A Missed Opportunity?

The New Republic's Eve Fairbanks has about had it with the Hillary press operation:

"Why . . . can't . . . Clinton's flacks . . . just walk off the stage?? I'm not saying they should quit; some of them are probably giving Hillary good advice behind the scenes, and obviously the press aides have to give the occasional quote. But do they have to be so public? Do they have to, daily, float so many different arguments for Hillary's continued viability that so often insult reporters' intelligence? . . .

"I actually like Hillary, but I feel like all I read about anymore are her damned advisers."

And on MSNBC, Tucker Carlson, like Chris Matthews before him, goes off on the Hillary spokesmen:

"They're awful to the media. Let's be totally blunt. They're awful to the press. They treat the press like enemies. Howard Wolfson is always calling around threatening people -- threatening people, news organizations. They do that. People hate you if you do that. I mean they've earned the enmity of the press in my view. They have. It's been hard, but they've done it."

As for grumbling that Obama is relatively inaccessible to the press, Atlantic's Marc Ambinder says it's misguided to compare the situation to 2000, when G.W. Bush provided more access than V.P. Al Gore:

"There are some important differences. For one thing, the Bush press corps in 2000 liked their candidate personally and the Gore press corps -- at least, in the popular recounting -- found Gore aloof and unaccessible. In 2008, the McCain press corps, largely because of access, enjoys the company of Sen. McCain, and it's fair to say that some reporters covering Obama find him aloof and not especially interesting to interact with. It's a weird duality: Obama gets the best coverage of any candidate, anywhere, ever, and yet . . .

"But in fairness to the Obama campaign, whatever they've been doing . . . has sort of . . . worked."

And get this: Mike Huckabee practically begs for the media to smack him around, noting the flap over the NYT "affair" story on McCain:

"If anything it's helped John McCain and I'm kind of hoping the New York Times will take me on and run a nasty front page story -- may be the best thing that could happen to me, certainly was to him."