This just in from campaign central:
Washington insider Lamar Alexander, a former Cabinet official who claims to be an outsider, finishes third in the Iowa caucuses and is declared by the press to be the virtual victor.
He then heads to New Hampshire to pose outdoors in a zero degree chill while mocking Iowa winner Bob Dole, who is declared in trouble, but who is campaigning in a nice warm building nearby.
Common sense has nothing to do with conducting presidential campaigns–or reporting them.
Every four years swarms of politicians and political reporters sweep through the cornfields of Iowa and the flinty hills of the Granite State, spewing authoritative sound bites, analyses and predictions that change so fast you could get whiplash.
But in a profession that prides itself on accuracy and restraint, the dirty little secret of campaign reporting is that much of it is just hokum, spun out to dress up farce and tedium as drama.
A week ago, the conventional wisdom in the press and political establishments was that free-spending Republican Steve Forbes had rewritten the campaign rule book with a barrage of mean-spirited TV ads. Forbes was soaring in the polls, signaling the end, it was said, to the maxim that Iowa and New Hampshire were the last bastions of old-fangled, hand-pumping, baby-kissing politics.
Never mind.
When the Iowa votes were counted, Forbes had as much fizz as a flat Coke, and the Campaign ’96 road show flew off to New Hampshire to watch the Republican contenders retail their fannies off before Tuesday’s primary, a trend that will continue until the next one comes along.
If it seems a wee bit silly, even cynical, to handicap the selection of the leader of the free world like a horse race and dwell on the petty ping-pong match of charges and countercharges, you’re wrong. It’s a lot silly.
When it comes to presidential politics, don’t believe everything you read in the papers.
Americans have long been conditioned to expect politicians to speak not just with forked tongues but with an entire set of cutlery in their mouths. But come campaign time, they get a lot of help from the news media.
Trends and boomlets come and go as casually as the winds, fueled by such fickle forces as a theory being kicked around on the press bus or a change in inflection a candidate might make in a key passage of his stock stump speech.
When it comes to big media events like the Iowa caucuses, candidates are mobbed by reporters, each with lots of space or air time to fill, pressured by editors to say something profound and paranoid that the competition is going to say it better or first.
For sheer lunacy, it would be hard to match the day eight years ago when Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis showed up with actor Richard Gere to do some staged door-to-door campaigning in a quiet Des Moines neighborhood. The event was chronicled by 20 television crews and 70 or so reporters, an entourage so big that it never could make it to a doorstep.
But Hollywood heartthrob pounds the pavement for dorky, policy wonk Massachusetts governor makes good copy and good pictures, so that’s the way it got splashed across newspapers and TV news shows across the nation.
Not that saturation coverage of presidential campaigns doesn’t have its pluses. It helps lesser known aspirants float sometimes innovative ideas, sheds light on the kind and quality of advisers would-be presidents listen to, and can even illustrate how they would handle pressure.
Like it or not, however, the media has evolved into something more than just an objective observer of the campaign process, building up straw men, knocking them down and then analyzing how the candidates screwed up.
A case in point is Forbes, whose stock was said to be soaring only weeks ago on the strength of all those negative ads he bought attacking opponents. When he flopped in Iowa, the conventional press wisdom became that voters were turned off by those same ads, a notion that led Forbes to perform an emergency facelift on his New Hampshire advertising campaign.
A story that said simply “this guy beat that guy” would never cut it anymore.
Instead, what you get is Dole in the catbird seat, Dole in the toilet. Forbes on fire, Forbes struggling for his life. Up, down, left, right. Stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight.
In the 1988 Iowa caucuses, Dole came in first among Republican candidates, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson second and Vice President George Bush third. No less an authority than the New York Times reported it this way:
“Iowa produced a stunning Republican result tonight, one that promised to alter dramatically the course of the 1988 presidential campaign. A surprisingly feeble showing by Vice President Bush raised insistent questions about his chances of winning the nomination, even though almost every major politician had been describing him for months as the favorite. A comeback is always possible; Ronald Reagan lost to Mr. Bush (in Iowa) in 1980 but went on to win the New Hampshire primary and, of course, the presidency. But the outcome in Iowa was far more clear-cut this time.”
A week later, as the polls were opening in New Hampshire and only hours before Bush would notch a huge win, this insightful piece of analysis appeared in another big national newspaper under the byline of yours truly:
“Ever since he was trounced last week in the Iowa caucuses, Bush has seemed like the man who ran over the cat and wrecked his car on the way to work, then spilled coffee on his suit. If Bush looks hapless, Sen. Bob Dole, his main challenger, is batting 1,000.”
So much for clear-cut outcomes and insightful analysis.
In the world of political reporting, the misses just keep coming.
Among the Democratic presidential hopefuls in 1988, the Iowa winner was Missouri Rep. Richard Gephardt and second place went to Illinois Sen. Paul Simon. A few weeks later, they too were Spam.
Fast forward to 1991, when Bush, fresh off his triumph in the Persian Gulf war, was deemed virtually unbeatable for re-election. A year ago, the man who beat him, Bill Clinton, was dead meat in 1996.
One of the problems reporters have in interpreting what goes on in Iowa and New Hampshire is that the states are so unrepresentative of the nation as a whole. Iowans tend to be far older and better educated than most Americans, New Hampshirites way to the right of mainstream. And the populations of both states are tiny and overwhelmingly white. Yet they’re hailed as bellwethers.
Perhaps the oddest of all coverage when it comes to presidential politics is the expectations game. Winning is less important than simply doing better than what the pundits said you’d do.
Using that barometer, Reagan’s 49 percent of the vote in the 1976 New Hampshire Republican primary was deemed a disappointment. At the same time, Jimmy Carter’s 28 percent of the Democratic vote in New Hampshire was considered sufficient to solidify his credentials as a serious contender.
The same dynamic was in play after Monday’s Iowa vote. Dole won, but not by an overwhelming margin so that was considered a poor showing.
Pat Buchanan came in second, but the big story was Alexander, the former Tennessee governor and U.S. education secretary whose third place bested better funded candidates like Forbes.
This is how the Associated Press characterized the Republican race going into New Hampshire:
“Lamar Alexander, fresh off his strong third-place finish in Iowa, set his sights Tuesday on Bob Dole and Pat Buchanan . . .”
Strong third-place finish.
By those standards, the Cubs could be considered the perennial powerhouse of the National League.
