Come Nov. 5th, All Will Be Forgiven

This column was written by Michael Schaffer.

John McCain recently took a shot at a reliable political target: The Georgetown cocktail party. In an interview with the Des Moines Register's editorial board, McCain dismissed the idea that some conservatives might be worried about his running mate's qualifications. "If there's a Georgetown cocktail party person who, quote, calls himself a conservative who doesn't like her, good luck," he snapped.

McCain is surely not the first popular DC social figure to knock the hostesses and party-goers of 30th and N. But these days, the feeling is reciprocal: As the Republican's campaign has lurched from negative ads to faux controversies over the past month, he's found himself in the unusual position of being scolded by a group he has jokingly called his political base: The centrist establishmentarians of Washington journalism.

With varying degrees of certainty and no shortage of chagrin, a host of onetime McCain media groupies have publicly abandoned their seats in the horseshoe-shaped couch aboard the Straight Talk Express. "He has become the sort of politician he once despised," declares The Washington Post's once-smitten Richard Cohen. "John McCain is not a principled man. In fact, it's not clear who he is," writes Elizabeth Drew, a woman who wrote a broadly positive 2002 book about who McCain is. "I just can't wait for the moment when John McCain--contrite and suddenly honorable again in victory or defeat--talks about how things got a little out of control in the passion of the moment," grumbles Joe Klein, who'd earlier predicted that McCain's nomination would assure an honorable fall campaign, but has spent much of the season denouncing the Senator for various acts of dishonor.

The headline for Klein's salvo against the onetime media man-crush from Arizona: "Apology Not Accepted."

All this opprobrium! Will McCain never sip a martini in Georgetown again? Don't bet on it. As furious as a herd of admonishing columnists may sound when they're in high dudgeon, the scorn of the commentariat is highly impermanent. Win or lose, McCain should be safely back in the media's good graces by this time next year. And I suspect that apology Klein envisioned may not even be necessary.

Two decades ago, high-minded disdain was also focused on a theretofore well-respected Republican nominee: George H.W. Bush. Ronald Reagan's number two may have been called a wimp during his vice presidency, but he was never called a sleaze. But then he turned to hatchet man Lee Atwater and a slew of race-baiting attack ads when he ran for president in '88. Bush's polarizing campaign and his choice of an allegedly ill-prepared running mate drew dismissive hoots from political opinion elites.

"He promises the high road and then takes the low one," Cohen wrote at the time. "He seems to flinch from his own words, suggesting that he is doing only what's necessary to win the election." "I say his campaign is probably the most disgraceful in modern American history," declared veteran analyst William Schneider. "When he glorifies the Constitution while denouncing the A.C.L.U., and attacks Governor Dukakis's patriotism while saying that he's doing no such thing, not only the Democrats but many others around here think he goes a bit beyond the loose bounds of political decency," opined the New York Times's legendary James Reston, noting that Bush's reputation had sunk from gentleman to alleycat.

But his image didn't stay in that alley. Bush won, of course, and became president, with all of the media tropism attendant to the position. No one boycotts the president. And while Bush had his troubles with the press once in office, to be sure, the gutter-politics label didn't stick with him for long after election day. Today, the 41st president is remembered as a slightly goofy, generally ineffectual, and essentially sweet old guy, which was more or less his reputation before he first okayed that Willie Horton ad. All is forgiven.

It's not just a simple case of winner-ism, either. Bush's successor, Bill Clinton, was deemed unfit for polite Washington society repeatedly during his two terms. And if the Monica Lewinsky scandal was too mired in partisanship to elicit the sort of establishmentarian condemnation now facing McCain, the final scandal of Clinton's presidency was not. As news spread about the erratic, tawdry pardons issued during Clinton's final night in the White House, the opinionators who had been too noble to get involved with Ken Starr sprang into action.

"You let me down. Yes 'me'--me and everyone else who has ever defended you," wrote Cohen--again! Pity poor Richard, who gives so much of his heart to faithless politicians--in an open letter where he noted that he'd been unable to find a single Clinton defender during his recent stay in Davos. The venerable D.C. columnist Mary McGrory, ordinarily not one to cite Bush mantras, wrote, "Clinton's departure lent a deafening resonance to the Bush campaign mantra about 'restoring dignity to the White House.'" Liberal Times scribe Bob Herbert piled on. "It's time for the Democratic Party to wise up," he wrote. "Ostracism would be a good first step. Bill Clinton should be cut completely loose. Cold turkey. No more talk about his political genius, his fund-raising prowess, his ability to captivate audiences. ... Send him packing."

And after a short spell in the political wilderness, the party and the media were fondly remembering Clinton's ... political genius, fund-raising prowess, and ability to captivate audiences. Likewise, it's a good bet that, despite the essayists who condemned the 42nd president's noxious rhetoric in this year's campaign, Clinton a year from now will not be known as the off-message passive-aggressive champion of racialized code words. Clinton may not be part of a winning ticket this year, but he has something just as good when it comes to making people forget that you're officially unacceptable: Celebrity. Rock stars don't get boycotted, either.

Which brings me back to John McCain. Americans are a forgiving people, the opinionators of the press included. Come next January, McCain will either be a president or a rock star. Either way, he'll be a guy with the enough celebrity wattage to make once-unequivocal critics forget why they'd condemned him in the first place. Klein may vow to never forgive him, but my hunch is that plenty of other scolding commentators will quickly do just that. It's not hard to imagine how it would play out: An early gesture of bipartisanship or a superficial public shot at some right-wing rival if he wins, a noble investigation of some undeniable wrong--war profiteering, maybe?--and then a self-mocking turn on "Saturday Night Live " if he doesn't. And as easy as that, the word will go out: The old John McCain is back.

But all this going back on declarations about just who will and won't eat lunch in this town again seems to create something of a moral hazard, to use a currently popular term. Insofar as editorial disapproval is supposed to represent a disincentive towards unacceptable behavior--like, say, trashy campaign ads, unfit veep nominees, or dubious eleventh-hour pardons--the quick evaporation of those judgments lessens the costs of such misdeeds. Candidates like John McCain don't have to change their behavior when the pundits get on their high horses. They know that their reputations will be bailed out eventually.
By Michael Schaffer
Reprinted with permission from The New Republic