In These Times's The ITT List was recently named one of the top 5 campaign blogs for its coverage of the Democratic National Convention.
ZoomZoom InZoom OutPrintDiscuss
Views > May 8, 2008 > Web Only

U.S. Media Trivializes Campaign 2008

By Robert Parry

Every four years, during U.S. presidential elections, the same thing happens, except it’s always a little bit different.

Some clever political operative injects “oppo” into the campaign – some little “scandal” that supposedly speaks to the “character” of a candidate – and the press corps obsesses on this marginal issue nearly to the exclusion of all substantive matters.

This all-consuming event distorts the campaign, turning the targeted candidate into a laughingstock or someone who isn’t quite American enough. Pundits pile on with criticism that the guy should have reacted faster or slower or answered this way or that.

Millions of voters become convinced, amid this intense negativity, that they simply can’t vote for this loser and the outcome of the election changes.

Then, in the election aftermath, the American press corps goes through a period of self-reflection; some excellence-in-journalism group issues a scathing report about the superficiality of the news coverage; political journalists vow that in the next election they won’t get suckered again.

Then, the process – which dates back at least to 1988 and Lee Atwater’s savaging of Michael Dukakis – begins anew, albeit always with some slightly new twist.

All this might be quite funny if one doesn’t consider the consequences for the Republic. When historians try to figure out how the most powerful nation on earth managed to end up under the control of someone as unfit as George W. Bush for eight years, they will have to take note of this media phenomenon.

In 2000, Al Gore was transformed from a thoughtful, even far-sighted government official into a delusional braggart who claimed “I invented the Internet” (though he really didn’t say that), a traitor who sold nuclear secrets to China (though he didn’t), and a phony who wore earth-tone sweaters and cowboy boots.

John Kerry also had many strong points – as a genuine Vietnam War hero (a decorated Swiftboat captain in the Mekong Delta) and a gutsy investigator (Nicaraguan contra drug trafficking and BCCI) – but saw his war heroism smeared by the misnamed Swiftboat Veterans for Truth and his Americanism mocked because he “looked French.”

At key moments in these campaigns, the press let the “oppo” define Bush’s opponents and thus millions of Americans went to the polls believing fiction was truth, up was down. (For details, see “Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush.”)

Going to Be Different

In 2008, however, the conventional wisdom was that the pattern would be different.

America could no longer afford the silliness – with the United States bogged down in two wars (Iraq and Afghanistan), with the dollar sinking and the federal debt rising, with global warming requiring urgent attention and gas prices soaring, with America’s image in the world shattered by Bush’s policies of preemptive wars and torture.

This time, the campaign press corps would keep its focus on what really mattered. Or at least, it would not wander too far off course.

But it didn’t turn out that way. With Hillary Clinton’s campaign playing the “oppo” role filled before by Republican operatives like the late Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, the attacks on Barack Obama’s “character” gradually took hold.

Especially, during the six-week lull before the key Pennsylvania primary, the American people got a steady dose of this “oppo,” especially the guilt by association that sought to define Obama by the comments of his former pastor Jeremiah Wright and by his tenuous connection to Vietnam War-era radical Bill Ayers.

There also was the furor over the fact that Obama often didn’t wear an American flag lapel pin (though Hillary Clinton and John McCain didn’t either).

One might have thought the obsession with Wright and with the lesser themes of Ayers and the flag pin would have soon disappeared as just little blips on the campaign’s radar, but that would have required the exercise of some judgment and self-control by prominent national journalists.

Instead, the old pattern reasserted itself. So, on April 16 in the first prime-time debate on a major network, ABC News moderators George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson hammered away at these “oppo” themes for nearly the first half of the debate: Wright, Ayers, flag pins.

By the time many Americans had given up or flipped the channel to Fox’s “American Idol,” they hadn’t heard a single question about issues that affect them directly. Though Obama appeared damaged by the pounding, ABC also got roughed up by critics of the debate, which was denounced as the most disgraceful debate ever.

Another Chance

So, on May 4, the Sunday before another important round of primaries, one might have expected something better or at least different when NBC News Washington bureau chief Tim Russert interviewed Obama for a full hour. But that’s not how this process works.

Russert opened up “Meet the Press” with a steady barrage of questions about Rev. Wright – a dozen all told – most of which had been thoroughly plowed previously.

Russert: “What has the controversy over Reverend Jeremiah Wright done to your campaign?”

“You’re still a member of the church?”

“Why do you think he re-emerged?”

“What did you learn [about Wright] in those [past] five weeks that you didn’t know in March?”

“The critics have said he [Wright] can attack the United States of America, he can do all sorts of things that divide the country, but only when he made it politically uncomfortable for you did you finally separate himself [sic] from him.”

“Reverend Wright was going to give the invocation [at Obama’s campaign launch], he was disinvited. … So you knew in ‘07, this guy’s a problem.”

“Why didn’t you just say then, ‘You know, Reverend, we’re going on different paths because this country does not believe in white supremacy and black inferiority’”?

“He said in a letter to The New York Times, he suggested that you apologized for not letting him do the invocation. Is that true?”

“Is it fair for people to raise questions about your judgment for misjudging Reverend Wright?”

“You’re done with him?”

“If you’re elected president, you won’t seek his counsel?”

“Could you have handled this better, differently, by severing your ties earlier?”

“What’s the most important thing you’ve learned from this?”

Russert then pivoted into a reprise of Obama’s supposed lack of patriotism, mentioning Wright’s comment, “God damn America,” and the criticism of Obama for not wearing a flag pin – with the question framed as a question from Democratic superdelegates about Obama.

Russert: “How is he going to defend or define his patriotism?”

Serious Issues

It was almost halfway through the program before Russert touched on a question that actually related to the lives of Americans, a question about whether or not the government should suspend the gas tax for the summer driving months.

Russert: “Why are you against giving taxpayers in Indiana, North Carolina, a relief from federal gasoline tax this summer?”

Only in the second half of the hour did the interview address some substantive questions about U.S. policy in the Middle East, before Russert ended the interview with a flurry of questions about what might happen in the campaign depending on the outcomes in Indiana and North Carolina.

Given the amount of time devoted to Rev. Wright and political tactics, what was striking was what wasn’t discussed. Russert didn’t ask a single question about President Bush’s policies on torture, his stretching of his constitutional authority as the “unitary executive,” the sub-prime mortgage crisis, the possible recession, the declining dollar, the federal budget deficit or a host of other important issues.

Since Russert is an icon to many Washington journalists, he was spared the kind of criticism that Stephanopoulos and Gibson encountered after the April 16 debate. But Russert’s obsession with political trivia was arguably worse than theirs.

When the post-mortems on Campaign 2008 are written, Obama – like Dukakis, Gore and Kerry before him – will be faulted for failing to figure a way out of the “oppo” trap. But the bigger question confronting the American people will be how they can escape this recurring nightmare of a silly news media trivializing and distorting the selection of the President.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the '80s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His books, including Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush and Secrecy and Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered here. This article originally appeared on Consortium News.

More information about Robert Parry

  • subscribe to print magazine

  • Reader Comments

    Maybe it’s not only the media trivializing the campaign.

    Since so much of each day’s media coverage deals with Hollywood’s latest crazy behavior or an athlete’s violence and lawbreaking, this may be all most of them are capable of talking or writing about.

    Much of what the candidates have to offer is a band-aid for economical cancer. Instead of well developed solutions or doable ideas they come up with cash diversions which will never be funded.  Perhaps trivia is more interesting to the electorate.

    Obama is well versed in what people are angry about. Hillary is pretty willing to get down to the blue collar lifestyle (when useful). McCain is well qualified in the character category.  None seems to have a clue about the real pressures on average Americans each and every day.

    How often do you suppose any of them has filled his own gas tank lately?

    How many times have they shopped for a family meal at the supermarket in the past year?

    Do they know anyone whose job has gone to cheap-labor-land, whose small town has lost its major employer, where there are so many homes for sale no one can afford to move to where any kind of job may be available?

    When they promise a retraining program for those aged 40 to 60 can they think of what that new “career” could possibly be?  How about learning Spanish for, Welcome to Wal-Mart”?

    I t has been so long since I went into a voting both to vote for someone rather than against the other candidate that it is pathetic.

    The one thing Wright had right was that politicians will do what they need to do to get elected… and to get reelected.

    Posted by whattheheck on May 8, 2008 at 12:41 PM

    I might add that congress majors in trivia as well. What was the last time they passed any meaningful legislation dealing with domestic problems?

    Social Security?

    Medicare?

    US job losses?

    Health Care and Insurance?

    Dangerous imports?

    Inflation?

    Infrastucture?

    None of the above. They deal with those critical issues like former baseball stars and steroid use.

    Posted by whattheheck on May 8, 2008 at 2:57 PM

    U.S. Media Trivializes Campaign 2008

    Naaaah.  The candidates have trivialized themselves.

    I thought John Kerry was the least accomplished major party candidate in history in 2004, and damned if the Dims didn’t come up with their final three who were even less accomplished candidates in 2008.  Do you really think that simultaneously running as a war hero with faked credentials and an anti-war hero with a solid gold record of traitorous talk against your own country qualifies you to be president?

    Neither race, nor gender, nor the dirty tricks BO and Hill are playing on each other are really significant in this campaign.  The only important question is how socialistic the candidate is.  Hill and BO are equally socialistic and therefore we have a tight race.  Edwards matched them in socialistic philosophy, but Edwards was lacking in melanin on one hand and estrogen on the other hand and therefore he could not compete regardless of his rock-solid leftist credentials. 

    At some level, all Americans perceive that LBJ was a socialist, and that he produced disastrous results for the republic.  The most blatant example was the War on Poverty that cost $6 trillion, and the sole practical result was the substantial destruction of black family life in the United States.  Before LBJ, over 80% of black children lived in a home with two parents.  Now the figure is less than one in three.  Destruction of the family and “bourgeoise morality” is a principle of Marxist philosophy. 

    The American people learned a hard lesson from LBJ, and now the Dim candidate in every election has a losing margin exactly tied to how leftist he is: McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry.  The only two winning Dim candidates since LBJ were Carter and Clinton (Bill), and neither of them emphasized their socialist credentials. 

    Since BO has the most socialistic voting record in the entire US Senate, you can bet your ass he will finish down in McGovern territory in the final ballot.  Enjoy.

    Posted by scorp on May 10, 2008 at 12:34 PM

    Scorp,

    I hope you are right (Wright?) about Obama’s finish. Americans have very short memories and the media love him.

    Isn’t it interesting how little we hear about the McCains personal charitable and humanitarian work — from those who still think a government program is more effective?

    Posted by whattheheck on May 11, 2008 at 7:19 AM

    Scorp, you have some baggage which sets you off on a tangent. The story was about the shallow level of thoughtfulness and discussion which goes into our “elections”, not whether LBJ was a bad president, or a socialist. I have never understood why the term “socialist” gets spat out like a wad of snot by people. It’s certainly no worse a term than “Republican” and they have cause more death and heartache than any of the Socialists in this country. It’s like your swipe at Kerry, calling him a traitor, or attributing the quality of “traitorous” to his testimony about the war. He said the government lied about why we were there, which it did without a doubt. He said American soldiers and Marines were raping and murdering, which they were (No, not all of them, but enough if it was your daughter raped and murdered) These are not traitorous actions anymore than calling for impeachment of George Bush is treason. It’s part of the legal process we used to have in the Republic, back when it was a republic, back before the Fascists took over. Read some of Mussolini’s writings and compare them to the writings of the New American Century Cabal, George Bush or John McCain. Stronger family values, return religion to the schools, make the country strong, turn in your neighbors, attack preemptively especially if the target is weak… It is not treason to understand what happened to this nation and it is reasonable to note that the so-called “news” industry is infotainment at it’s worse. And in the end, with 7 out of 9 Justices, the Executive Branch and the Republicrats in charge of the government and the corporations and Republicrats in charge of the news, to say elections are trivial is to miss the point. Elections in America are not elections. They are money laundering schemes. That’s it.

    Posted by WillShirley on May 11, 2008 at 8:41 PM

  • extended discussion >>>Continued...

    Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 9 posts.

Join Here
Member Login

Forgot password?

Also by Robert Parry
Popular Discussions