Fanning the Flames

It's been something of a volatile week, with all kinds of rumors flying around about whether John McCain would take the opportunity to announce his running mate while Barack Obama was on his overseas trip.

Robert Novak is complaining that he was used by Republican operatives to spread the news that McCain was about to make his announcement. But that's a game they've been playing for a long time — all they have to do is goose a big name in journalism (preferably one they know is on their side) into reporting a rumor as if it were a fact. Others in the media will follow, particularly if it is a dry time for real news.

Novak acts incensed, but it wouldn't surprise me if he turned out to have been a party to this plan from the beginning.

And now, the Washington Post is getting into the act of fanning the flames.

McCain, the Post says, is "weighing whether to announce his running mate in the coming weeks" — which gives the impression an announcement could be coming in days, if not hours.

Near the end of the story (which may well have been buried deep within the print version of the paper on the "jump" page), the Post finally gets around to acknowledging the possibility of a "ploy."

Then the Post reports that many of McCain's advisers are against announcing the choice during the Olympics — the politically awkward scheduling of which (for U.S. politicians) raises some of the logistical problems I mentioned in an earlier post.

The bottom line of the story, which apparently began on Page A1 of the Post, is that there is still no news.

If there's no news, is there a need for the story?