McCain takes the press for a bumpy ride
Gaffes and all, the media's favorite Republican restarts the Straight Talk Express in Iowa.
By Michael Scherer
Read more: George W. Bush, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Politics, Bob Dole, Iowa, News, Michael Scherer, 2008 election
Photos: (AP/Charlie Neibergall)
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., steps off his campaign bus in Des Moines, Iowa, on March 15, 2007.
March 18, 2007 | ON THE ROAD IN IOWA -- Once we reached Mason City, the reporters on the bus began loading baby pictures onto their laptop and cellphone screens. John and Cindy McCain just could not get enough of the cute kids. "Awww," cooed Cindy, as a digital photograph of a 7-year-old in a blue blazer was handed around. "A beautiful smile," said John. "Take lots of pictures. We took thousands, but we wish we'd taken tens of thousands."
The bus had stopped at a railroad crossing, almost exactly 11 hours into the relaunch of the Straight Talk Express. The final town hall of the day had just ended -- the chili dishes emptied, the bumper stickers distributed, the applause lines well received. Everyone was too tired to keep asking hard questions. So talk turned to John's love of boxing matches in Vegas, and the final days of Bob Dole's hopeless 1996 presidential campaign, when the McCains crisscrossed the country for the loyalty and the kicks. "He was unleashed," John remembered fondly of Dole. "He knew he was going to lose."
By all appearances, the national press had somehow become one with the McCain campaign. We had been with him all day, nearly a dozen scribblers from the major papers, news Web sites, networks and wire services. We reclined on the motor coach's two couches, set our papers on its tables and swiveled in its leather chairs. There were six flat-screen televisions to watch the NCAA basketball finals, free WiFi for filing stories, packs of playing cards and boxes of powdered Donettes. A framed fern print hung above the toilet. We all sank into our seats, guests of honor mingling with senior staff, munching potato chips and Butterfingers with the candidate, peppering him with questions, and waiting for him to stumble. It went on for hours, with the subjects breaking in waves: Iraq, his age, military contracting, Jack Abramoff, the Bush administration, immigration, gays in the military. Everything was on the record, and nothing was off limits. It was a reporter's dream. David Broder, the grand muck-a-muck of campaign columnists, once called the national political press "the Screening Committee." John McCain, on the other hand, calls it "my base."
McCain was playing a game he had mastered once before, with the original Straight Talk Express. Back in 2000 he had stunned the American people, and seduced its political press, by offering endless on-the-record access, as if he had nothing to hide. The resulting buzz had helped make him, for a time, a real threat to the party's chosen candidate, George W. Bush.
It was a strategy no one has attempted since. The risks are too high. The political press can build up a candidate, for sure. But it loves nothing more than to destroy. As we sat through the hours of conversation, the scribblers all waited for the same thing. We only needed one flub, one unexpected admission, one apparent tear like Edmund Muskie's in New Hampshire, one "brainwashed" comment like George Romney's about Vietnam, one "Dean scream." This is why presidential contenders hide behind a phalanx of hired preppies, spokespeople and surrogates. It is why most reporters would have to sacrifice their firstborn before front-runners Hillary Clinton or Rudy Giuliani offered them unfettered on-the-record access.
McCain dodged and weaved plenty in his answers, but he always remained engaged, as if he were daring us to bring more heat, more traps, more opportunities for a mistake. If a question took too long to ask, he faked a snooze or impatiently tossed a water bottle between his hands. "What else?" he prodded. The New York Times' Adam Nagourney struggled in his swivel chair on a story for the next day's paper, so McCain's taunted him, calling him "you old geezer." Later McCain loudly teased John Weaver, his political mastermind, for losing the primary election in 2000 to President Bush. When McCain's Motorola Razr cellphone rang -- South Carolina's Lindsey Graham with an update on a Senate vote -- he did not excuse himself. "Hey, Lindsey," he called out. "What happened?"
The day had begun at 8:30 a.m. in the driveway of a Des Moines Marriott. For an hour, the Straight Talk Express drove in circles around the city, in a ridiculous self-parody, so the networks could shoot their interviews with the illusion of a bus that was going somewhere. Finally, the motor coach parked itself in front of the Iowa state capitol, a five-minute drive from the Marriott, so the still photographers could get their shots in front of the city's skyline. McCain came out and held a press conference, looking tense and annoyed, while Cindy shivered beside him. "Little bit older, but still the same candidate," McCain announced, hitting the day's talking point. "Still having fun. Still on the bus. Having the town hall meetings in the same way we were before." What he didn't say was that none of this had really happened yet. He certainly didn't look like he was having fun.
As the morning wore on, it appeared that McCain's return to the trail might be a dud. The Straight Talk Express seemed to have been replaced, as the late Jean Baudrillard would have put it, by the spectacle of the Straight Talk Express, a pale media simulation of the original, devoid of meaning and filled with empty photo ops. The story seemed easy to write: The old McCain, who once called Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell "agents of intolerance," had been replaced by a new McCain who spoke at Falwell's events -- a new McCain who would, in short, do anything to get to the White House.
Next page: "Rev. Falwell came to my office and said, 'I want to put our differences behind us'"