English is a dynamic and ever-changing language. It is rich with idioms adopted from other languages (Oy!). But one of the biggest contributors to our lexicon is sports. Idioms like “slam-dunk”, “pinch hit” and “bump and run” have all be adopted and used throughout everyday life, business and most especially politics.
In 1992, a term used extensively in basketball was introduced to politics. A strategy memo penned by Rick Bond, chairman of the Republican National Committee, is credited with introducing the term “work the refs” to the world of politics. Bond’s memo was addressing an effort by the RNC to paint the media has having a “liberal bias.” He wrote:
There is some strategy to it [bashing the 'liberal' media]. If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is 'work the refs.' Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack on the next one.
Let me be clear, any individual running for public office whether it is John McCain, Barack Obama or the weird guy down the street who’s running for dog catcher, all try to work their media coverage. Everyone, who is in the public eye, wants his or her public image to gleam. But the McCain campaign is pushing the envelope farther and farther and perhaps his sinking poll numbers reflect a public who may believe that Senator McCain has crossed some invisible line.
Last night (October 1), David Folkenflik of NPR commented:
The cliché is that McCain is just working the refs, like all politicians seeking an advantage. The reality is that at least in public, his campaign appears to be challenging the media's right to be seen as a referee at all. That's a high-stakes game.
And I would add a dangerous one – dangerous for both the McCain-Palin ticket and dangerous for our republic.
McCain has always had a rather bipolar relationship with the press. In Washington, McCain was the darling of the mainstream media. For years, John and Cindy McCain courted the national press corps, even going so far as feting them at their ranch in Sedona. In return, the national press dubbed McCain’s first campaign “The Straight Talk Express.”
But at home in Arizona, things were quite different. McCain’s relationship with the press has always been a bit testy. McCain’s relationship with the Arizona Republic has been at best a cold war, occasionally erupting into full-blown confrontation, like when the Republic published lengthy stories on McCain’s relationship with Charles Keating.
But now the storied romance between the national press corps and the Straight Talk Express has soured. Now it’s the “No Talk Express”, and that’s on a good day. Often, it is the “Snarky Express” or the “Openly Hostile Express.”
The decline began back in 2005, when the press first began to cover the 2008 campaign. Candy Crowley of CNN covered the kick-off to the McCain 2008 campaign with the story, which mentioned McCain’s 8-year effort to ingratiate himself with Republican red-meat eaters. Gone was the maverick that castigated the religious right “agents of intolerance” and in his place was a candidate who openly courted the endorsement of Falwell, Hagee and others.
Relations with the press further deteriorated this spring when McCain had a testy exchange with Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times. Bumiller had written a story on the 2004 discussions between John Kerry and John McCain to assess McCain’s interest in running as Kerry’s VP. Relations cooled further with campaign staffers, such as Rick Davis and Charlie Black, attacking the New York Times, NBC, ABC and most recently CBS and PBS. In August, the Times reported on the on-going financial relationship between Freddie Mac and Rick Davis. Davis Manafort, the lobbying firm owned by Davis, had been receiving a monthly retainer from Freddie Mac. Rather than provide concrete information refuting the story, Charles Black screeched that the newspaper was “in the tank” for Obama. Andrea Mitchell of NBC news came under fire twice – first for her story refuting McCain campaign claims that Barack Obama cancelled a visit with troops in Germany, because he couldn’t bring a press aide and the second for uncovering the fact that John McCain was not in the “cone of silence” and heard Rick Warren’s questions to Obama. Charlie Gibson of ABC and Katie Couric of CBS have been accused by the campaign of roughing up Sarah Palin. Now, Gwen Ifill’s abilities to be a fair moderator are being called into question on the day of the veep debates, because she has written a book (not as yet available) on young black political leaders.
While much has been made of the McCain campaign’s efforts to shield Sarah Palin from the press, McCain, himself, no longer walks to the back of the campaign plane to kibitz with the press corps as he did in 2000 or even earlier in this campaign. This is unfortunate for the health of the Republic – it’s a violation of the compact between elected officials and the press.
I end with Thomas Jefferson. Our third president understood greatly the importance of having an active and free press. In a letter penned to General Lafayette in 1823, Jefferson wrote:
The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.
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