Below, Rich notes Jonathan Alter is setting up a preposterous straw man about how he thinks the McCain campaign will hide Palin from the press. And even though it hasn’t happened yet and he has no reason to believe the McCain camp will adopt this strategy, Alter is preemptively condemning what he smugly assumes will happen in very strong terms.
Now it wasn’t that long ago that liberal bloggers were complaining that a presidential candidate “just doesn’t give the press much access, sometimes shutting them down for weeks at a time. Why? Does this make sense to anyone else as a campaign strategy? I’m baffled by it.”
That candidate was Obama, who, leading up to the not insignificant Pennsylvania primary, didn’t talk to the press at all for ten days straight. Further, when Tony Rezko was indicted Obama held a press conference and answered all of eight questions before he tried to duck out. The media was so upset they lept out of their seats and demanded he return — one news report called it “mayhem.” (You can watch the video here.) For comparison, when McCain had to answer charges about the NYT’s bogus allegations that he had an affair with a lobbyist, he held a press conference where he answered 36 questions from the press.
Yes, clearly it’s the McCain campaign that should be chastised for a lack of press access throughout the campaign. But with respected journalists just floating it out there that the Palin needs to be torn down — at some point in the future because of something she hasn’t done yet! — honestly, who the hell would blame them if they kept her away from such unprofessional jackals?