Reply #10: They know all about it, McCain told them in 2000 but they kept it off the record

[Mabus]

They know, they've always known. The press liked McCain so much that they would go off the record to protect him.

From the Daily Howler

PART 3—PREPARE FOR NOVELIZATION: Our analysts derived one last mordant chuckle from Glenn Frankel’s (generally unobjectionable) profile of McCain. They came to us with the following passage—a description of the way things worked the last time McCain sought the White House:

FRANKEL (8/27/06): "We knew that John could carry on a conversation with any reporter for 24 hours a day," says Davis. "So we based our whole campaign model on 'earned media.' If a reporter wanted to fly with him or get an interview, we'd say: 'He's going to the West Coast. You can sit next to him on the plane; you can have the hotel room next to his; you can be in the car with him the entire time.'"

The same strategy produced the campaign bus, dubbed "Straight Talk Express," in which McCain, positioned in a red leather swivel chair like a prime minister, held a running all-day news conference for the media pack. All of it was on the record, much of it lively and self-lacerating.

“All of it was on the record!” Except for more McCain’s less impressive statements—things the press took off the record! Yes, we know—it’s hard to believe. But in December 1999, Nancy Gibbs and John Dickerson, writing in Time, described the way their cohort was covering—and covering up for—their champion:

GIBBS/DICKERSON (12/13/99): And then there are the stories he tells—to which, if there's a pattern, it's to exalt other people and deflate himself. A presidential candidate is not supposed to tell you about the rules he broke or the strippers he dated, or the time he arrived so drunk that fell through the screen door of the young lady he was wooing. The candor tells you more than the content, and reporters sometimes just decide to take McCain off the record because they don't want to see him flame out and burn up a great story.

Ah yes, life on the Straight Talk Express! Reporters were getting all sorts of free donuts, and McCain kept explaining how smart they all were. So they’d simply take him “off the record” when he said things which didn’t compute. Let’s make sure we understand what that means—when McCain would say squirrelly things, reporters agreed that they wouldn’t report them. For example, the scribes weren’t reporting the fact that McCain would call his North Vietnamese captors “gooks.” ...

more at: http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh090106.shtml