McCain on Zell

McCain (I usually utter his name like Seinfeld uttered Neumann). Well, ya knew it was only a matter of time before Senator McCain began tossing out soundbites in order to butter back up to the press. Apparently, at a party Wednesday night he had his gums flapping about how Zell Miller's speech was going to backfire. He called Buchanon's 1992 culture war speech milquetoast in comparison to Miller's. His spokesman said,

"This is not his style (McCain's)," Wittmann said. "He would prefer to see Democrats not as our enemies, but rather as Americans who have good intentions but policy differences" with Republicans.

Apparently he and his spokesman forgot Zell is a Democrat. All things considered, I don't know if it is better to have McCain as an enemy or as a friend.

The Tribune newspapers are running with the story now, 2 days after Miller's speech and a day after Bush's healthy bounce in the Time magazine poll. McCain's already been proven wrong-unless he thinks Bush would have opened up a 20 point lead after the convention.

I've been able to gauge the reactions of some undecided, apolitical individuals who will be voting in November. My sample size is small, but I consider my subjects very representative of that soft group of voters in the middle. First, they didn't know who Zell was to begin with. Second, most didn't keep him on because they didn't know who he was. Third, they all acted like scales had fallen from their eyes when they learned he was a Democrat-the anger took on new meaning. All in all, though, Zell's speech had little impact on these people. Bush's did, especially the emotion he showed near the end. Arnold's did even more so, especially the 'how do you know if you're a Republican' bit. Giuliani's did. That's it. They found McCain boring. They didn't keep Laura on, and they were split on the twins. Pataki barely registered. Zell's influence was near zero, and that's why there was the bounce in the polls.

So, in sum, McCain was wrong, and the Trib was creating news rather than reporting news.