On Sunday Talk Shows, a Familiar Cast of Characters

On the Sunday Morning Talk Shows, a Rather Familiar Cast of Characters

WASHINGTON â€" In mid-February, Senator John McCain went on the NBC program “Meet the Press” to explain his unhappiness with President Obama’s nominee for defense secretary. A week later, he took to “State of the Union” on CNN to chat about sequestration (bad) and the attack in Benghazi (worse).

Graphic

In May, he was on “Fox News Sunday,” talking about Middle East politics with Chris Wallace. Last week, Mr. McCain, who was in California for his oldest son’s wedding, hit “Face the Nation” on CBS, via satellite, to discuss his trip to Syria.

Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, is not his party’s most recent presidential nominee. He is no longer the highest-ranking Republican on any major Congressional committee. And as party spokesmen go, these days he is just as often speaking against Congressional Republicans as with them.

Yet on many given Sundays â€" over 60 of them since 2010 â€" Mr. McCain repairs to a television studio in Washington to hold forth. On “Face the Nation” alone, Mr. McCain has appeared more than any other politician in the program’s 60-year history.

His Sunday ubiquity has set off some grumbling in Washington that producers give him too much airtime. It also tends to solidify the impression in living rooms across America that he remains the spokesman for, and titular head of, his party.

“Really?” Mr. McCain said with a soupçon of glee when informed of his record-breaking Sunday showiness. “Well I enjoy them. I find it is the best way to communicate with the American people.”

In many ways, the Sunday morning talk shows are like ID lanyards and BlackBerries. While much of the nation has lost interest in them, they hold a big â€" some would say disproportionate â€" sway in Washington.

The programs’ producers and members of Congress â€" and, to some degree, White House officials â€" collaborate in a weekly seduction ritual in which producers try mightily to get the most powerful guests and newsmakers of the moment, as the guests’ staffs weigh the risks of stepping before some of the toughest questioners in Washington.

When it comes to a dream guest, program hosts say, Mr. McCain checks almost every box: a senior Republican senator who can speak authoritatively and contemporaneously on many issues, flies secretly to Syria, compares members of his own party to deranged fowl and yet is a reliable opponent of most Obama administration policies.

“What makes a good guest is someone who makes news,” said Mr. Wallace, the Fox host. “To make news, you have to be at the center of the news and willing to talk about it in a noncanned way, someone who always come to the shows ready to play.”

He went on: “I sometimes think to myself, ‘Gee we’ve had McCain on a lot,’ ” not to mention Senators Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois. “But the fact of the matter is they are good guests.”

And good guests become frequent guests. The programs tend to be dominated by a handful of predictably quotable politicians. Others make only rare appearances when a pet issue rears its head. And still others, by choice or by elimination, never make the cut at all.

“I usually go where I’m asked,” said Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican of Georgia, who has not been on a Sunday talk show in the last few years. “I did Greta the other night,” Mr. Isakson pointed out, referring to the Fox News program “On the Record With Greta Van Susteren.”

Mr. Isakson, like several other Republicans, says Mr. McCain does not serve as a spokesman for them or their party. “We all speak for ourselves,” he said.

Critics of the Sunday programs argue that the words spoken on them are at once too calculated and overly interpreted, simply by virtue of where they are delivered. “You can go on Charlie Rose midweek and have a long conversation that ends in a game of strip poker and no one will pay attention,” said Philippe Reines, a senior adviser to former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. “You go on a Sunday show, and everyone is looking for the slightest change, a new syllable, some new nuance.”

A version of this article appeared in print on June 9, 2013, on page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: On the Sunday Morning Talk Shows, a Rather Familiar Cast of Characters .