Pubbie "Geniuses": No Excuse for Stupidity

There's simply no excuse for the stupidity of the Pubbie "whizkids" handling the press.

At least, that's McCain's take.

Let me try to explain this briefly. The daily deadline reporters who are out there covering the McCain campaign every day should never be treated as the Big Media Enemy, except in those cases where an individual reporter commits some specific act of unfairness. Nor should the local and regional reporters who show up to cover specific events be confused with The Big Media Enemy.

The workaday journalist whose job it is to go out and cover campaigns deserves to be treated with respect. That reporter is supposed to be getting the news, and when campaigns don't allow reporters access to candidates -- when there's never a press conference, never any unscripted availability -- you can't blame the inevitable deterioration of the campaign's press relations on the press.

...The liberal leanings of the press corps can't be helped (at least, not in the short term), but how Republicans deal with that problem is within their own control. "I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing," Reagan said, and today's GOP stands guilty of doing nothing about media bias -- except constantly whining and lashing out in paranoid rage, which is Nixonesque, not Reaganesque.

Republican campaign operatives have to get over their sadistic, punitive attitude toward the press. The Tucker Bounds School of GOP media relations -- where every interview is treated as an opportunity to show contempt for the interviewer -- is only making a bad situation worse.

All this because of what has become obvious: Sarah Palin actually IS bright, principled, and able to engage in intelligent discourse---when she's not being micro-managed by micro-brained Pubbie "whizkids."