The Drudge Report is reporting that New York Times editor op-ed edutir David Shipley rejected an op-ed written by Senator McCain responding to a recent piece published by Senator Obama. Shipley, who served in the Clinton administration, told McCain he was not pleased with format of the piece, asking instead for a revised version. The McCain campaign claims Shipley’s rejection was based on the editors opposition to the main arguments of the piece and was not simply asking for a revision of the piece but a revision of the policy behind it.

Here is the piece originally published by Drudge

In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military’s readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.

No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five “surge” brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.

But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.

Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”

The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.

I am not entirely clear on the histoic nature of the Times rejecting the presidential nominee of a Party this close to an election but I would have to believe it is a rather unique occurance. I would imagine any media outlet that was at least attempting to be fair, would welcome an exclusive piece by any high profile news figure reglardless of how it is written.

Ultimately, as often happens with anti-conservative New York Times moves, not publishing the piece will only gain it more attention and give conservatives something to channel their energy toward.

I have to be honest with you and say I am always amazed when the media asks a candidate “are you planning on dropping out” BEFORE a vote is cast. Every general and Super Tuesday election I hear people on the West Coast decry the fact that vote totals come in three hours before they vote feeling it influences the election. So what does a month of asking “are you going to drop out, because we don’t expect you to win” do to a candidate? I am being serious here.

Before every primary the media has asked every candidate who wasn’t running away with the polling whether they would drop out. Now obviously no one expected Dennis Kucinich to sweep New Hampshire or Iowa or any state, but could we at least have given him the courtesy of letting the voters say “we don’t like you” before the Associated Press jumped to it?

The lunacy involved here is staggering. Time and again we’ve seen polling, including exit polling that was wrong, especially in cases where the election was close. If one candidate is three or four points within range, we don’t know that the poll is accurate until people actually turn out. Weather, world events, gaffes, any number of things can change a person’s vote the day of the election. Just because three hundred people called on landlines in a small sample show one thing, we have no idea when things are close, how the vote will actually turn. Yet, what do we have? “Are you going to drop out, are you going to drop out, are you going to drop out?” LUNACY!

MSNBC or the Matthews Secures Nomination for Barack Campaign Network is hosting the last democratic debate before the Ohio & Texas primaries tonight at 9:00PM eastern. As a special treat I compiled some of the best Matthews moments for the last year to get you revved up for the totally unbiased coverage we are sure to see tonight.

Enjoy!

Statement After New Hampshire

The Apology

Read the rest of this entry »

New York Magazine writer John Hellemann looks at the potential reasons why Obama has come under so little scrutiny in Election 2008 while Clinton has received nothing but. The author looks at the current state, potential causes, long-term effects and more.

From the article:

Divergence in tone is one thing, double standards are another. And it’s the latter that most galls the former advisers to the other, now-departed, Democratic candidates. “Obama has been able to get away with a stunning amount of hypocrisy that would get called on her,” says one such operative. “They’ve run the nastiest, most deceptive pieces of paid media: the mailer they did lying about her health-care plan, with the Harry and Louise look-alikes. The idea that it took Hillary growling Tony Rezko’s name in a debate to get any national coverage. How he complained in Iowa about 527s and then had them supporting him like crazy in Nevada and California. And nobody says a peep about it. It’s fu^&ing comical!”

There are countless other examples of this syndrome, both large and small. The way that Clinton’s famous fumbling of a question about whether illegal immigrants should be allowed to have driver’s licenses in a debate last fall was hammered on for weeks—whereas Obama’s flubbing of the same question in the next debate was essentially let slide. The way that Obama’s evisceration of his rival in his stump speeches was applauded by the media—whereas Clinton’s plunge into negative territory was widely condemned. The way that Clinton was roundly criticized for being inaccessible, and thus unaccountable, to the press—when Obama has since January been even less available for questioning than she.

The article largely comes to the conclusion that it is the meta-narrative of each candidate that is responsible for this disparity. Obama is a new commodity who is surging up, Clinton is a known commodity that has no room to go but down and all the stuff inbetween that fits into both camps just writes itself. The PR, the message crafting played into the coverage. Rather than reporters looking for the answers, they went with the spin to help build pre-existing notions. Obama rising up from nothing, Clinton stagnating from the top.

I call it all terrible reporting, bias and a sign of just how indiscernible this nations Fourth Estate is from the three branches of government, corporate America, and the Liberal sections of the Entertainment Industry and Academia. But that is just my take.

“I’ve been following politics since I was about 5,” said Mr. Matthews. “I’ve never seen anything like this. This is bigger than Kennedy. [Obama] comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament. This is surprising.”

“I really think there’s a Salieri-Mozart thing going on here,” said Mr. Matthews. “Salieri was the court composer who did everything right. He was impressive. Along comes Mozart. And everybody couldn’t get the music out of their heads. Hillary is really good at doing what she is supposed to do. She’s impressive. He’s inspirational. That’s the difference. One’s the court composer. And one is the genius. There’s something he does. I don’t know what. Oprah said it. It’s not that he’s black. It’s that he’s brilliant.”

Read the whole article in the New York Observer.

My thought? In the world of media bias MSNBC has become the new FOX News and Matthews the new O’Reilly.

Early on much was made of Senator Hillary Clinton’s relationship with conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Last week much was also assumed by Murdoch’s paper The New York Post endorsing Barack Obama. Was it a sign of a breach in their relationship? Was it Murdoch’s personal belief that Republicans would have a better chance running against a perceived lightweight in Obama? Nobody really knows but there is plenty of speculation to go around.

David Carr at The New York Times looks over the complex and perhaps unknown relationship and Clinton’s sometimes half-hearted wooing of the paper and its owner.

As a senator, Mrs. Clinton did put time and effort into the care and feeding of the tabloid, making sure that Post reporters had access to news and expertise out of her office, along with the occasional scoop when it suited both parties. But she never once appeared before its editorial board — a customary act of tribute by local politicians — and her lack of deference was duly noted by the paper’s leadership.

Part of the cooling in the relationship, according to people involved on both sides, has to do with the realities of being a hometown paper. When Mrs. Clinton was serving and running as a senator, she had a relationship with the paper. But as her candidacy for president gathered momentum, The Post became just one more part of the media scrum, and the paper did not react well to the disregard.

When John Edwards announced that he would boycott the Fox News Channel debate last spring, Mrs. Clinton went along. Fox News and The Post are corporate siblings, although they’re not particularly close. Still, Mr. Murdoch certainly took note of the fact that the courtesies extended to Mrs. Clinton — a muted presence in the gossip columns of Page Six, more balance in the news pages — did not seem to be returned in kind.

From TPM found via Cadillac Light:

Okay, this is interesting. I’ve just learned that CNN has told top Dem strategists James Carville, Paul Begala, and Robert Zimmerman — who are CNN mainstays but are all Hillary supporters — that they will not be doing any more political analysis on the network until the Democratic primary has reached a conclusion.

I’m also told that this move came after the Obama campaign repeatedly complained to high level officials at CNN about the presence of Carville and Begala on the network.

After I reached him today and pointed out that he hadn’t been on CNN in some time, Carville confirmed to me that the network had told him that he wouldn’t appear until the Dem primary is resolved.

Sam Feist, CNN’s political director, also confirmed the decision to me. “As we got closer to the voting, we made a decision to make sure that all the analysts that are on are non-aligned,” Feist said, adding that the decision had been made around the start of December. “Carville and Begala are two of the best analysts around and we look forward to seeing them on CNN plenty of times in the future, once the nominating process has ended.”

Though there are plenty of other contributors on all of the networks who are less than objective this is probably a decent move by CNN.

For every article that was written just a few short months ago declaring that Super Tuesday was going to be the decisive blow for both parties, there will now undoubtedly be an equal article written declaring that Feb. 5th will not mark the end of each nominating process. Today the Associated Press gives us one.

There will be nearly 1,700 Democratic delegates at stake on Feb. 5, enough to put a candidate well on his or her way to the 2,025 needed to secure the nomination. But even if somehow either Clinton or Obama won every single one of those delegates, it wouldn’t be enough. And with two strong candidates, the delegates could be divided fairly evenly because the Democrats award their delegates proportionally — not winner-take- all.

The Republicans have a better chance to produce a clear front-runner because several states, including New York, New Jersey, Missouri and Arizona, award all their GOP delegates to the candidate who wins the popular statewide vote. But a Republican candidate would have to attract support across the country to build a formidable lead.

Incase you haven’t noticed from all of the wrong predictions and countering analysis not one of us writing or looking at the 2008 race has any idea what we are talking about when it comes to predictions. We will all continue to make them, but everything from saying Clinton’s Iraq War vote would doom her candidacy to John McCain’s campaign being DOA, to Obama’s win in Iowa marking his immediate rise to the nomination has been wrong, wrong, wrong.

Are there good reasons to assume Super Tuesday won’t mark the end of both nominations or even one of the nominations? Sure. However if one candidate manages to sweep or at the very least take all of the delegate rich states we are going to have a MUCH better indication of how this race is going than we do today with only a few states and not many delegates decided.

My suggestion is that everyone calm down on this prediction stuff. We are early into the process and anything can happen. For all we know some heavyweights will drop out after Feb. 5th radically changing the race. For all we know some heavyweights might drop out after Florida. For all we know candidates the media are predicting will have to drop out today will hold on tightly until the convention and broker their way to the top.

The media has lost a lot of its domination over this presidential race. No longer can it announce the “front runner” after Iowa and New Hampshire and take that candidate to the nomination. So far what we have seen is that the voters are deciding this one and they seem to have ideas that run counter to Chris Matthews, Rush Limbaugh, Tim Russert, Wolf Blitzer, George Will and the rest of the commentators, pundits, reporters, anchors, bloggers, activists, editors, Facebook friends and monied interests.

I will say it again, CALM DOWN, no one has any idea where this is all going. Feb. 5th will be the first big indicator and it could be the end or the beginning or the middle or have no significance whatsoever. I know we all live in a world where we are not expected to delay gratification but for just this once we may have to let the people vote before we predict a winner.

Why is John McCain so beloved by the press? Howard Kurtz has a simple answer, because he talks to them. It sounds simple but it might well be true.

Kurtz argues that access is often the key to getting at the very least a more even handed write-up and at most the love of those who can help spread and shape a candidates image to the public.

Some further thoughts from Kurtz on the candidates:

Every presidential campaign is constantly calculating whether journalists are potential allies or incorrigible foes. The media are a great — and dirt-cheap — vehicle for carrying a candidate’s message, but submitting to questioning also carries the risk of being thrown on the defensive, as Mitt Romney learned in a tense exchange with Associated Press veteran Glen Johnson last week over the role of lobbyists in his campaign.

As a front-runner, Hillary Clinton spent most of last year keeping reporters at arm’s length. But after falling behind in Iowa, she held an off-the-record dinner with traveling correspondents, brought them doughnuts on the press bus, pretended to be a flight attendant and began doing a slew of interviews, culminating in her “Meet the Press” appearance eight days ago. Accessibility, Clinton has concluded, has its benefits.

Barack Obama has staked out a middle ground, holding occasional “press avails” — but traveling on a separate bus from the pack — and recently agreeing to open his major fundraisers to journalists.

Mike Huckabee has been the ringmaster of a traveling media circus, even inviting reporters to watch him get a haircut. With a shoestring budget, he has been endlessly available as a talk-show guest, yukking it up with Jay Leno and Stephen Colbert, and regularly holding conference calls with journalists. Rudy Giuliani, despite taking a swipe at “the pundits” in a recent television ad, holds a daily news conference on the trail.

And then there is McCain. Reporters rarely quote his aides because the man himself is available to react to just about everything. And that “infinite” access, says Boston Globe correspondent Sasha Issenberg, helps the Arizona senator.

[techtags: John McCain, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Media Criticism, Howard Kurtz, media accessibility, election 2008, politics]

I have noted a few times on this blog how MSNBC’s Chris Matthews has spent the last few months publically fawning over Barack Obama. The Daily Show seems to have noticed the same thing. You can see the individual take on Matthews here but if you have a minute and want to see the entire media mocked by Stewart check out the shows coverage of media coverage from New Hampshire which also includes the Matthews moment:

Meanwhile check out this clip of Matthews talking about how he teared up watching an Obama speech.

You can also see this clip of Matthews declaring an Obama win in Iowa will be equivalent to the fall of the Berlin wall and elections in South Africa and the “biggest news story to come out of America since Reagan beating Carter.”