It turns out the AP's man in Washington, in addition to telling Karl Rove to "keep up the fight" and all the rest of it, was in talks with the McCain campaign to join it in a "senior advisory role."
I guess there's nothing inherently wrong with this, except that it fits the profile of a guy who is at a stage in his career where he's not sure if he wants to be a news editor or a Republican operative, and there's a lot of evidence to suggest that he's resolved the conflict by effectively doing both, which ain't right.
AP story on the front page of the WSJ: "McCain Blasts Obama on Troop Visit"
Obama's campaign called the accusation "wildly inappropriate." His spokesman has claimed that the visit to a military hospital in Germany was scrapped after the Pentagon raised concerns about political activity on a military base. Earlier, though, the campaign had said Mr. Obama decided the visit might be seen as inappropriate politicking. However, the Pentagon said the senator was never told not to visit.
The story reads like a companion piece to McCain's web ad:
The Pentagon spokesman the AP finally mentions by name in the last graf is also quoted on the subject by WaPo's Dan Balz, and at more length.
"The Senator's staff was informed of the limits on what the military can do with respect to a political campaign and how we could support a senator's visit to Landstuhl and, quite frankly, I expected them to have the visit."
Quite frankly? Hmm... I can't help but think that's the kind of statement the Pentagon's spokesman would make if he were under the impression that having Barack Obama catch heat for this wouldn't be such a bad thing.
As the Post, but not the AP piece explains, Obama's Europe stops were not part of his official congressional trip, and is funded by his campaign. Had Obama and his entourage descending on a military hospital in Germany, he would at least been at risk of violating some (or all) of the regulations separating the military from political campaigns.
I don't know what the restrictions were that the Pentagon would have placed on an Obama visit. Would he have had to travel without any expressly campaign-oriented staff? I like the idea of rules like that, personally, but if they're at all onerous it's absurd to expect a candidate to make the trip anyway.
As for the larger point, this is a totally chickenshit ad by John McCain. The guy solicits (and receives) credit for not trading on his military record, even though he does it every chance he gets. This isn't even a legitimate opportunity to play "I love the troops more than you," but there he is, making an asshole out of himself.
Update: Ah, yes. I knew I read somewhere that this attack is being made in completely bad faith. TPM got confirmation from the Pentagon that they told the Obama campaign, after they had left for the trip, that he couldn't come to the base in Germany with campaign staff (as opposed to Senate staff). So the Pentagon effectively cancelled the visit, unless you expect him to go anywhere without his campaign staff, which is just naive.
Apparently the AP's recent stretch of shamelessly pro-McCain copy is the handiwork of, or at least due in large part to Ron Fournier. The well known straightnewsreporter is now in charge of the AP's Washington bureau and openly embracing a new journalistic style that involves "cutting through the clutter."
Michael Calderone has a piece in the Politico that details the editorial change and gets some reactions to it. James Taranto, of the country's nuttiest op-ed board, is quoted arguing that given the abundance of political opinion writing the AP should "should emphasize what they're especially good at, namely impartial reporting."
Presumably it's not the pro-McCain stuff that bothers Taranto as much as the AP's overarching and pervasive liberal bias. (While conservatives tend to believe that literally all mainstream news outlets except Fox are indistinguishable from Daily Kos, they consider the AP an especially bad offender.) But regardless of the reasoning, he's completely right about this. The AP has gone amazingly bad, and Fournier should be sacked as soon as possible.
Of course, he was just recently promoted so that's probably not going to happen. The AP will have brought John McCain so many donuts by the time this thing is over.
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