To hear his campaign tell it, John McCain is in his element when he hosts town-hall forums. Give him a podium and a teleprompter, and he’s lost. Give him a microphone and a floor, and he’s fine.
With that in mind, McCain, hoping to erase some of the lingering memories of last week’s speech debacle in Louisiana last Tuesday, hosted a forum in NYC last night. According to media accounts (I did not watch the event), McCain emphasized a bipartisan worldview: “We’ve gotta put our country first and not our party first and too many people have that reversed,” he said, garnering applause.
It’s curious, then, that McCain apparently tried to pack the audience with sympathetic allies.
For those of you who can’t watch clips online, Fox News’ Shepard Smith told viewers as the event was wrapping up, “I reported at the top of this hour that the campaign had told us at Fox News that the audience would be made up of Republicans, Democrats, and independents. We have now received a clarification from the campaign and I feel I should pass it along to you. The McCain campaign distributed tickets to supporters, Mayor Bloomberg, who of course is a registered Republican, and other independent groups.”*
Watching the event, Oliver Willis noted, “Right now John McCain is doing a ‘town hall’ meeting being broadcast by Fox News (The Official Network of McCain ’08, Home Of The Terrorist Fist Bump) and it’s a mighty amazing trick the McCain camp is pulling. Somehow they’ve gone to the most diverse city in America (New York City) and are seemingly unable to find minorities willing to attend.”
And now we know why.
This may seem like a simple “gotcha” moment, but I can’t help but wonder if this may have a more lasting significance.
First, it gives Dems a chance to highlight just how similar this is to the least-popular president in modern times.
DNC Chairman Howard Dean issued the following statement:
“Once again John McCain’s campaign is trying to mislead the American people. Senator McCain should understand that after seven years of a President who has divided Americans and pursued a scorched earth policy full of misleading propaganda campaigns, we need a leader who understands he is the President for all Americans not just his supporters. Copying the Bush campaign model of stacking events with his prescreened supporters is not the transparency Americans are looking for. If that is Senator McCain’s idea of straight talk, the American people are in for a long and disappointing campaign season.”
Quite right. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from Bush’s “Bubble” policies, it’s that the president loves town-hall forums, just so long as he can pick the audience. If McCain is pulling similar stunts, and FNC’s Shepard Smith made it sound as if he is, we have yet another example of McCain following in Bush’s footsteps.
And second, I wonder if this might also offer the Obama campaign a chance to steer clear of McCain’s invitations for joint town-hall events.
The event was originally intended to be a joint appearance with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Although his opponent declined the invitation, McCain forged ahead making only a nod to Obama’s absence.
“Probably would’ve been a little more interesting tonight if Sen. Obama would’ve accepted my request to join in the meeting,” McCain joked.
If I’m the Obama campaign this morning, I’m thinking, “Why would we want to participate in joint events if McCain operates in bad faith?”
* Update: Commenters are right to note that FNC’s Smith is mistaken about Bloomberg, who was a registered Republican, but then switched to being an independent.
In this light, Smith’s “clarification” seems to need some additional clarification. He went out of his way to say that what the McCain campaign told Fox News about the event’s audience wasn’t accurate, but upon reflection, Smith didn’t go particularly far in explaining the extent of its inaccuracy. If I can get further details on this, I’ll update again.