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On a conference call with reporters on Monday morning, Rick Davis, John McCain’s campaign manager, and Steve Schmidt, a top McCain strategist, were asked about a New York Times article reporting that Davis had been paid nearly $2 million for running a Washington outfit set up by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to stop stricter regulation of these two entities. Davis said he had never engaged in any lobbying for that group and downplayed Fannie and Freddie’s role in the organization. He joked that he appreciated “all the exposure I get” in The New York Times. He added that the newspaper must have “Davis envy.”

Schmidt then went bad-cop. “We’re First Amendment absolutists,” he said, noting journalists are free to “write whatever they want to write.” But, he continued, “whatever the New York Times once was,” it is no longer a journalistic entity. Schmidt called it a “pro-Obama advocacy organization” and claimed the paper “attacks” McCain every day. Schmidt went on: the Times is “an organization completely, totally 150-percent in the tank for the Democratic candidate” and has “cast aside its journalistic integrity and tradition” to get McCain.

It was a blistering slam. And several times throughout the call, Schmidt chided the media for treating Obama more kindly than McCain. (In recent weeks, many news outlets have scored McCain’s ads as being full of falsehoods.) Clearly, the candidate who once was beloved by the national media (and who joked the press was his base) has calculated that the old Republican play of bashing the media, especially The New York Times, will help him get elected. Also, Schmidt might also have been trying to establish a context for judging any future Times investigations that might pose a problem for McCain. (“See? I told you they were out to destroy Senator McCain.”)

By the way, neither Davis nor Schmidt pointed out one error in the Times‘ story about Davis.

Photo by flickr user Joe Shlabotnik used under a Creative Commons license.