Press corps members describe McAuliffe as an invaluable source for the kind of tidbits that make reporters' stories shine. Tidbits like who got called at 3 p.m. and told he'd better get on board or his career was over. Who wants to bite the hand that doles out those nummy little factoids?
"He is full of the inside skinny—the shit that you drop into a political story that makes you look like you really know what is going on," says one national-politics reporter, who declined to speak if so much as his organization was identified. "He's important because he has access and because he can be something of a blabbermouth. It's all about the care and feeding of people who can help you and people who can hurt you."
That's why beat reporters are rarely the source of tough stories in their bailiwicks. Big media outlets drop in fresh talent when it's time for a hit because it gives the people on the beat plausible deniability. That way, they can continue to share a table, some crab cakes, and plenty of found-nowhere-else dish at the Palm with McAuliffe.
As a measure of reporters' loyalty to their one-of-a-kind source, consider that both Mencimer and the unnamed reporter, who has done some reporting on things besides McAuliffe's fabulousness, say they believed at the time that other reporters on the political side of their respective organizations were updating McAuliffe on the progress of their stories.
Another member of the Washington press corps says that if the nice-cop stuff doesn't work, McAuliffe knows how to play hardball—a skill that came in handy back when his fundraising innovations seemed to be the worst of Clinton's problems: "He is very sensitive to what is written about him, and he complains bitterly to editors."
That method has been known to work. After New York Daily News reporter David Eisenstadt wrote a story three days before the 1996 election that suggested that McAuliffe was connected to the by-then-scandal-ridden Democratic National Committee fundraiser John Huang, McAuliffe called Eisenstadt's boss, Mortimer Zuckerman. The News ran a white-flag correction the following day, saying Eisenstadt's sources "could not substantiate the allegations." Eisenstadt's editor flew down to Washington a week later and fired him.
"McAuliffe has cemented relationships with the most powerful interest groups in Washington: the press, members of government, and the business community," says Eisenstadt. "And he knows how to leverage each of those relationships to his advantage."
Daily News columnists Jimmy Breslin and Lars-Erik Nelson protested the dismissal, saying that the story was a 400-word deadline item that had not been proved false. At the time, Eisenstadt was a rising young star famous for busting Newt Gingrich over whining about not getting a front-row seat on Air Force One. That story still hangs large in the lobby of the newspaper, but Eisenstadt is out of the business and getting ready for a move to Poland. It doesn't pay to cross McAuliffe.
And instead of rallying around a colleague who was getting the bum's rush, the Post used Eisenstadt's firing as a cute anecdote in another story about their pal, the "Macker." In a postelection Style profile in early 1997 about the man who can make money fall out of trees, Lloyd Grove chummed it up thus: "'I lit [Zuckerman] up for 20 minutes,' McAuliffe says with a grin, describing his chat with the media mogul with undisguised glee....The next day, the newspaper retracted and apologized for the story, and the 'relevant editors' ultimately fired the reporter who wrote it up. Chalk up another win for the apparently charmed McAuliffe."
Paper Trail, Oct, '99
Very apt way to describe this lowlife scum, McAuliffe!
That's the beauty of goin' after the Slick Willie's Li'l Punkette, he's got the trust of the Leftist Whores who bow at the feet of Der SchleekMeister, and they will go down defending him...let the Left Defend the Indefensible!!
It'll be the Death of their Legitimacy, IMHO...MUD
Those who revel in stompin' on the heads of rivals on the way up should not expect much assistance and/or respect as they tumble back down from their perch.
FReegards...MUD