ome might say the photos of John McCain's beaming visage that graced the Feb. 14 covers of Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report were no coincidence: The romance dominating the political world on Valentine's Day was between the GOP presidential hopeful and the press corps.
And leading up to yesterday's South Carolina primary, that relationship had become one of the biggest stories of campaign 2000. At the same time the news media were reporting George W. Bush's brother Marvin's comment that ''the great sucking sound you hear is the sound of the media's lips coming off John McCain's ...,'' Doonesbury's Gary Trudeau depicted reporters at a McCain press conference behaving like tail-wagging lapdogs.
Has love blossomed between the usually cynical members of the Fourth Estate and the Arizona senator? And if so, is it affecting the presidential primary contests?
The answer to the first question is an unequivocal yes. The answer to the more critical second question is almost certainly no.
''Clearly, the way McCain has run his campaign is something that appeals to the press. ... It's kind of `Bulworth' without the rap,'' says Jeff Greenfield, a CNN political analyst. But ''if so, so what? So far, he has struck a nerve with the voters. I think the press role in that is greatly overstated.''
''We know that journalists personally like McCain,'' says Robert Lichter, president of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. ''There's no evidence he's benefiting differentially from that well of positive feeling.''
Observers say a combination of factors - McCain's insurgent campaign, his accessibility, and his refreshing willingness to admit mistakes - have helped disarm the media. But they point out that those same qualities won over the New Hampshire voters who catapulted McCain into the spotlight.
On the chicken and egg question of which came first, good press or good results, Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Washington-based, nonpartisan Project for Excellence in Journalism, leans toward the latter.
''If you're surging in the polls, the press tends to cover why you're succeeding,'' he says. ''So the press helps reinforce momentum.''
The Project for Excellence in Journalism studied two weeks of pre-New Hampshire primary coverage in five leading newspapers and nine television programs. While only a snapshot, the survey revealed that McCain received only marginally more favorable coverage than Bush. Of the stories in which McCain was the dominant subject, 31 percent were favorable while 26 percent were negative. By comparison, of the stories that focused on Bush, 29 percent were positive and 34 percent were negative.
''It's hard to make the case that the coverage has been explicitly more positive for McCain,'' says Rosenstiel.
Meanwhile, another nonpartisan Washington-based media watchdog group, The Center for Media and Public Affairs, has been studying campaign stories on the three network evening news shows with similarly unremarkable results. During 1999, Bush and McCain fared almost exactly the same when it came to generally favorable comments. Bush, however, had a significant edge on the issue of who seemed to be the more viable candidate.
The center's recent numbers, which covered the month before the Feb. 1 New Hampshire primary, showed McCain narrowly besting Bush on the percentage of positive comments. On the matter of viability, Bush still held a significant edge.
Lichter's conclusion echoes Rosenstiel's. ''McCain was getting good press but so was Bush,'' he says. ''My data do not support the notion that McCain was a media darling who was benefiting disproportionately from a fawning press.''
No one doubts that McCain has displayed an unusual array of media skills. That was foreshadowed in November when The New York Times Magazine published a piece in which journalist Michael Lewis confessed his affection for McCain under the headline ''I Liked a Pol.'' Others would soon share those sentiments.
The candidate's bus, the Straight Talk Express, ''has taken on a life of its own,'' says Roger Simon, the chief political correspondent for U.S. News & World Report, who believes the media have helped magnify McCain's reformer image. ''The bus is the symbol of the guy who sits there and just talks to the press. ... McCain is this guy who appears to be different and refreshing and he's feeding the beast.''
None of that has inoculated McCain from negative press. In the days before the New Hampshire vote, he was hit with several tough stories that bounced around the media universe: the controversy caused by his statement that he could sometimes identify a gay man by behavior and attitude; his intervention with the Federal Communications Commission on a case critical to a big campaign contributor; and the flap that occurred when he stumbled over the issue of what would happen if his daughter faced an unwanted pregnancy.
The campaign continued to roll, thanks more to a candidate style that includes self-deprecation and confession than any media forebearance. Jon Keller, political analyst for WLVI-TV, recalls that when he started a McCain interview by grilling him about his ties to savings and loan villain Charles Keating, the candidate immediately admitted serious wrongdoing.
''My only comment is, how can you get any traction on a guy who admits fault, is repentant, and wants to talk about the future?'' says Keller.
It's also true that the media gravitate to the candidate, like McCain, who plays the outsider/reformer role. ''Outsiders benefit from the fact that the press likes outsiders,'' says Lichter. ''That's the way the game is played and McCain has played it well.'' Lichter also notes that such previous outsider candidates as Eugene McCarthy in 1968 and Gary Hart in 1984 got bigger press bounces than McCain.
Citing the same kind of longshot reformers, Greenfield says: ''The fact is that over the last 20 years, every candidate who has been a press favorite has gone down to crushing defeat. ... I don't believe the press can make a horse race when there isn't one.''
Without McCain's clear voter appeal, he adds, ''all the press gee-whizziness wouldn't have meant a hill of beans.''
Some of the loudest complaints about press treatment of McCain are coming from duel ing ends of the political spectrum. Tim Graham, director of media analysis for the conservative Media Research Center, says the media are ''basically trying to decide the Republican primary for Republican voters. I don't like the idea of Dan Rather picking the Republican candidate for me.''
Journalist Robert Dreyfuss, who recently wrote about the McCain-media ''love affair'' for the liberal magazine The Nation, says, '' Reporters have allowed McCain to create this image of himself as the straight-shooting war hero with very little to counterbalance it.''
The chemistry between the press and McCain is undeniable. But the idea that it is driving his candidacy is more the concoction of a confused Bush campaign than valid political science.
''I have this theory,'' says media analyst Andrew Tyndall, offering what has suddenly become a unique view of the McCain phenomenon. ''He got good coverage because he deserved it.''
