MORE CAMPAIGN MUCK….Chris Orr suggests that John McCain ought to quit whining about the amount of press coverage Barack Obama is getting:
The truth is that, while the inordinate coverage of Obama hurts McCain in some ways, it also dramatically decreases the costs of his mistakes. What exactly are the stories McCain wishes the press had paid more attention to during the last few weeks? His mathematically irreconcilable economic promises? Adviser Phil Gramm’s “nation of whiners” comment and job at subprime abettor (and alleged tax-evasion specialist) UBS AG? Surrogate Carly Fiorina’s confusion over McCain’s stance on whether insurance plans should cover birth control? McCain’s suggestion that he somehow knows what Maliki wants better than Maliki does? The string of gaffes in his presumed area of expertise (Sunni vs. Shia, Somalia vs. Sudan, Czechoslovakia, the “Iraq-Pakistan border,” etc.)?
The truth is, when you’re running a campaign as weak as McCain’s has been, in a political environment as hostile to the GOP as this one, the less attention anyone pays to you the better off you probably are.
True enough, but “better off” only means he loses in November by a little bit rather than a landslide. An even better strategy would be to do something genuinely worthy of press coverage. Accusing Obama of being a poltroon or a genocide flip-flopper probably isn’t it, but surely McCain can come up with something that’s (a) newsworthy but (b) doesn’t irrevocably ruin his reputation for decency at the same time? I suspect that firing Steve Schmidt would be a good place to start, but that’s just a guess.
