How'd that work out, guys?

McCain aide Rick Davis gets fingered as the author of the don't-let-candidates-talk-to-reporters "strategery":

McCain would want to head back to the reporters' section of the plane, and Davis would pull him back. "No, no, no, I want them around me," McCain would say, referring to the reporters. "No, no, no, they're screwing you," Davis would retort. At McCain's insistence, his new campaign plane this past summer had been fitted with a large bench-style couch, to re-create the space on the Straight Talk Express bus, where the candidate had spent hours jawing on the record with reporters, half a dozen or so at a time. But reporters were never asked to sit there. McCain did not look happy about being kept on a tight leash, as least as far as reporters could tell from a distance.

The idiocy of these campaign aides! We're supposed to trust this guy to be President of the United States, and you don't trust him to spend a few minutes on the record with the press? Nice "message discipline," douchebags!