(Newser Summary) – John McCain used to call the press “my base,” but if that’s true, his base has turned against him. Most of his biggest admirers, won over by his 2000 campaign, have become brutal critics, John Heileman writes for New York. The Republicans of all stripes pouring off the bandwagon, especially over the past month, "gave the press a permission slip to question McCain’s authenticity and integrity," Heileman contends.
Mere months after McCain and Barack Obama were on essentially equal footing as media darlings, "the McCain campaign has been complicit in squandering one of the most precious assets its candidate brought to the race: a media dynamic that had previously worked overwhelmingly to his advantage," Heileman writes. “It made reporters wonder, ‘Have we been had?’” says one journalism professor. Source: New York
There was a mismatch between the way he was behaving and the narrative the press had bought into. It made reporters wonder, 'Have we been had?' - Marion Just, consultant to the Project for Excellence in Journalism
There is no brand in politics you can just put on the shelf, run a campaign totally contrary to it, and then take it down later and still expect people to believe it. - ex-McCain strategist John Weaver
