When bad photo-ops highlight worse policies

For the first couple of years of Bush’s first term, there was an amusing phenomenon involving the president’s photo-ops — they tended not to make any sense. In 2002, Bush visited a job-training program in Oregon, highlighting it as the kind of success story that deserves support. He then cut the program’s federal funding. In 2001, he visited a children’s hospital in Atlanta, and vowed to help the hospital continue its work. Bush then proceeded to cut the hospital’s federal funding.

Lately, I’ve begun to think John McCain has hired the same advance team.

About a week ago, McCain traveled to Gee’s Bend, Alabama, and touted the success of a local ferry that crosses the Alabama river. An RNC spokesperson said, “The ferry he will be riding is very important to that community. It’s both a good and terrible symbol. It’s good that it now exists, but it’s terrible it took so long to build it.” We soon learned, however, that the ferry was paid for by a congressional earmark, and if McCain had his way, the “very important” ferry wouldn’t be there.

A few days later, the senator visited Youngstown, Ohio, and stood before a “nearly shuttered factory pocked with broken windows,” to tout the benefits of free-trade policies like NAFTA. McCain, a multi-millionaire, told the factory’s five remaining workers to “hold on” and wait for “surprises” that might come if we reject “protectionism.”

Yesterday in Miami, McCain did it again, kicking off a week of health care events at Miami Children’s Hospital.

Steve Bernard was talking about treatments for his 9-year-old son, Jake, who was born with a cleft lip and palate. Jake has already undergone numerous surgeries with more to come. Bernard described his battle to get insurance coverage for speech therapy. “Every time they say, ‘No, speech therapy isn’t covered,’ and we say, ‘yes it is covered.’ As a matter of fact in the state of Florida there are specific statutes that were created by other parents of kids with clefts that will protect those kids.”

He ended his comments with a plea to McCain, whose adopted daughter, Bridget, also had a cleft palate: “If there’s ever going to be somebody in leadership position who is going to know it, it’s going to be you, and we’re hoping you understand that,” Bernard said.

As it turns out, McCain doesn’t understand that at all. The policy that helped the Bernard family is one that McCain happens to oppose.

Left unsaid was that McCain’s health plan is designed to weaken state regulations like the one in Florida that, like 14 other states, mandates that insurance companies cover treatment for cleft palates. McCain says that mandates like this one drive up the cost of insurance, and he would allow people to buy coverage across state lines. Many experts predict that under this system, insurance companies would simply gravitate to the states with the fewest rules.

Asked about the contradiction between the family on the stage and the McCain policy, McCain senior policy adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin said that the marketplace will fill the void.

Wait, it gets better.

Kicking off his “Call to Action Tour” today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) toured Miami Children’s Hospital, where he “met and listened to some of its young patients and their parents.” In remarks delivered at the hospital, McCain pledged that he would “work to eliminate the worries over the availability and cost of health care.” […]

McCain’s use of the Florida children’s hospital to launch his health care-focused tour is ironic considering McCain’s recent vote against expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. The expansion that McCain opposed would have extended coverage to a significant portion of Florida’s 658,000 uninsured children.

The expansion passed despite McCain’s protestations, but President Bush vetoed it in October, which McCain said was the “Right call by the president.” At the time, pediatricians around the country protested Bush’s veto, including doctors at Miami Children’s Hospital.

It seems like the kind of location McCain should try to avoid, not exploit for a photo-op.

This seems like an easy story for the media to pick up on, if reporters were interested — McCain keeps visiting specific locales for campaign purposes, but in nearly every instance, he either has or intends to undercut the facilities he’s visiting. This should be quite an embarrassment for McCain and his campaign. And yet, I have a hunch this will go completely unmentioned.

And just as an aside, I’ve been mulling over where McCain could go to talk to people who would benefit from his policy agenda. Country clubs? Corporate board rooms? Military-contractor conventions? No wonder McCain is showing up in odd places; he has limited options about where he can realistically go.