NYT's Maureen Dowd

Maureen Dowd was John McCain’s friend, a part of his “base.” Then a few weeks ago he kicked her off the campaign plane, abandoning her in Pittsburgh.

How close were they? In 2004, she was invited to celebrate his birthday with other members of the media elite:

When Republicans gathered at Madison Square Garden to celebrate President Bush’s second nomination four years ago, Senator John McCain gathered at a restaurant uptown with some of the biggest stars in journalism to celebrate his birthday. Among those mingling over cocktails and fine French food with Mr. McCain and his wife, Cindy, were Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, Bob Schieffer, Maureen Dowd, Tim Russert — ”our people,” as an old campaign hand reminisced on Wednesday.

So how do you go from being one of “our people” to left in Pittsburgh?

It’s a pretty solid bet, that Dowd’s August 24th column is what got her kicked out of the cool kids club. In it she hits McCain for both his affairs:

My mom did not approve of men who cheated on their wives. She called them “long-tailed rats.”

During the 2000 race, she listened to news reports about John McCain confessing to dalliances that caused his first marriage to fall apart after he came back from his stint as a P.O.W. in Vietnam.

And as Dowd explains:

His campaign is cheapening his greatest strength — and making a mockery of his already dubious claim that he’s reticent to talk about his P.O.W. experience — by flashing the P.O.W. card to rebut any criticism, no matter how unrelated.  

She concludes by writing:

The real danger to the McCain crew in overusing the P.O.W. line so much that it’s a punch line is that it will give Obama an opening for critical questions:

While McCain’s experience was heroic, did it create a worldview incapable of anticipating the limits to U.S. military power in Iraq? Did he fail to absorb the lessons of Vietnam, so that he is doomed to always want to refight it? Did his captivity inform a search-and-destroy, shoot-first-ask-questions-later, "We are all Georgians," mentality?

Does the column hit McCain where it hurts? Absolutely. Was it snarky? It’s Maureen Dowd. But nothing she wrote was untrue.

Sure, the McCain campaign pays no political price for kicking her off the plane. Swing voters are not the target audience of her column and shockingly the New York Times has not protested the decision. What it does show is John McCain is just like George Bush. He’s a bully, who will trample the first amendment to get his way. The only question is, what other parts of the constitution will he shred as President?

Photo by Cameron Hickey