This is a post many moons in the making. Part of it is my frustration with the people who are in the running on my side for President, and part of it is just a general observation of the political scene over the last dozen or so years I’ve been active and paid attention.
I’ll start with the ancient past and bring it up to the present quickly. My old hometown of Toledo, Ohio has had a fixture in Congress for the last quarter-century by the name of Marcy Kaptur. Every two years we on the Republican side would duly nominate a candidate to oppose her in the general election and call on her to debate our nominee so voters could compare and contrast her with our guy, an offer she continually refused. What I thought I should have expected from our local media outlets that regularly called for having two strong parties in local and state politics would be a call for Ms. Kaptur to debate the issues in a public forum, instead we got silence – well, except for the regular endorsement she got from our local paper that cited her record in Congress.
I used to think the charge of the media was trying to educate voters and encouraging candidates to defend their records. In Kaptur’s case, the local newspaper decided to allow her to control her own message and the delivery by not holding her feet to the fire and joining our call to debate the issues. Given that and the natural advantage she has running as a Democrat in a heavily unionized area, she regularly won with 70-80% of the vote without having to undergo the slightest of scrutiny. On the other hand, that same newspaper was the one who broke and regularly featured the “Coingate” scandal that all but destroyed the Ohio Republican Party in 2006.
We all know there’s media bias in effect. To that end, I’m not denying I have an editorial bias either – anyone who’s read monoblogue for a week can pretty much tell which side of the aisle I inhabit. (They can also tell I’m a sports fan and follow local music, but that’s not germaine to this discussion.)
In the last couple months as the Presidential primary has approached, we’ve seen national media ramp up its coverage of the 2008 election, which is understandable. But are you getting the whole story? If you’ve watched the cable networks or read their internet sites, you’d think that Hillary’s comeback in New Hampshire is the whole story and it’s a big deal because big girls do cry yet they win anyway. Has that advanced any of the things we should be voting on though? In case they’ve forgotten, we have troops in several countries overseas fighting against a militant Islamic threat, not to mention the economic and security threat we quite possibly have spilling through our porous southern border that was supposed to have a new fence built on it.
And that doesn’t count domestic issues like health care, energy, and the role of the federal government in addressing those issues. Instead, the cable networks concentrate on two things: personality issues and the horse-race aspect of the electoral sweepstakes.
On occasion, these networks will have or cover debates between the candidates on each side but how meaningful and specific of an answer can you get on energy independence or national security in 60 seconds? Sometimes these debates make more news for who they exclude than for what is said, and in both cases that bothers me.
I have to admit that I’m more of a political junkie than 98% of the population, probably just under those who actually make their living in the field. I’m also passionate about these things to such a degree that I would get involved in the electoral process and election day became my personal Super Bowl. The only difference is that I’d play the game for 13 hours and not know the score until later that evening.
In the 2008 election, before even one vote was cast, the networks and media were already deciding who they thought should be covered and by extension who they wanted to secure the nomination. So most of the coverage seemed to be around Hillary Clinton, with begruding attention to GOP candidate Rudy Giuliani. To the media that set up a perfect horse race between two New York politicians, the dream race they wanted on the 2000 undercard. By getting a Hillary/Rudy race they would get the pair they wanted – the wife of a media darling on one side and, just in case Rudy won, someone who was arguably the most socially liberal candidate. They could always hammer him on national security, having had 7 years of practice with President Bush.
The ace in the hole that these media forces have is that the American public is dreadfully uninformed and for the most part the information they get filters through the lens they provide. Let’s face it: in a country that truly was educated and informed, people would say “Britney who?” In a country that was truly informed, everyone who came into the voting booth would know in some detail where everyone who was on the ballot stood on the important issues of the day. They’d also have been educated on how what these candidates wanted to achieve compared with the rules of the road detailed in the Constitution. (I bet if you asked 100 Americans, you couldn’t get five of them to detail what the main point of any four of the ten Amendments in the Bill of Rights were.)
Tonight there’s another debate on FOX. While this time Ron Paul was included, they still left out several candidates on the South Carolina ballot. Most of them aren’t included because they’re not on many state ballots, but Duncan Hunter was excluded despite being on most states’ ballots. In his case, the media makes things a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I’ll use Hunter as an example because I happen to support him, but one could look at Mike Gravel or Dennis Kucinich on the Democrat side or another GOP hopeful, Alan Keyes. Hunter declared his candidacy in November 2006 and by January of last year he was already being declared a “longshot.” At that time, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain were the so-called frontrunners but the question was already starting to be asked by the GOP conservative base as to who would be their candidate, since neither frontrunner was completely acceptable to those in the grassroots for some views they held. Giuliani angered social conservatives by being pro-choice and McCain was known as a “maverick” Republican who voted for amnesty and sponsored an ill-thought campaign finance reform package.
But both Giuliani and McCain had something Hunter didn’t – media on their side. Every move they made had coverage, while Hunter toiled in obscurity. In fact, I didn’t find out he was running until I did a search on Presidential candidates. I knew McCain, Giuliani, and Mitt Romney were in but didn’t know about most of the rest until I did the search to determine who I would back. And the question about who disaffected conservatives would support seemed more to be whether Fred Thompson would get in, since he had star power as an actor. Never mind that there were already candidates in the race that had conservative records like Hunter and Tom Tancredo. The media had already dismissed them as “second-tier” candidates before a single vote was cast, even in the Ames Straw Poll. Based on those results, both Giuliani and McCain should have been relegated to second-tier status (Rudy had 1 percent and McCain even less.) Of course, that was explained away by the media and they even found a new darling in Mike Huckabee.
My point is that, instead of the people picking the best candidate, the media annointed a chosen few that they preferred and a sheepish public followed right along. They did polls which were simply preference based on name recognition and worked their coverage to those who scored highest for the most part, continuing the vicious cycle. They even resurrected John McCain after the outcry over the amnesty bill would have killed a more conservative candidate that wouldn’t have had a sympathetic media behind him.
And the media continues to control the destiny of a party, the party they wouldn’t vote for when they close the voting curtain behind them.
So in 2008 it looks like we’ll have a flawed candidate on the GOP side, at least flawed in the respect that there’s at least one issue guaranteed to keep some single-issue voters home on Election Day.
With John McCain, it’s amnesty and campaign finance.
With Mitt Romney, it’s his recent conversion to a more conservative stance on a number of issues. Is he sincere?
With Mike Huckabee, his feelings on illegal immigration and record as governor on taxation worry the conservative base.
With Rudy Giuliani, it’s his pro-choice stance and his messy personal life.
With Fred Thompson, people question his “fire in the belly.” He got in late to high expectations but aside from a few highlights such as the hand-raising incident just hasn’t ran that exciting of a campaign.
Finally, Ron Paul winning is just too scary of a prospect for most GOP regulars.
Those six are the six-pack that are debating in Myrtle Beach as I write this.
And the media isn’t helping with some of these folks. Mitt Romney’s campaign is finished if he doesn’t win Michigan, they say. Fred Thompson will be sunk if he doesn’t take South Carolina. Rudy Giuliani’s adopted the wrong strategy by ignoring the early states. But McCain is the GOP’s comeback kid for winning New Hampshire (where he won in 2000, so why was that unexpected?) In Iowa, the buzz was Mike Huckabee beating Mitt Romney but then he was second in the Ames Straw Poll so it wasn’t that great a stretch for him to win there.
Of course, the Democrats aren’t being ignored here. The media loves the battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama because there’s also the star power of Hollywood involved – Oprah stumping for Obama and Hollywood fundraisers for Hillary by the score. And America, to its discredit, laps it up unquestioningly. Well, most of America.
Luckily there are people asking the questions, but the problem is that no one feels the need to answer them because those who are asking aren’t considered mainstream enough to merit the attention. The internet is a powerful force but still fewer than 10% get their news from the blogs and much of that comes from the outlets used by the cable news networks and newspapers so it’s the same old info on a different outlet.
Someday America will wake up to the fraud being perpetrated on them by those elements in the media who want to usurp the power people hold at the ballot box. I’m afraid the election in 2008 isn’t going to set off the alarm bells though.
