One of the more obnoxious tenets of President Bush's M.O. has been to allow only die-hard supporters access to campaign events and even public speeches, keeping anyone who might be so churlish as to actually disagree with him as far away as possible. Not only was Bush thus kept blissfully ignorant in his bubble, but TV audiences were tricked into believing the vast majority of Americans wholeheartedly agree with Our Great Leader and that only some sort of hippie jihadist crank could possibly think otherwise. This has only deepened as Bush's poll numbers continue to plunge.
Given how John McCain has previously bragged of how he marches in lockstep with Bush, it's not surprising that he's emulating the Decider in other ways as well.
Last night, the McCain campaign held a supposedly bipartisan "town hall" meeting in New York which was carried exclusively on Fox News. Viewers may have noted the rather stark absence of blacks, Hispanics and other non-whites in what is arguably the most diverse city in the world.
Well, there's a reason for that. At the very end, Fox told its viewers that the event wasn't bipartisan at all - rather, that the McCain campaign had distributed tickets to its own supporters, along with GOP New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and supposedly independent groups. In other words, McCain once again emulated Bush: he packed the event with his own people and made it look as if he enjoyed wide support.
Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean was not amused: "Copying the Bush campaign model of stacking events with his prescreened supporters is not the transparency Americans are looking for. If that is Senator McCain's idea of straight talk, the American people are in for a long and disappointing campaign season."
McCain likes to talk about how he's an agent of change, but so far it looks like he's not changing a darn thing.
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