Soccer Dad

McCain's role

Last week in editorials, both the NYT and WaPo derided Sen. McCain's decision to stop campaigning and work on the bailout bill. Here's the Washington Post:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the Republican presidential nominee, poured gasoline on this volatile mess with his announcement that he was suspending his campaign to deal with the financial crisis. Whatever Mr. McCain's intent, the inevitable effect was to inject presidential campaigning into an already difficult situation.

The New York Times:

Mr. McCain came to the debate after one of the more ludicrous performances by a presidential candidate. With the markets teetering and Washington desperately trying to find a bipartisan solution, Mr. McCain tried to make the biggest question of the week whether he was actually going to show up for Friday's debate.

But a number of conservative sites have emphasized that Sen. McCain did make a difference.

What we do know is that only one of the presidential candidates understood the political and personal dynamic at work and the way forward. That explains why Reid and Paulson called McCain: they wanted a deal and couldn't get there on their own.

So how did the Times and the Post report all this?

Here's the New York Times:

Both major presidential candidates, Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee, and Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate, gave guarded endorsements of the bailout plan. Both Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama had dipped into the negotiations during a contentious White House meeting on Thursday.

They both "dipped," however only one of them played a pivotal role. The Post was, frankly, worse. Much worse. Yes the Post's report had more details - but they were presented in the form of Democratic talking points:

But Democrats noted that McCain spent very little time on Capitol Hill talking directly with lawmakers, instead preferring to work the phones from his Crystal City headquarters.

And an Obama spokesman sent out e-mails to reporters noting that, while lawmakers and congressional staff members worked into Saturday night to hammer out the deal, McCain was at CityZen, one of Washington's priciest restaurants.

"After taking 22 hours to get from New York to Washington to pull a pointless political stunt, McCain spent yesterday working the phones -- from his campaign headquarters across the river from the Capitol," said Damien LaVera, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee.

And it gets worse:

Campaigning in Detroit, Obama continued to attack McCain, saying the Republican's backing of deregulation laws helped cause the economic crisis.

"You can't make up for 26 years in 26 days," Obama told a crowd of more than 15,000 at a rally in downtown Detroit. "For most of the 26 years, he's been against the common-sense rules and regulations that could have stopped this problem."

Instead of taking a time out here and calling Sen. Obama's falsehood, the Post goes on reproducing more of his attack on McCain. But it wasn't Bush or McCain who fought the regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It was people like Barney Frank (via memeorandum) and Chistopher Dodd.

In fact it was the Bush Administration and Sen. McCain who had been pushing for their reform.

Perhaps not surprisingly neither newspaper mentioned that it was due to Republican objections that the inexplicable funding for ACORN was dropped from the bailout plan.

Neither the Post not the Times provided any narrative that's at odds with the idea that Sen. McCain played a constructive role in shaping the compromise. One simply ignored his role, the other mocked it.

There is a narrative here of putting national interests ahead of personal or political interests. It's a narrative that favors John McCain. Why are the gatekeepers of our national debate refusing to do their job and tell the story? A free press is necessary to the proper functioning of democracy and yet our media is failing in its number one job: to keep the citizenry informed.