Yesterday I was part of a conference call for political bloggers held by some of John McCain's senior campaign staff. David All did an excellent liveblog of the call here and Mary Katharine Ham has an extensive roundup at Townhall. I asked McCain's staff a question D.J. Drummond had about the perception that McCain is hostile to bloggers (they definitely did not agree with that assessment) and one that Jim Addison had about whether or not McCain thought campaign finance reform had been a failure (they said he doesn't, but that he is concerned about the 527 situation and has joined the President's efforts on that front). After asking D.J. and Jim's questions I expressed some of my concerns about a McCain candidacy.

I explained that my problems with McCain were more general, rather than policy specific, (although I disagree with McCain on some policies). An example I gave was my problem with his past history with the media, including his playing up the maverick persona which often is portrayed in the media as McCain battling those evil, unreasonable Republicans. I expressed the concern that all Republicans win, not just the presidential candidate. The McCain people responded as follows (as transcribed by David All): "In terms of John McCain being a maverick, I think that's one of the great thing about Senator McCain. When it comes to campaigning on behalf of Republican candidates McCain campaigned extremely hard..." That was a smart response and frankly I think that is why McCain has the support he does -- he has done some serious campaigning and fundraising for candidates all over the country.

I put in my two cents about my displeasure over the "dishonest and dishonorable" comment from McCain regarding the Swift Boat Vets and about my displeasure over his opposition to some of the Bush tax cuts and his "tax cuts for the rich" language. Ed Morrisey expressed concern over the Swift Boat issue, as well, and noted that as far as he knew McCain's statements have never been retracted.

Paul Mirengoff of Power Line picked up on the blogger hostility theme D.J. expressed, but with a twist saying, "I'm not surprised so much about what I'm reading in the conservative blogosphere about McCain, but what I'm hearing and seeing from readers. "

Several of the bloggers expressed concern that the candidates not tear each other to shreds in the primary and let the McCain people know that bloggers did not mind being used to get information out about issues, but that bloggers did not want to be used to play "gotcha" against other primary candidates.

In my opinion, this phone call and this kind of outreach is always a good idea. I hope we see many more of these from the McCain campaign and from those of the other candidates over the next two years.

(The quotes above are taken from David All's excellent post.)