The Plane, McCain's, Is Where You Feel No Pain

OK. Last one. I promise. Let me stress, by way of compensation, that if you really want to read a masterpiece on how the political press fails democracy, don't buy this book, buy this one.

So, via Yglesias, 2008:

The national headquarters in Chicago airily dismisses complaints from journalists wondering why a schedule cannot be printed up or at least e-mailed in time to make coverage plans. Nor is there much sympathy for those of us who report for a newscast that airs in the early evening hours. Our shows place a premium on live reporting from the scene of campaign events. But this campaign can often be found in the air and flying around at the time the “CBS Evening News with Katie Couric” is broadcast. I suspect there is a feeling within the Obama campaign that the broadcast networks are less influential in the age of the internet and thus needn’t be accomodated as in the days of yore. Even if it’s true, they are only hurting themselves by dissing audiences that run in the tens of millions every night.

The McCain folks are more helpful and generally friendly. The schedules are printed on actual books you can hold in your hand, read, and then plan accordingly. The press aides are more knowledgeable and useful to us in the news media. The events are designed with a better eye, and for the simple needs of the press corps. When he is available, John McCain is friendly and loquacious. Obama holds news conferences, but seldom banters with the reporters who’ve been following him for thousands of miles around the country. Go figure.

The McCain campaign plane is better than Obama’s, which is cramped, uncomfortable and smells terrible most of the time. Somehow the McCain folks manage to keep their charter clean, even where the press is seated.

1968:

Bob Haldeman had it game-planned perfectly. Nixon most often held but one rally a day. The news cameras shot on celluloid. The precious cans then had to be shipped to New York for developing. So Nixon's events were near airports--timed exquisitely for insertion into the evening's newscasts. Which, eager to be fair, would always show one clip of the Democratic and one clip of the Republican. Nixon's staff always helpfully pointed producers to their preferred soundbite. Humphrey, on the other hand, had upwards of a dozen events a day. The producers had plenty of chances to locate some newsworthy Humphrey gaffe....

The rest of the time Nixon rested, met with with backers, pored over a briefing book kept updated nonstop by an army of twenty-something research assistants tasked with thinking up the nastiest questions possible. With Prussian efficiency, aides handed out position papers to AM and PM newspapers deadlines. Even the elephant at the rallies was carefully prepped--with an enema, to foreclose any embarrassing accidents.

He couldn't give the press no contact, because that would become the story. So he gave what the press corps called "three-bump interviews": two minutes in the candidate's cabin just before the flight attendant sent everyone back to their seats for landing. They didn't seem to mind. Maurice Stans was raising $24 million for Nixon. That bought a lot of bottomless cocktails and delicious food; a British reporter described the press plane as an "astounded torpor." Humphrey's biggest financial backer, on the other hand, was the Minnesota-based frozen food magnate Jeno Paulucci. Apparently his firm had an overstock of a cocktail weenies--which were served, in lieu of cocktails, morning, noon, and night.

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