This may be just because I'm an old curmudgeon, but I find these fights about fringe issues lead to nothing but more fights.
It's for that reason that I think some form of guideliens would help. It would reduce the need for battling about the same thing, candidate by candidate.

PS I would prefer not to defer to Dr. Gupta, as in addition to being a neurosurgeon, he is also a 'personality'. To avoid controversy, give me the experts toiling away out of the spotlight.

Well, even Shaun admits that he's not immune to bias in the way he sees this, and Ed Morrisey could certainly be seen as having the opposite bias in this case. So if people are reading Shaun's take on it, I feel it's very valid to point them to Ed's piece where he sizes up why NYT was probably left off the invite list. No one is claiming that either opinionator is more factual- it's just a matter of balance from two different perspectives.

Perceptions have a lot to do with how McCain is viewed and how this story is covered.

I wrote a couple of months ago — after all due deliberation and a consult with neurologist and psychologist friends — of my concerns about McCain's state of mind. Would I do the same about Obama or Clinton if I had similar concerns? Absolutely.

I don't think my concerns will be addressed because:

(1.) The mainstream media will buy into the McCain dog-and-pony show lock, stock and barrel and move on. A review of a dozen or so media outlets shows that everybody is buying in.

(2.) It is a rare blogger — whether Captain Ed or myself — who does not approach this story with his or her own preconceptions and that inevitably will color how this story is covered in the blogosphere.

(3.) This story requires a degree of sensitivity — and I want to be respectful of McCain because I think he deserves nothing less — and most bloggers don't do sensitive.

I'll leave it up to others as to whether I have been.

Ed Morrissey may be the finest opionmaster on earth, but what he writes is not journalistic news reporting., it's news +analysis.
He often reasons well, at other times, not so much.

What I was refering to was the whole notion of judging an issue by where you read about it..
What happened to just looking at the facts and doing one's own thinking?
Is FoX a reliable or a disreputable source 100% of the time?

The reliance on only certain sources, while rejecting others outright, to form or back up an opinion, is exactly what creates and maintains the parallel universes we live in.

Used in a debate, i reject that methodology.

Should any (or all) candidates be required to provide their full medical records? One the one hand, the “possibly most embarrasing moments” argument holds no water for me. When you run for high office, your life becomes and open book and sadly that means all your human foibles wil be on display. A far more persuasive argument, at least for me, is that we're really not supposed to have any sort of “test” applied to candidates in terms of their health. A person with terminal cancer who had six months to live should still be able to run and leave it up to the voters as to what they want. Unless it can be shown that the medical records in question will reveal something that leads to proof of criminal activity (e.g. a urine test for drugs?) then it doesn't seem that we can apply a “medical test” to the candidates of any sort. Candidates offer up all manner of records voluntarily, but that doesn't mean that they have to. It's up to us to decide if a lack of candor on some of these records means they are hiding something or erodes our confidence in the candidate.

But nonetheless, I mostly agree with the rest of your comment- I think we should come to some objective terms. There should be a baseline agreement that things that are of a personal nature but have nothing whatsoever to do with fitness for office should be redacted- but somehow there would have to be a doctor signing off on that to sort of certify that the redacted items were of that nature and not covering up something that should be in the public domain.

This isn't about McCain's health or his mediical record at all. I'm beginning to doubt anyone cares about those.
It's about lining up your argumentaiton duckies in rows to suit a political prefeence.

Access to mediacal records, how much and to whom, is a real issue that should be looked at without campainging for or against a candidate, as it was in the past.
When Pres. Eisenhower was hospitalized, all information, including the facts of his bowel movements, were released by staff daily. In the aftermath, it was agreed by EVERYONE that this was humiliating, and the practise was stopped.

Other concerns remain. The US is so much in the dark ages, that a record of having been treated for a mental condition would probably ruin a public career on the spot. Considering the traumatic nature of McCain's POW experience, I wouldn't be surprised if he had had some residual psyshological issues, at least at one time. I've been wondering about that and worrying that if something like that came out, ihow that woudl reverberate in commentary.
That's the kind of thing to worry about in these, what we wink and call, discussions.

I think there should be areas of privacy for all political figures as to medical records. IWe've come to a point, though, were no agreement is likely, because it's all about campainging for or against, and there are no issues of princiole left.

It's too bad. If there were guidlenes, maybe some people could stop campaigning long enought to think about what's really important. .

It's a bit like Dems refusing the Fox debate- and again, I'm not sure I think it's a good idea because it can backfire if it looks like you are afraid of how things will be spun. In this case though, I think because it wasn't necessarily overt- no one announced that the NYT isn't invited, they just weren't on the list of the ones who were chosen due to space restrictions- so it probably won't register with most people that there was any spat going on there.

Consider the context of the ridiculous smears that the NYT has attempted against McCain. I guess it could be considered petty of him to decide against allowing them this press avail- and it could even backfire on him if people think he's hiding something. But my guess is they made a calculated judgment that he had more to gain by allowing other reputable news agencies that didn't have a history of biased reporting on him.

Nice work, we await the release of Chicago's own native son's medical records.

From what I understand, the McCain campaign said that the pool of reporters had to be limited because the press avail was being held at Mayo clinic and they couldn't handle hundreds of journalists. As for making everything available for complete release, photocopying, etc- personally I don't think that the public would be served by having excerpts of descriptions of McCain's colonoscopy available to us.

Hrmm…