Opinion: John McCain, once a media mingler, now keeps his distance
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It has come to this for the presidential candidate who once, only partly in jest, referred to the press as ‘my base.’
As The Ticket recently noted, the days when John McCain and a raft of reporters seemingly enjoyed kibitzing are long gone -- the victim of the pitched battle for the White House.
And the change is epitomized by the logistics aboard the jets carrying McCain and his rival, Barack Obama, from battleground state to battleground state.
Obama has never come close to emulating McCain’s trademark mingling with the media. But The Times’ Peter Nicholas, who has covered both men, relates that compared to the Obama campaign plane, McCain’s Straight Talk Air these days gives the candidate maximum privacy.
Here’s Nicholas’ report:
An opaque brown curtain separates McCain from the traveling press corps. It remained closed through most of the flight this morning from Nashville to Allentown, Pa. A flight attendant opened it during descent. At no point was McCain visible. His motorcade dropped him near the front of the plane on the rainy tarmac in Nashville. McCain boarded and spent the rest of the flight in his front cabin. By contrast, on Air Obama the Democratic nominee is separated from the press corps by a see-through curtain. Obama doesn’t often come back to the plane’s press section, but by craning your neck you can often catch a glimpse of him in the front rows. Such is what passes for access in the 2008 presidential race. Is the McCain curtain ever open mid-flight? “Never,’ an aide said. If McCain wasn’t in evidence, his daughter, Meghan, pierced the curtain briefly to schmooze with a few reporters. She took up a position between life-sized cardboard cutouts of her father and vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. One member of the news media did get access to McCain en route to the Pennsylvania stop. About 30 minutes into the flight, top McCain aide Steve Schmidt appeared and waved to conservative talk show host Sean Hannity. Hannity came up, passed through the curtain and disappeared into McCain-land.
-- Don Frederick
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