Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?
Jacob Weisberg, four years ago:
A similar pattern describes his views on gay rights. I remember McCain telling me during an interview in the mid-1990s about how a gay member of his staff sensitized him to the issue. When he ran for president in 2000, he won the endorsement of the Log Cabin Republicans. The Advocate calls him “notoriously pro-gay.” In 2004, McCain was one of only six Republican senators to vote against the Federal Marriage Amendment, and after a Massachusetts court affirmed gay unions, he took the position that states could decide their own marriage laws without federal help. McCain has lately fallen back into formation, saluting an obnoxious Arizona bill that would deny benefits to unmarried couples. Gay leaders in his state, who know better than to take such maneuvering seriously, have already let him off the hook. The rest of us should be sophisticated enough to recognize that politics is the art of the possible, and that what’s in McCain’s heart on this subject (as President Bush might say) is not a viable stance for any presidential candidate just yet, especially a Republican one...
John McCain today:
Armed Services ranking member John McCain said Thursday that he would “without a doubt” support a filibuster if the bill goes to the floor with repeal language. “I’ll do everything in my power,” the Arizona Republican said, citing letters from the four service chiefs urging Congress not to act before a Pentagon review of the policy is complete. “I’m going to do everything I can...”
Scott Lemieux calls Jacob Weisberg another example of "media incompetence about McCain":
Of Course They Are!: Meanwhile, speaking of media incompetence about McCain, I offer the following juxtaposition. John McCain, in real life.... John McCain, in the dreamlife of a certain kind of center-left pundit.... But don’t kid yourself, one of these days politics will end, and What’s In McCain’s Heart will finally emerge!
When Jacob Weisberg attacks people as naive for saying that perhaps McCain believes what he says:
Weisberg: McCain's not really a conservative: John McCain, whom everyone expects to run for president in 2008, is pandering to the Republican base in a way that is politically shrewd but disappointing to his nonconservative admirers.... Most liberal commentators take McCain's love fest with the neo-Calvinists at face value, arguing that he's finally revealing his true colors.... To the American Prospect, McCain is Barry Goldwater's true heir. A couple of weeks ago in the New York Times, Paul Krugman wrote, "The bottom line is that Mr. McCain isn't a moderate; he's a man of the hard right." But the literal-minded left has McCain all wrong. He's trying to win over enough of his party's conservative base to win, for sure. But this is a stratagem—the only one, in fact, that gives him a shot at surviving a Republican presidential primary. Discount his repositioning a bit, and McCain looks like the same unconventional character who emerged during the Clinton years: a social progressive, a fiscal conservative, and a military hawk. Should he triumph in the primaries, we can expect this more appealing John McCain to come roaring back...
It's not "incompetence" that Weisberg is exhibiting. It's something else...
