US Media Trivializes Campaign 2008

By Robert Parry 
May 6, 2008
For The Consortium

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 William 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.

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