Opinion: McCain vs. Obama: The Op-Ed smackdown
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John McCain couldn’t have begged for better coverage of his opinion piece countering Obama’s New York Times Op-Ed detailing his plan for Iraq. The presumptive Republican nominee got to:
- Rag on the liberal media,
- Get major play across the interwebs, and
- Publish his piece sans edits -- which generally doesn’t happen at major newspapers, the L.A. Times included.
And the New York Times didn’t really reject the piece. As the paper’s Op-Ed editor David Shipley wrote in an e-mail to the McCain campaign, explaining his decision:
It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece. To that end, the article would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq. It would also have to lay out a clear plan for achieving victory — with troops levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate. And it would need to describe the senator’s Afghanistan strategy, spelling out how it meshes with his Iraq plan. I am going to be out of the office next week. If you decide to re-work the draft, please be in touch ...
Sounds fair. So here’s a question: How many times did Obama’s op-ed get sent back for edits, and how much was changed?
Let’s focus that finely tuned 20-20 hindsight:
-- Amina Khan