Let's not get fooled again

Back in 2000, the media presented us with two very clear images of the presidential candidates. George W. Bush was a regular guy who'd be fun to hang around with. Al Gore, on the other hand, was a pretentious bore -- preachy, self-important, and generally not somebody you'd want to spend any time with.

Looking back, those images seem pretty ridiculous. Which raises the question: Is it happening again this year? Are lazy journalists fitting the facts into simplistic narratives that lack any foundation in reality?

Yeah, pretty much. I'm hardly a bosom buddy of Obama, Clinton, or McCain. But I took advantage of living in New Hampshire to watch them fairly closely, and I see some definite gaps between reality and the media narratives that have formed around each of them.

[adapted from The Weekly Sift, a new blog]

Obama. Here's the media narrative about Barack Obama: He's an inspiring speaker, but he lacks substance. His way with words is all fuzzy abstraction that masks his lack of detailed understanding.

The "inspiring speaker" part is true. But I saw him answer questions at a rally last summer, and his command of details is as good as anybody's. And if you chase the links on the issues page of Obama's web site, you'll find quite a bit of detailed policy commitment. His health care plan, for example, is a lot more specific than John McCain's -- even though McCain has been able to exploit the media narrative by saying: "To encourage a country with only rhetoric rather than sound and proven ideas ... is not a promise of hope. It is a platitude."

So Wednesday when Obama gave a speech in Janesville, Wisconsin specifically to outline his economic plan, it should have been a man-bites-dog moment, right? If you had the expertise and resources of, say, the New York Times or the Washington Post, think of the service you could offer your readers: You could examine his proposals in detail, get experts to assess whether they would help anybody, figure out what they'd cost, and so on. Readers aren't set up to do that kind of analysis for themselves -- and neither am I, to tell the truth (at least I provide the links) -- but you're a big news organization. It's right up your alley.

Well, maybe not. The Post sort of mentioned that Obama had made some economic proposals, but their article was totally focused on the political tactics behind the proposals: the up-coming Wisconsin primary, Clinton's advantage with working class voters, and on and on. If you want to know what Obama actually proposed, good luck to you. (Matt Yglesias took the Post to task here.) Ditto for the Times: They note that Obama is "adding detail to his oratory", but they treat "detail" as an ingredient, like salt. You don't need to know what the details are, just that he's adding them. And of course, you get a long tactical analysis about why he's adding details and what he hopes they'll do for him with certain kinds of voters.

Here's the upshot: Obama can spell out as much as he wants, but if the Times and the Post are sitting between him and the voters, nothing's going to get through. And even if you're a faithful reader of both the Post and the Times, when the guy in the next cubicle at work says: "That Obama -- he sounds good, but there's nothing there" you won't know enough to argue.

Clinton. In the musical 1776 John Adams doesn't want his personal unpopularity to sink the cause of independence. So he goes from one member of his committee to the next, looking for someone else to write the proposed Declaration. After several rebuffs, he approaches Robert Livingston.

ADAMS:
Mr. Livingston, maybe you should write it.
You have many friends, and you're a diplomat.

FRANKLIN: Oh, that word!

ADAMS:
Whereas if I'm the one to do it,
They'll run their quill pens through it.

CHORUS OF COMMITTEE:
He's obnoxious and disliked.
Did you know that?

LIVINGSTON: I hadn't heard.

Today, you'd have to be as diplomatic as Robert Livingston to claim you hadn't heard this about Hillary Clinton: She's unlikeable. She's cold and calculating and doesn't care about anything but power. Even her supporters don't like her. Women vote for her because she's a woman. Men support her because they have something to gain out of the Clintons' return to power, or because they're racists who don't like Obama, or because they're afraid she's going to win anyway so they want to get on her good side.

Now, I can't claim to have spent quality time with Hillary Clinton. But when I did see her in person at a New Hampshire Democratic Party dinner last March, I didn't find any support for the stereotype. She seemed quite likable to me, and I found one particular part of her message very moving: She talked about all the people who are invisible to the Bush administration, and she promised that as president she would see them.

I've talked to some of those older women who are Hillary's primary base of support. (My mom is one.) You know what? They like her. They don't just support her because she's a woman. They support her because they know the kind of crap a woman has to take to succeed in a man's field. Those women see Hillary sailing through the crap-storm with her head high, and they just admire the heck out of her.

McCain. Clinton supporters often claim that Hillary gets bad coverage because a strong woman threatens the manhood of male pundits like Chris Matthews. They're missing the bigger story: John McCain gets good coverage because he threatens the manhood of male pundits like Chris Matthews.

I feel something similar myself. Like most of the male talking heads on TV, I live in safety and comfort. My physical courage, my ability to think clearly when threatened, that whole Hemingway grace-under-pressure thing -- it's never really been tested. Given the chance, would I be a hero? Would I scream and faint like a little girl? Nobody knows, least of all me.

The intimidating thing about John McCain is that he's been tested and he passed. He knows. That gives him an alpha-dog aura that makes untested men want to follow him around like puppies. When he called on me during the question period at his town-hall meeting, I felt a little thrill that I normally don't. I felt honored. It's irrational, but very effective.

That's why McCain's media narrative is so positive: He's the straight talker. The maverick. The guy who says what he thinks and follows his conscience.

The truth -- and this really shouldn't be so controversial -- is that he's a politician. Not an outstandingly devious or dishonest one, but still a politician. When his target voters don't like one of his positions, he changes it or soft-pedals it or somehow makes it go away. Brave New Films put together a collection of his flip-flops. But you know, the striking thing about those waffles and self-contradictions is how ordinary they are. If not for the straight-talk myth, they wouldn't be noteworthy.

He's also not that much of a maverick. He has made a few independent noises over the past seven years, but when it comes time to vote he gets in line with all the other Republicans. This week he even backed down on his signature issue: torture. But again, that shouldn't shock anybody. There are no Republican mavericks. The breed is extinct.

The one downside of McCain's image -- his temper -- is also overblown. What strikes me about McCain's temper is that he gets over it. No campaign in recent memory was as nasty as the one Bush ran against McCain in South Carolina in 2000. But McCain has put it behind him. (A questioner took him to task for this at the town meeting I attended. McCain shot right back: The American people care about issues and getting things done; they don't want to hear about his ancient feuds.) He made up with Jerry Falwell. He even went back to Vietnam. Try to imagine George W. Bush doing anything similar. If you piss off W, you can go to Hell; he's done with you. McCain isn't like that.

Conclusion. Truthfully, I think the primary voters could have done a lot worse in picking our three finalists. There was never any chance I was going to vote Republican in this election, but I think McCain is as close to a reasonable candidate as we could have hoped for from that party. (Rudy scared the crap out of me.) And even though I was for Edwards, I'll happily vote for either Obama or Clinton.

But we're going to have to keep watching these baseless narratives. The closer we can keep to Reality, the more of an advantage we'll have.