There’s been quite a bit of talk this week about energy policy, but the media coverage has left one key detail out of the news altogether.
We talked earlier this week about a press conference John McCain held, during which he was asked about renewable energy. McCain responded by ignoring the issue about which he’d been asked, and explaining that he supports a “cap-and-trade system,” just so long as there’s no cap.
It was an unusually dumb thing to say, suggesting that McCain, even now, doesn’t quite understand his own energy policy. That he said this in front of a room full of reporters made the error far worse, and potentially more embarrassing.
That is, if any reporters actually thought to tell the public about it. CJR’s Zachary Roth explained today that McCain, once again, got a pass. (via Atrios)
If a candidate for president unwittingly revealed, at a widely attended press conference, that he either didn’t understand a basic element of one of his own key policy proposals, or wanted to fool the public about it, you’d think the mainstream press would treat it as news. Apparently, you’d be wrong. […]
Either McCain doesn’t understand [his policy], or he’s being deliberately disingenuous…. [W]hatever the case, by saying he wouldn’t impose a mandatory cap, he’s flatly misstating the facts — something you’d think the press would call him on.
Guess not. Four days later, plenty of environmental news sites and blogs — including CJR’s Todd Gitlin — had drawn attention to the incident, but the only mentions of it that we could find in the mainstream media were a blog post at Politico and this online chat with Washington Post political reporter Michael Shear—and even here it took a reader to bring it up. (Shear replied that he suspects it was a “misstatement” by McCain, and that the paper is “still trying to get clarification.”) Other than that, nothing.
So: A presidential candidate flatly misstates the central premise of one of his signature policy initiatives, and the press ignores it. But, hey, at least we know all about how Michelle Obama did on “The View.”
If only this were the first time.
Hilzoy had a great post on the same subject the other day, highlighting all kinds of major issues on which McCain seems utterly clueless, from troop levels in Iraq to Social Security policy to government spending. McCain isn’t flubbing tests on obscure policy minutiae; he’s largely incoherent on issues a) Americans care about; and b) he claims to know quite a bit about.
So, why is there a complete media blackout on McCain’s confusion? Hilzoy came up with some possible explanations:
First, the reporters who cover McCain might not know much about policy, and thus might not notice when he gets something spectacularly wrong. I suspect this is true, and it’s a huge problem: if those reporters are not supposed to evaluate what McCain says, or ask whether or not it’s true, how do they differ from mere stenographers? And why not just save money and have a video camera follow him around?
Second, when they do notice, they might be worried that if they note his confusion, they will be illegitimately invoking McCain’s age. But this is not true.
The main reason why McCain’s opponents might bring up his age is because it might suggest that he was more likely to become confused and befuddled. But if he is already confused and befuddled, then it is possible to note that fact without bringing up his age at all. You can just cut out the middleman: it doesn’t matter at all whether his confusion and befuddlement is due to age, to an unwillingness to pay attention to policy details, to laziness, or anything else: he is confused on very important points of policy, and that’s what matters.
Third, journalists might just assume that McCain really does know better…. If this plays a role in the coverage of McCain, it’s worth asking what, exactly, journalists base this on. As McCain’s mistakes pile up, the idea that he really does have a good grasp of policy issues gets less and less convincing.
These are not, of course, mutually exclusive observations. It’s quite likely campaign reporters ignored McCain’s Sunni/Shi’ia confusion because they assumed he knows what he’s talking about, while those same reporters gave him a pass on cap-and-trade because they themselves don’t know anything about the policy and had no idea he was as clueless as they are.
But it’s time for reporters to get their heads in the game here. The Obama/Clinton drama is done. We’re about to elect a president, and one of the major candidates seems unusually incoherent on some of his own signature policies.
I know the reporters are buddies with McCain, and that he considers them his “base.” But there’s too much at stake for another cycle of media malpractice.