D.C. Dispatch | 2004.02.11

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Recent commentary from National Journal:

Social Studies: The War in Iraq Was the Right Mistake to Make (February 11, 2004)
The war in Iraq was premised on a mistake. Does that mean the war itself was a mistake? Yes. But it was a special kind of mistake: a justified mistake. By Jonathan Rauch.

Legal Affairs: Did Bush, Cheney, and Powell Deliberately Mislead Us? (February 11, 2004)
The administration's selective disclosures about Iraq denied Americans the opportunity to reach fully informed judgments about a matter of incalculably grave consequence. By Stuart Taylor Jr.

Political Pulse: Trouble, Trouble, Trouble (February 11, 2004)
George W. Bush's approval rating has dropped below 50 percent for the first time in his presidency. By William Schneider.

Legal Affairs: Ted Kennedy's Excellent Idea: Disclosing Admissions Preferences (February 4, 2004)
Ted Kennedy has the right idea in wanting universities to disclose information on alumni relatives that they admit. But why stop there? By Stuart Taylor Jr.

Political Pulse: Desperate to Win (February 4, 2004)
The man who had the most influence in New Hampshire wasn't on the ballot. His name is George W. Bush. By William Schneider.

Media: It's Raining Words (February 4, 2004)
Sometimes phrases just catch on. Consider "wintry mix," an inexact phrase used to describe inexact weather. By William Powers.

Wealth of Nations: How Tony Blair Survived His Scariest Week (February 4, 2004)
Tony Blair has just endured the scariest few days of his political life. One of his problems also plagues George Bush: Iraq's missing WMD. By Clive Crook.

More from National Journal.

D.C. Dispatch | February 11, 2004

Media

Gut Check

The problem with campaign journalism is that it is at once seriously old-fashioned and wildly postmodern.

by William Powers

.....

There's something deeply wrong with the campaign coverage. Everyone senses it lately, watching the media's bogus handicapping, the embarrassing mood swings over the various candidates, the need to be always building somebody up while taking somebody else down.

The media appear clueless and insecure, unable to decide what matters most, or should matter, about any given candidate. His policy positions? His legislative achievements? His polls? How much money he raises and from whom? His childhood? His temperament? His marriage? His Botox rumors? The odd sounds he makes at pep rallies?

The problem is that campaign journalism is at once seriously old-fashioned and wildly postmodern. At the old-fashioned end, you've got a bunch of reporters moving around with the candidates themselves, breathing the bottled air of the campaign terrarium, and trying to convey this world in their reports. Watch Candidate X as he bounds into the requisite greasy spoon, shakes the requisite hands, and makes the requisite small talk about the requisite big issues. This is American politics at the micro or "retail" level, and You Are There.

Thus, a story on the front page of The New York Times this week, about John Kerry's new, improved public persona, gave us this moment:

In North Dakota on Sunday, as Mr. Kerry addressed a rally of 600 people in the stuffy Fargo Air Museum, relaxed in a tattersall shirt and brown corduroys, an older man near the front fell to the floor.

"I think we have somebody who's fainted there," Mr. Kerry said, hopping off the stage to check on the man as the murmuring crowd made way for him. Moments later, he reclaimed the stage and said calmly: "Ladies and gentlemen, he's all right. He's all right. He's a World War II vet, and he's been standing for a while on his legs and he needs a little air and a little water."

"You should be president!" a woman in the crowd called out.

At the other, postmodern extreme is a different kind of journalism entirely: the dark inside knowledge that all top-flight political reporters possess about how presidential campaigns really work. Based largely on the media's running conversation with pollsters, consultants, campaign managers, and other hardened political pros, this macro-level strategic coverage has effectively opened up the smoke-filled rooms of old and let the rest of us see what goes on in there. So, on one recent installment of MSNBC's Hardball, we got an entirely different take on the new, improved John Kerry, from this exchange between host Chris Matthews and guest Joe Trippi:

Matthews: But how do you explain this guy that nobody really ever was in love with exactly? He's a competent politician and legislator, but what made him so—what gave him the star quality the last three weeks?

Trippi: Six point four million big ones.

Matthews: He spent it well.

Trippi: He wrote himself a check for $6.4 million.

Matthews: Was it from his ads? Bob Shrum's ads?

Trippi: No. I mean, I think it bought him a lot. But ...

Matthews: Those ads are good.

Trippi: No money and broke going into Iowa, you're dead. He wrote himself a $6.4 million check.

There's nothing wrong with either brand of coverage. Each offers something of value, and they actually complement each other. In fact, they tend to appear side by side in the same media outlets, often in the same stories.

But neither gets at the place where the really decisive part of a campaign happens. Nobody wins the White House at the retail handshaking level, or through the machinations of strategists and consultants. A presidential election is ultimately decided between these two poles, in that very public space where candidates go to connect with the mass of voters.

That space is the media, of course, so it's strange that news people are not very good at helping us understand who's connecting and why. But it's a huge, complex piece of turf. Like the retail beat, it's old-fashioned, in that it's all about individual voters and their choices. And like the insider beat, it's very sophisticated, in that it's about a media-age transaction so elaborate that Marshall McLuhan would have trouble explaining it.

There's no Nielsen system for tracking the day-to-day media performance of candidates, no reliable way of knowing how each of them is registering at any given moment in the brains and emotions of the voting 100 million. The closest approximation is the polls, and we know how reliable those are.

Last Sunday, The New York Times ran a smart front-page piece that tried to explain the fall of Howard Dean, which so few in the media had foreseen. The writers, Jodi Wilgoren and Jim Rutenberg, argued that one of Dean's key problems was he sold his message instead of selling himself. The piece quoted an anonymous "major supporter," who said: "Howard never built a relationship with the voters on a fundamental, gut level.... When Howard needed to make the sale, I believe that required him to be more human, more self-revelatory, more personal with people, and Howard is a very private person."

Dean himself referred to this story in a remarkable interview last weekend with NBC's Tim Russert, calling it the best analysis of what went wrong for him. It also points to a diagnosis of what's wrong with the campaign media. "The sale" isn't happening in the diner, or on the phone with pollsters—it's happening in the great American gut. How about some more coverage of that?

What do you think? Discuss this article in the Politics & Society conference of Post & Riposte.

More from National Journal.

More on politics and society in Atlantic Unbound and The Atlantic Monthly.

William Powers is media columnist for National Journal. This column appears every week in National Journal, a weekly magazine covering politics and government published in Washington, D.C.

For information on National Journal Group publications, see NationalJournal.com.

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