I thought things would go a lot better for Mitt Romney after an adviser promised an Etch-A-Sketch-ing of previous campaign positions. I expected this because Romney seems, at least on paper, to be the kind of guy mainstream journalists would let get away with this: he’s a Republican but, at least for his time in office, he wasn’t excessive about it, plus he constantly yammers about the deficit. That’s a pretty good formula for the sort of GOP Daddy the mainstream press usually likes, no?
But he’s not getting that kind of coverage. I assume it’s because he’s not running an enjoyable, press-friendly campaign like McCain or Bush in 2000. (A couple of weeks ago, Politico told us that Romney’s campaign has “the worst relationship of all with the press,” in a story about “what passes for a media charm offensive” in the Romney operation.)
You know which Republicans could have gotten away with this, if they’d run? Haley Barbour and, God help us, Paul Ryan. The press loves those guys. I’ve been blogging for years about the media’s love affair with Barbour; maybe that pardon scandal tarnished him a bit, but the press certainly would have gone for him if the he’d run and gotten traction in the GOP voter base. And Ryan … well, there’s a bit of skepticism now that even members of his own party are shying away from his budget, but the mainstream press has regularly showered him with adulation.
You can lose this charmed status with the press under certain circumstances, though I’m not quite sure what those circumstances are — for instance, I don’t know why John McCain wasn’t the press’s Golden Boy in 2008. I guess there was just too much revulsion at the disaster of the Bush presidency, and McCain didn’t try to distance himself from Bush. But I also think it’s because Barack Obama out-charmed McCain.
Which makes me wonder whether the 2008 outcome could have been very different with a few small adjustments: either no Obama run or a quick, decisive victory in the primaries by Hillary Clinton, accompanied by a little bit of deviation from Bush-era orthodoxy on McCain’s part, especially concerning the war. (As I recall, the press kept assuming in ’08 that surely someone other than Ron Paul on the GOP side would do the politically prudent thing and express skepticism about the war. Of course the war was a sacrament to GOP voters, so nothing of the sort ever happened.)
A Hillary Clinton who won the nomination but never had to build up an inspiring narrative of breaking glass ceilings? Versus a master schmoozer who’d gone somewhat maverick-y on the war? McCain could’ve gotten away with anything.
… And I should add that I’m not trying to cast aspersions on Hillary — I just think a disturbingly large portion of the press was primed to portray her as a castrating shrew going into 2008.
(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)