McCain’s Night on the Town (Hall)
Via WSJ
McCain’s Night on the Town (Hall)
By Elizabeth Holmes
John McCain held a televised town hall meeting at Federal Hall here Thursday evening, the first opportunity the Republican presidential candidate has had in the general election to showcase his stump speech to a national audience.
The event was originally intended to be a joint appearance with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Although his opponent declined the invitation, McCain forged ahead making only a nod to Obama’s absence.
The event was billed as bipartisan. But afterward, a Fox News anchor Shepard Smith clarified the makeup of the audience. “I reported at the top of this hour that the campaign had told us at Fox News that the audience would be made up of Republicans, Democrats, and independents. We have now received a clarification from the campaign and I feel I should pass it along to you,” he said. “The McCain campaign distributed tickets to supporters, [New York] Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg … and other independent groups.”
>Read the rest at WSJ.
Hmmm, does that mean if Obama had accepted.. the audience still would’ve been stacked full of shills? Personally, I think any potential president should be willing to answer questions from any and all comers.. including one sided partisan hacks. However, “advertising” one thing and delivering another is shameful. Yet, I don’t really blame FNC for this one.
Comment by Terance — June 13, 2008 @ 10:54 am
It means that if Obama had manned up and accepted that his campaign would have gotten tickets to distribute, as the McCain campaign did.
Then again, we all know what happens when Obama speaks without a script. Stuff like shout-outs to the dead soldiers in the audience at a Memorial Day rally. Fifty-seven states. Makes Bush sound eloquent.
Comment by Freddie FooFoo — June 13, 2008 @ 11:37 am
I always cringed whenever Bush & Blair would have joint pressers.. Because Blair was very eloquent and Bush is pretty embarrassing. With that said, even Bush is better than McCain.
Comment by Terance — June 13, 2008 @ 12:23 pm
McCain is good at town hall meetings when he can feed off the crowd. In front of a podium, he is not so good.
Comment by cornycob — June 13, 2008 @ 3:02 pm
I agree that it was not FOX’s fault that McCain and/or his people didn’t let audience members from the left into the townhall. FOX got mislead with initial info from McCain’s people as did people tuning in.
Freddie Foo, to be fair, McCain has made more than his fair share of dumb verbal gaffes too. Neither McCain or Obama are so bad that they make Bush sound eloquent though.
Comment by joeyb — June 16, 2008 @ 3:14 pm