza captures the reasons why in a recent New Yorker profile:

"The Democratic candidates rarely speak to the travelling press. McCain not only packs his bus with reporters (whom he often greets with an affectionate 'Hello, jerks!') but talks until the room is filled with the awkward silence of journalists with no more questions. The Obama campaign, like the Bush White House, prides itself on message discipline and tracks down leakers with a frightening intensity. McCain and his aides openly discuss strategy ... . By engaging reporters in long, even substantive conversations, he also disarms them. The incentive to ask 'gotcha' questions that feed the latest news cycle is greatly reduced, and the hours of exposure to McCain breed a relationship that inclines journalists to be more careful about describing the context of his statements."

After riding along and covering the campaign for a couple days, I wrote this:

It didn't take long to figure out why the media likes the Senator and to my surprise it has less to do with policy and more to do with openness. The Senator doesn't tell the media things off the record and he doesn't keep an arms distance from them. This makes them more trusting of McCain and they feel less of a need to find the "real" reason for an announcement, strategy or policy view.

Talking to other media members, there was a general sense that McCain is the most open candidate to them and Hillary was the least open....

For better or for worse, McCain's campaign is different from the others in its openness to the media. This has won him at least respect and probably some sympathy from many reporters. Being there makes it easier to see how much style rather than substance can matter in person, both to the voters and the to the media.

______________________________________
Donate to the Rs in Close Senate Races through Slatecard

... not seen since Eisenhower.

Romney/Pace 2008

There have been many, many posts here predicting this. The only surprise is that it came so early.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

It's based a lot on self interest. Journalists embedded with campaigns have to produce a certain amount of words to get their paycheck, and if all they have to go on are bones that a candidate throws them from time to time in scripted press conferences, then that leaves a void that they have to fill with something. Being generally liberal, they let speculation and rumor, colored by their bias, seep into the void. I don't think most mainstream journalists (the NYT excepted) act in bad faith. They are just biased, like almost everyone is, and they interpret things a particular prism. McCain's strategy is to give them more substance to work with.