"The care and feeding is four star..."
by digby
It seems like a good time to trot out this notorious story from the 2000 campaign. It was written after Bush was caught on tape calling a New York Times reporter an "asshole" with Cheney chiming in "big time."
Although trivial in the end, the outburst was a setback in Bush's wooing of the press. He routinely comes to the back of the plane to pinch cheeks and hand out nicknames. He asks about the budding romances of the reporters on board; his favorite scribes get their bald heads palmed. The care and feeding is four star. The last time I was on the plane, I had six meals--one featured lobster--over the course of three events, an excellent ratio. Sleep was plentiful, thanks to Bush's light schedule, which protects his naps, nights and weekends.
Such a genial host has the quiet effect of curbing pointed questions. Who wants to bring up politics, religion or money at a family dinner or when there are Dove Bars on demand? One day in Pittsburgh, after Bush and his press pack filled the plane with talk of jogging routes, pickup trucks and heifers, it was the reporters on the ground who pressed Bush to clarify his mushy position on abortion and whether he could prove, given the absence of official documents, that he had actually put in all his time in the National Guard. The charm vanished, the lips pinched, discussion ended. As he so often says when crossed, who are we to judge what's in his heart.
By contrast, Gore's way is not to be chummy but not to be petty either. He has never held it against Time magazine for breaking a story about his hiring of author Naomi Wolfe as a secret adviser or reporting his suggestion that he and Tipper were an inspiration for Love Story. Until the campaign-finance scandals seared him, he'd always been accessible. But he doesn't coddle. The regulars are treated like tourists on Aeroflot: on some days, the food is timely; on others you have to survive on fruit roll-ups and chicken-salad sandwiches past their sell-by date. The most reliable thing is courtesy Rolaids in the bathroom. Bedtime is just something you dream about until well past midnight. Air Gore was a grumpy place, and the alpha male in earth tones with his earnest town-hall meetings couldn't catch a break for much of the campaign.
Just to be fair she went on to point out that Gore became more chummy when the polls starting moving in his direction and Bush got less friendly when the race tightened up.
But that's not what's important here: it's the admission that for many campaign reporters, it's really all about them. And it is. Just keep that in mind when you listen to today's caterwauling about Clinton not being "accessible" to them in the first four days of her campaign. They all sit around and whisper to each other like a bunch of 8th graders and these memes take on a life of their own.
Of course if Clinton provides premium chocolate and lobster dinners, she'll be dinged for being a hypocritical elitist, so she can't really go that way anyway. ("It's not so much that there's anything wrong with giving out expensive Dove bars, it's the appearance of hypocrisy that's the problem here, Andrea"...) All she can do is endure the inevitable. But we, at least, can be aware of what's really going on.
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