What is it? An innocuous little piece that helps explain 2000, 2004, and moreover why things aren't in utter landslide territory this year. I've often wondered: How could a solid, knowledgeable, staid guy like Gore be painted as an emotional effete, and a compulsive liar besides? How could a recovering alcoholic Yalie who bought a ranch in '99 and feared horses be painted as the regular-guy cowboy everyone wanted to have a beer with?
I think we now have a partial answer: it's the apparent belief of prominent campaign reporters that covering a campaign should be in all ways like attending a political fantasy camp. They crave a personal relationship with the candidate. They long for "unguarded moments," wherein the true character of the candidate is revealed through some unscripted "off-message" bit of amiable banter. They want a guy who gives them personal gifts, tells off-color jokes they can titter about nervously like kids in church (without reporting them), and who generally takes time out to be interested in -them-, to be their pal. The question "which candidate would you like to have a beer with?" in and of itself doesn't really influence many voters. However, the traveling press corps seems to base its coverage on another question: "Would this candidate like to have a beer with me?" That sort of bias can influence an entire electorate.
The power of this bias, in complete conflict with journalistic responsibility, has been all too obvious in the case of McCain--he provided the fantasy, and reaped the rewards, in 2000. His coverage was overwhelmingly milk-safe and positive. Despite running robo calls himself, despite baldly lying about himself, his policies and his opponent, despite reneging on much-ballyhooed promises to run a positive campaign, McCain remained a saint to the media. His studied and shrewd courtship of his press corps was a huge factor in this--if all the ground-level reports are breathlessly positive, troubling gaffes or misstatements may never see the light of day.
The obvious contrast to this was Gore. While rumblings of unjustified pundit disapproval were in full swing a full two years before election day, Gore was fatally sunk by a hostile traveling press corps. Misstatements were invented, core personality flaws were discerned from the most ephemeral trifles, and the general tone of coverage was always one of thinly-disguised contempt. Why? It may be because, by all reports, Gore didn't "hang out" much with the press corps, joshing and back-slapping, but instead stuck mostly to his script and actual campaigning.
What spawned this spew of endless words from me? Maeve Reston's horrifying LA Times article, concerning her travels with McCain this season.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-maeve28-2008oct28,0,7533361,full.storyFirst, note her apoplexy after asking a "tricky" question resulted in a minor McCain gaffe:
The questions meandered across more than a dozen topics, but I asked if he agreed with his advisor Carly Fiorina's recent statement that it was unfair for some health insurance companies to cover Viagra but not birth control -- because McCain generally opposed those kinds of mandates.
Liberals and late-night comedians would later revel in McCain's on-camera discomfort -- the widening of his eyes, the awkward silence while he clutched his jaw and formulated an answer. But I had come to respect McCain's frankness and his willingness to admit he didn't always have an answer. Watching the question morph into an embarrassing "gotcha moment" for cable television, my stomach churned and my cheeks grew hot.
Why, exactly, does she feel stricken by shame? We only have to read on. It gets weird:
By July, I had covered McCain for almost seven months. I could recite many lines of his stump speech by heart, dreamed about his events at night and spent so much time scrolling through campaign e-mails on my BlackBerry that my fiance joked to our friends about the other man in my life.
Is this dedication to the job or a schoolgirl crush? The weirdness continues:
Over those months, McCain had artfully created a sense of intimacy with the reporters who traveled with him. He barbecued for us at his Arizona cabin, and opened up about matters as personal as his faith and his son's girlfriends. On one of my first days covering McCain, another reporter protectively warned me that it was important to be judicious with the material I used from McCain's bus rides to keep the conversations in context.
Translation: don't spoil our fantasy camp by actually reporting newsworthy McCain statements. The personal revelations and barbecues, the -intimacy- with us transcends our ostensible purpose for being there in the first place--reporting noteworthy facts about the candidate and his campaign. Reston gushes at length that McCain took time to ask her personal questions; about her upcoming marriage, etc. But after the Viagra incident, it all went downhill:
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.
Oh, the tragic snub! This poor reporter once had something, something infinitely valuable--a shrewd pretense of friendship from Senator John S McCain! But now all was lost due to that detestable business of actually being a journalist! I don't think what happened here can be overemphasized: this lady actually valued her perceived personal relationship with the candidate as being far more important than judiciously covering his campaign. The
accompanying piece on Obama notes that our guy sticks mostly to campaigning and doesn't choose to "go rogue" all that much once the recording devices are out. Given the events of 2000, can anyone blame a Democrat for this?
There have been several great blog posts on this article, and they're far better than my lame venting. I particularly like Terry Welch's comment that McCain's press corps is acting like the guy who believes strippers are totally into him; you know, for real dude.
Glenn GreenwaldTerry WelchBob Somerby