Opinion: In his own words: John McCain on politicians and the media

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Below is a passage from a major speech given today in Columbus, Ohio by Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president. It’s a fairly trenchant, and many would say accurate, description of the sometimes socially destructive synergy between politicians making charges and the media reporting on them.

The Ticket covered the rest of the senator’s speech in a Breaking News item available here.

‘In his/her own words’ is a regular feature of The Ticket in which we print some public remarks in total without interruption or comment.

‘The hectic but repetitive routine of presidential campaigns often seems to consist entirely of back-and-forth charges between candidates, punctuated by photo ops, debates and the occasional policy speech, followed by another barrage of accusations and counter-accusations, formulated into the soundbites preferred by cable news producers.

‘It is a little hypocritical for candidates or reporters to criticize these deficiencies. They are our creation. Campaigns and the media collaborated as architects of the modern presidential campaign, and we deserve equal blame for the regret we feel from time to time over its less than inspirational features.

‘Voters, however, even in this revolutionary communications age, with its 24-hour news cycle, can be forgiven their uncertainty about what the candidates actually hope to achieve if they have the extraordinary privilege of being elected president of the United States. We spend too little time and offer too few specifics on that most important of questions.

‘We make promises, of course, about what kind of policies we would pursue in office. But they often are obscured, mischaracterized and forgotten in the heat and fog of political battle.’

-- Andrew Malcolm

Photo Credit: NBC