Maeve Reston is the journalist for the LA Times who famously asked John McCain aboard his campaign bus whether he supported mandating health insurers that cover Viagra also cover contraception. His answer to her question (or search for one) was caught on tape and became one of the most memorable images (and most widely watched videos on YouTube for that matter--with over 600,000 views) of the presidential race. Most Americans were startled that McCain could not, or it seemed would not, answer such a straightforward question on what for most was the most common sense of issues.

It showed the power of asking questions the public doesn't think need to be answered. Few knew McCain's 30 year voting record against contraception. The fact was, McCain couldn't answer the question, for if he did the answer would have to be "no." That would lead to a whole host of other questions. By not answering, McCain did his best to defuse it as much as he could. It could have certainly blown up in his face far worse had it led to questions about his record on contraception which it, mysteriously, never really did. But the question did have a dramatic impact on his campaign as Maeve Reston, the LA Times reporter, recently revealed in a "behind-the-scenes" account of her experience before and after she asked the contraception question She wrote:

At the time of that July bus ride with McCain, there was broad disagreement among his staff about whether the endless hours of questions were helping his quest for the White House.

In the driveway of the airport motel on the evening of the Viagra question, McCain's aides made an argument that would shape their attitude over the next four months: If reporters were going to ask about issues that they deemed irrelevant to voters, why should the campaign give them access to the candidate at all? Salter told me I had made the case for those who thought McCain should curtail his exposure to the press.

McCain aide Brooke Buchanan sarcastically asked whether contraception was next on my agenda. And Steve Duprey, the candidate's usually jovial traveling companion who often visited the press cabin bearing Twizzlers and chocolate, twisted my question into what I interpreted as an accusation of bias: "Are you going to ask Obama if he uses Viagra?"

That the McCain campaign considered this issue "irrelevant to voters" was certainly the thinking that led to the air quotes McCain used around the words "health of the mother" in the final debate which again did him no favors. (As Jim Ponoewozik of Time magazine explained, "Dial group report 2: Um, Sen. McCain, women don't like it when you put 'health of the mother' in air quotes.") That women are spending 68% more in health care costs out of their own pocket than men is not "irrelevant" for most women voters. Any campaign mastermind could figure that out by reviewing the many polls taken on the issue. One national poll indicated that 78% of privately insured adults (that's women and men) support contraceptive coverage, even if it would increase their costs by five dollars a month. Seventy-eight percent is not the block of the electorate you want to offend.

This election proved that by broadening the discussion around reproductive health issues we are able to win. Voters recognize when politician veer off too far into their own important life decisions. People are able to distinguish cartoonish and baseless attacks (McCain's attempt to portray Obama as an extremist on abortion was seen as preposterous) from bad policies that could show up as horrendous problems in our own lives (Bristol Palin's pregnancy drew a bright light on the abstinence-only education her mother supports.) McCain and Palin's positions on issues that Americans believe should be reserved for our own individual decision-making were front and center. Palin's support of a policy to charge rape victims for pregnancy prevention became a campaign issue. Talk about adding insult to injury--people got that. These along with McCain's stammering on the "Straight Talk Express" helped to characterize the McCain-Palin ticket as extreme on reproductive health issues.

But, from Reston's point of view, the contraception question was powerful in others ways too. The disproportionate reaction it led to within the campaign was symptomatic of the hubris and disconnectedness the campaign suffered from all along. When 600,000 people take to the internet to watch a clip about politician's policy position it probably shouldn't be classified as "irrelevant to voters." But that block-headed thinking caused the campaign to cordon off their candidate. By misinterpreting the question as spurious attack rather than a genuine policy question, the campaign made the fatal error of distancing McCain from the media and thereby the American people.

Reston explains how the campaign dramatically altered it's relationship with journalists in the days and months after she asked her question:

Later that summer, the frequency of McCain's news conferences dwindled to late-afternoon, end-of-the-week affairs where he began calling more often on reporters he didn't know. We now watched from afar at most events -- listening for the few sentences that would change each day in his stump speech. We would catch glimpses of him through the window of his SUV from five cars back in the motorcade or watch him get off the plane.

At the height of vice presidential speculation, we rushed the staff cabin of the plane, frustrated that no one was around to address the rumors. "What do you want, you little jerks?" McCain said, using his former term of affection, before turning away.

On a recent Sunday during a brief stop at a Virginia phone bank, I got unusually close to McCain in the line of people waiting to shake his hand. Tape recorder out and within a foot of him, I asked if he could talk about his new economic plan, which he was to unveil that week. The man who once asked me about my wedding date returned my gaze with a stare, shook the hand of the strangers to the right and left of me and continued out the door.

The McCain campaign will probably be studied for years to come for its missteps and under-performance. No curricula on the subject will be complete without a review of the Viagra-Contraception question. But the most important take away is for reproductive rights movement. The 2008 election showed that the broader discussion on reproductive health issues is what engages the public and frightens anti-choice candidates. It's not that we haven't educated the electorate about the right answers, it's that we hadn't been giving them the right questions. This election changed all that.

This post was first published on BirthControlWatch.