Carly Fiorina is one of John McCain's chief surrogates, particularly talking him up to women. But Fiorina, who was ousted as chief of Hewlett-Packard in 2005, is not above lying to soften the edges on McCain's positions that are unpopular with women.
On Monday, Fiorina said this to a group of reporters "Let me give you a real, live example, which I've been hearing a lot about from women. There are many health insurance plans that will cover Viagra but won't cover birth control medication. Those women would like a choice." She said. And then for emphasis, she repeated "Those women would like a choice."
Clearly, women don't need to chose between birth control and Viagra. So by saying those women would like a choice, just what did Fiorina mean? Is she trying to make McCain look Pro-Choice?
This is not the first time that Fiorina has taken some license with McCain's positions. She recently told women in Columbus, Ohio that McCain "has never signed on to efforts to overturn Roe vs. Wade." This is a blatant falsehood and misrepresentation of McCain's position, since McCain's own campaign website states "John McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned, and as president he will nominate judges who understand that."
When it comes to the birth control issue, in a rebuttal to Fiorina's Monday comments, the group Pro-Choice America was happy to point out that McCain twice voted against measures that would have required insurance companies to cover birth control -- in 2003 and in 2005.
The Republican said Wednesday that he did not recall those votes. "It's something that I had not thought much about." he added.
Now that will make him popular with women voters.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/07/09/mccain-squirms-on-birth-control-question/
The Washington Post 2.0
Can Brauchli bridge the paper's digital divide?
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When Marcus Brauchli succeeds Leonard Downie as the executive editor of The Washington Post on Sept. 8, he will be the first new leader there in 17 years. Just how Brauchli manages the enormous challenges facing the paper will reveal much about the future of American newspapers and journalism in general.
When Downie ascended to the post in 1991, among the main concerns of the newspaper were to improve its local coverage, deal with its liberal image and compete with The New York Times. Ah, if only Brauchli's problems were that simple. Today, what the 47-year-old former top editor of The Wall Street Journal must navigate is more akin to monastic scribes handling the invention of the printing press or European monarchs responding to the concept of democracy.
The first and most important issue for Brauchli is to help Post publisher Katharine Weymouth (a granddaughter of Katharine Graham) monetize the paper's Web site. Like many dailies across the country, the Post's print readership is shrinking while its Web audience is growing. Its site has nearly 9 million unique visitors every month, compared with sales of about 673,000 copies of the paper each day. Yet only about 10 percent of the paper's revenue comes from the Web. Compounding the problem is that the Post's readership is largely based in Washington, D.C., while its Web audience is international. That means the economic model for the two platforms may need to be quite separate.
Fortunately, Brauchli will have some advantages to work with. The Post is a Web innovator with a strong site. Weymouth comes from the online world. The company is also deeply committed, has relatively deep pockets and has a lot of patience. The Post is a likely leader in deciphering a new economic model online. If Brauchli and Weymouth cannot succeed, the industry itself may not. (NEWSWEEK is owned by The Washington Post Co.)
Key to that is finding a solution to Brauchli's second problem: how to unify the culture of the Web site operation, based in Virginia, and the print operation, based in downtown Washington. The two newsrooms are not just separated physically but culturally and psychologically, as well. This problem is not unique to the Post. A good many newspapers have cultural schisms between online and print. Some of this is generational. Some of it is more subtle, a tension between a writers' culture and a multimedia and programming culture. Nor is it limited to the newsroom. The business sides of newspapers have had even more trouble generally embracing the Web. The problems at the Post, however, appear especially acute. Feudal politics has already scuttled some efforts at innovation, including one involving creating community microsites.
The third challenge Brauchli faces is more peculiar to the Post. Great papers of national rank—a small and perhaps shrinking list—generally do not go outside for leaders. With more resources, larger papers are able to shepherd potential leaders through stints on the foreign, national and investigative assignments. When top editors are imported from outside at such papers, it's generally a sign of internal problems. By hiring Brauchli, Weymouth is signaling there may indeed be something to worry about at the Post.
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