Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey, noting that Senator John McCain supported George W. Bush 90 percent of the time in the last session of Congress, got it right when he told delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Denver: “That's not a maverick, that's a sidekick.”
Unfortunately, the corporate media – translation: White-owned media – has decided to become an unabashed sidekick to Bush's sidekick. Fawning journalists have abandoned their supposedly "objective" roles and are portraying McCain as a maverick when, in fact, he is anything but that.
The selection of Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate has fueled even more of this nonsense. A column in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle, for example, was headlined: “GOP resurging as party of mavericks.” A day after McCain announced his VP pick, a Washington Post headline proclaimed: “With Pick, McCain reclaims His Maverick Image.” On “Meet the Press,” Andrea Mitchell declared that McCain “has returned to the original John McCain, the maverick.”
NBC host Chris Matthews accurately stated, “The press loves McCain. We're his base.” As Peter Hart observes in an article in Extra!, the publication of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), “A candidate could only get away with such an elaborate and long-running con with the media as willing accomplices.”
Hart credits CBS's 60 Minutes with elevating the myth that McCain is a maverick. In 1997, it ran a segment titled, “The Maverick from Arizona.” Even crusty newscaster Mike Wallace told the Washington Post, “I'm thinking I may quit my job if he gets the nomination.”
Bob Schieffer, another CBS broadcaster, called McCain “the most famous maverick of the last half of the 20th century.” Not to be outdone, Time magazine characterized McCain as “a free-ranging, fence-jumping, kick-the-coral maverick.”
The problem with such unceasing cheerleading – in addition to destroying any semblance of fairness – is that such bias carries over into analyzing the candidate's record. Consequently, McCain ends up getting a free ride even when he contradicts himself. Peter Hart of FAIR noted, “For a more typical politician, McCain's myriad flip-flops would be a serious liability. But McCain mostly manages to get along just fine. Next to his turnabout on Jerry Falwell, McCain's highest-profile reversal might be on Bush's tax cuts. McCain bucked the White House by voting against both the 2001 and 2003 packages, pointing out that they were tilted in favor of the wealthy. In the 2008 campaign, McCain is running in support of extending the very same tax cuts. McCain's campaign talking point now is that he opposed the cuts because they were not accompanied by spending cuts, a boldly disingenuous argument that is rarely challenged by the press corps. (The Associated Press was one notable exception – 1/31/08.)”
Hart continued, “McCain has even managed a flip-flop on one of his signature issues –immigration policy. Though he was cheered by some pundits for co-sponsoring legislation with liberal Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), McCain would eventually distance himself from that bill. On NBC's Meet the Press (1/27/08), he tried to avoid answering a direct question about whether he would sign his very own bill as president, saying the ‘bill is dead as it is written’ and that ‘the lesson is they want the border secured first.’ The ‘they’ he's speaking of would seem to be the right-wing of the party, whom McCain had angered by resisting such 'security first' demands for many months.”
It's interesting how the corporate media tries to cover for McCain when he can't cover for himself.
Consider the following account from FAIR:
“... McCain was asked – aboard the Straight Talk Express, no less – an extraordinarily straightforward question: ‘Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?’
”McCain responded by saying, ‘You’ve stumped me.’ When the questioner offered some help (‘I mean, I think you'd probably agree it probably does help stop it?’), McCain still wasn't able to offer a response: I'm not informed enough on it. Let me find out. You know, I'm sure I've taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was. Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception – I'm sure I'm opposed to government spending on it, I'm sure I support the president's policies on it.’
“McCain would go on to plead with an aide to 'get me [Sen. Tom] Coburn's thing' to figure out his position. New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney wrote on the paper's website (3/16/07) ‘that this went on for a few more moments until a reporter from the Chicago Tribune broke in and asked Mr. McCain about the weight of a pig that he saw at the Iowa State Fair last year.’”
