’Tis a season of change. Summer shifted into fall. Lehman Brothers shifted from in business to not. And John McCain shifted from ardent de-regulator to Wall Street sheriff.
And with this last shift came an evident change in rhetoric. “Fiery,” said the Washington Post; “striking a more populist tone,” said The New York Times; “McCain has had to rapidly adjust his stance,” summed up the Boston Globe.
We come not to bury these national papers’ stories, but to praise them. Because each of these pieces not only noted that the candidate was up to something new, as a matter of campaign tactics, but also pointed out that it was new for him ideologically. They highlighted a core inconsistency between a career—including four years chairing the Senate’s Commerce Committee—that again and again favored deregulation (of our airwaves, of our banking system, and of our financial markets), and his newfound rhetorical pitchfork.
The press and its magnifying glass wearing ancillaries at outfits like Politifact can do a fine job of patrolling the candidates’ allegiance to the dry truth. It’s a relatively simple matter to hold a candidate to honest numbers or recitations of facts. (Although mileage may vary on whether or not they change what the candidates say.)
But McCain’s shift requires something different, something that you won’t see from the arbiters at Factcheck. It’s not a matter of finding a report or statistic that refutes a particular claim he’s made; it’s about having the willingness to look back at his career and make a judgment about the full force and flavor of his record.
It’s the sort of judgment that reporters often resist making, for a host of reasons. It requires the willingness to think for oneself, and the recognition that analysis and independent conclusion is not the same thing as bias. But it’s also a matter of resources: to judge a candidate’s record fairly, reporters must first be deeply familiar with it. And if they’re not already, that familiarity can only be gained through thorough reporting, and through the time such reporting requires.
In this case, especially as the markets quiver and McCain swoops into Washington, journalists’ willingness and ability to make those judgments is what best serves readers. This is clear if you take a look at a few local stories from early last week, early last week, as the crisis reached full boil and McCain began to whistle a new tune. Here’s one describing a Tuesday event from the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Republicans Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin brought a populist message to the Mahoning Valley Tuesday, whipping up a rally with vows to fix Wall Street and help working-class Ohio families.
McCain promised stiffer regulations and more transparency in the American financial system if he is elected president.
After that lede are some quotes from the rally, followed by some balancing quotes from a Democratic conference call with Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown that the Obama campaign organized to rebut the visit. There’s no mention of McCain’s past record on deregulation, no clue to readers from either the voice of the reporter or a non-partisan source that McCain’s tune is something new, unexpected, and rather contradictory to what he’s made his career saying. Isn’t that the sort of information you’d want as a swing state voter?
If so, you’d have to find it elsewhere. Here’s the top from a Washington Post story, published the same day:
A decade ago, Sen. John McCain embraced legislation to broadly deregulate the banking and insurance industries, helping to sweep aside a thicket of rules established over decades in favor of a less restricted financial marketplace that proponents said would result in greater economic growth.
Now, as the Bush administration scrambles to prevent the collapse of the American International Group (AIG), the nation’s largest insurance company, and stabilize a tumultuous Wall Street, the Republican presidential nominee is scrambling to recast himself as a champion of regulation to end “reckless conduct, corruption and unbridled greed” on Wall Street.
See the difference? Of course, The Washington Post has far more resources and experience to bring to a story than the Plain Dealer. And a campaign rally is a hard news story for a regional paper, perhaps warranting a different cast. But just because a news event happens in a paper’s backyard is no excuse for not putting that event in the proper context.
It’s not just Ohio. Take this story from the Sarasota Herald Tribune, from a McCain rally in Florida earlier the same day:
Republican presidential nominee John McCain lashed out Tuesday at Wall Street with a ferocity seldom heard from leaders of his party. He railed against corporate greed, called for more government regulations and vowed to stop CEOs from cashing in when their financial institutions falter.
And most of all, McCain tried to position himself as the best candidate to solve the financial crisis–not as one of the leaders who allowed it to happen….
While offering little detail, he promised to give full support to financial regulatory agencies and advocated transparency.
The article strikes a more skeptical tone than the Plain Dealer’s, certainly, but there’s still no mention of McCain’s past regulation-hostile philosophy.
Again: If you were a reader in swing state Ohio, or Florida, isn’t that information you’d want to have?
One of the main benefits campaigns get by stumping in swing states are the media echoes after the rally: the headlines in the next day’s papers, the segments on that evening’s news. This week, NPRs David Greene and Politco’s Michael Calderone had excellent stories teasing out this strategy. The bottom line is that this local coverage will reach more people than can be packed into even the largest stadium. And when those stories offer little more then stenography, and fail to question a candidate’s record versus his rhetoric on one of the campaign’s biggest issues, well, who’s to say that’s not part of the plan?
Clint Hendler is the managing editor of Mother Jones, and a former deputy editor of CJR.