Once, long after the passions of the election had cooled, I had drinks with someone who had been my opposite number; that is, someone who had volunteered for the candidate opposing my candidate. Our side had won, but my opposite’s bitterness had (mostly) subsided. Both of us had been pretty disillusioned with the up close view of sausage being made, and as were comparing notes about that whole clusterbungle, a third party came up to us and complained about the pettiness of politics and the nastiness of negative ads. In a flash, my opposite and I both said the exact same thing: “We wouldn’t do it if it didn’t work.”
With that in mind, Ezra Klein (H/T) has effectively summarized why the campaigns are busy mudwrestling:
The McCain campaign’s decision to lie about, well, everything, really needs to be understood as more than the outcome of John McCain’s consuming ambition. It is a rational and obvious response to the rules laid down by the media. Indeed, McCain’s spokesperson Brian Rogers says this directly to The Politico’s Jonathan Martin. “We ran a different kind of campaign and nobody cared about us. They didn’t cover John McCain. So now you’ve got to be forward-leaning in everything.”
And it’s true. Earlier this year McCain made poverty tours and offered policy speeches. No one cared, Obama retained his lead. It was only when he began offering vicious attacks and daily controversies that he began setting the pace of the coverage. The McCain campaign learned something important about the media: It’s an institution that covers conflict. If you want to direct its coverage, give it more conflict than your opponent. And so they have.
Klein’s analysis could be carried further, but first a tangent.
Let us stipulate that between her introductory speech in Dayton and her address to the Republican Convention, the mainstream media’s coverage of Sarah Palin and her family was ridiculously overblown. Millions of people saw these unhinged accusations, and then they say Palin perform, and they stopped believing what the talking heads were saying about Governor Palin. The unintended consequence of the media’s venom was to inoculate Palin, so to speak, from any future criticisms—even legitimate ones. Meanwhile, nobody on the right expected three front page New York Times articles about poor Bristol Palin on the same day. After catching his breath, McCain decided that since the media coverage was going to spin him walking on water as being unable to swim, he might as well attack hard. In for a penny, in for a pound, so McCain went for a ton.
Further, almost by accident, the McCain campaign realized that the best way to unnerve Obama was to hit his ego. Nobody runs for federal office without seeing a future president in the mirror, but even by this bar, Obama’s stuck on himself. The ads comparing Obama to Britney and Paris were tacky and graceless, but they rattled Obama. In a sense, they were the first punches he had to take, and he didn’t handle them well. If we understand Obama’s charmed political life, we can understand why he reacted so badly.
First, remember that he won his state senate seat unopposed; he’d maneuvered all his opponents off the ballot. Second, remember that Obama lucked into his Senate seat when his major primary opponent (Blair Hull) and his original general election opponent (Jack Ryan) collapsed in sex scandals. Third, remember that Obama lucked into the presidential nomination because Hillary Clinton didn’t realize she had to attack him until it was too late. Once she figured that out, she won 9 of the last 14 primaries, while McCain was watching and studying.
The situation as it now stands: Obama faces McCain, who wants to win the presidency and is willing to go negative; worse, Obama faces Palin, who’s immune to most criticism and is a hero to swing voters for flourishing in a media firestorm; worst, Obama has no significant support from his running mate, whose best showing in the presidential primaries was 3% in his native Delaware and who happens to be a walking gaffe machine.
If things don’t change, either through Obama’s gutsiness or a Republican gaffe, then expect a mudslide for the next 50 days that will bury Obama and give us President McCain. Yes, McCain could campaign nicely and let Obama win, but he won’t do that. He’s going to go ugly because it works.
Posted by Hubbard in Audacity of Hype, Journalism