Wow
For reasons I can't fully explain, I sat through the entire two hours of ABC's "debate" tonight, and it was--hands down--the worst mainstream media performance I've ever seen. Gibson and Stephanopolous made Chris Matthews look like a consummate professional. That's how bad it was.
It was virtually substance free. Rather than asking policy questions, the moderators spent the vast majority of the time trying to embarrass the candidates (mostly Obama) by quoting things said by people who are loosely associated with them. It was an orgy of banality and triviality that made everyone who watched it dumber.
On the few occasions where the discussion did turn to policy, the moderators asked deeply loaded questions that the candidates had no hope of being able to unpack and debunk in the 90 seconds they were given. Gibson's questions about the capital gains tax were the perfect example of this. He simply asserted that capital gains cuts lead to increased revenue (i.e., they cause the government to bring in more money than it otherwise would). Needless to say, this is a highly dubious empirical assertion, but the way that Gibson asked the question left no room for it to even be challenged. The candidates were forced to accept its truth as a given and try to answer the question accordingly.
If I were in any way associated with ABC News, I would be deeply, deeply embarrassed about that debate. It epitomized everything that is wrong with mainstream political coverage in this country.
And can we now put to rest the annoying SNL-inspired meme that somehow the press is coddling Obama in these debates? ABC spent the first half hour of that debate (on national television!) trotting out every single tired line of attack against Obama (he's an unpatriotic flag hater; his minister is a crazy racist; he thinks small town people are rubes, etc.). Yes, there was eventually a mention of Hillary's Bosnia remarks (at which point Obama graciously defended her), but there was an obvious imbalance.
The entire thing was a debacle from start to finish, a case study in everything that is wrong with political coverage in this country.
UPDATE: Glad to see my assessment is shared by others.
It was virtually substance free. Rather than asking policy questions, the moderators spent the vast majority of the time trying to embarrass the candidates (mostly Obama) by quoting things said by people who are loosely associated with them. It was an orgy of banality and triviality that made everyone who watched it dumber.
On the few occasions where the discussion did turn to policy, the moderators asked deeply loaded questions that the candidates had no hope of being able to unpack and debunk in the 90 seconds they were given. Gibson's questions about the capital gains tax were the perfect example of this. He simply asserted that capital gains cuts lead to increased revenue (i.e., they cause the government to bring in more money than it otherwise would). Needless to say, this is a highly dubious empirical assertion, but the way that Gibson asked the question left no room for it to even be challenged. The candidates were forced to accept its truth as a given and try to answer the question accordingly.
If I were in any way associated with ABC News, I would be deeply, deeply embarrassed about that debate. It epitomized everything that is wrong with mainstream political coverage in this country.
And can we now put to rest the annoying SNL-inspired meme that somehow the press is coddling Obama in these debates? ABC spent the first half hour of that debate (on national television!) trotting out every single tired line of attack against Obama (he's an unpatriotic flag hater; his minister is a crazy racist; he thinks small town people are rubes, etc.). Yes, there was eventually a mention of Hillary's Bosnia remarks (at which point Obama graciously defended her), but there was an obvious imbalance.
The entire thing was a debacle from start to finish, a case study in everything that is wrong with political coverage in this country.
UPDATE: Glad to see my assessment is shared by others.
posted by A.L. at 10:06 PM
22 Comments:
I thought Obama came across as tired, but as I think of it, I think he may not have been so much tired as he was disheartened that this is what our press has been reduced to. A smoldering ruin.
Your post title "Wow" was right on!
Yeah, we need more objective journalists like Keith Olberman.
BTW, if you click on the Greg Mitchell post, you will note that the three stories highlighted on Huffington Post are (1) Hillary's "screw em" remark from 1995, (2) the fact that one of the men in her "bitter" ad isn't registered to vote and (3)Obama wont say whether his 97-99 tax returns will be released. Clearly HP cares about the "real issues."
Yeah, the debate was a sham. Their whole organization is horrible. Take a look at this as well.
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sorry
http://www.politrixasusual.com/abc-newspart-of-the-problem/
Ditto, ditto, ditto. I will post your thoughts about ABC debate on my blog. Point well taken. Edward R. Murrows would roll over his grave on the type of journalism and reporting in the media.
The transcript posted online doesn't fare well either. Nearly 16 out of the 26 web pages were devoted to divisive remarks and wedge issues. Even with a conscientious eye, I had difficulty parsing out the crap just to get to what the candidates want to do for the country. I didn't watch it, but I imagine it would be very easy to change channels. Shame on you, ABC!
Here is the transcript rundown I prepared for my readers:
http://brainsplitter.blogspot.com/2008/04/debate-86-fluff.html
I wouldn't watch it, the first one. I had a feeling that it was going to play out just like this.
Yep, and I can believe Charlie Gibson. Was his glasses half way down his nose and face? Stupid unprofessional I wanna be the one that takes Obama down - dumb fcuk!
I'm sick of the major news outlets and everyone whose got a stupid opinion on the television.
This race is the biggest farce.
A.L., what do you expect ABC to do? Obama and Clinton have spent an enormous amount of time ensuring that their policy positions are close enough to one another that they can adopt each other's platforms at will. They've intentionally crafted their campaigns around issues of style and character.
It's bad TV to have two people saying the same thing in slightly different language. So of course ABC obligingly directed its questioning toward the areas where the candidates have chosen to differentiate themselves. ABC gets no more than half the blame here.
Good public policy? Certainly not. But TV news is about TV, not news. Feel free to bitch about that as much as you please. Have fun stormin' the castle, boys!
Oh, yeah, TRM, it's not ABC's fault -- they're job is, after all, to pander to the lowest common denominator, not to even attempt to elevate the discourse. Sure, the FCC grants them licenses "in the public interest" -- but that doesn't mean they are in any way responsible to the public.
And of course, ever since the GOP started deliberately making the elections about style and character (can't blame them, their real agenda won't bear the light of day), and the media piled on, the Democrats have, in self-defense, made style and character a prominent part of their campaigns.
But the media bears no great responsibility for that, oh, no.
Hmm, c2h, you raise an interesting question: Does ABC have a regulatory obligation to produce network content in the public interest? Other than content broadcast by the ten local TV stations they own, I don't believe they do. I doubt the news division and the O&Os have much to do with one another.
As for your second point, I'm glad you cleared this up for me: ABC concentrated on style and character over issues, because Clinton and Obama have been concentrating on style and character, but that's not their fault, because the GOP has (probably through a malicious conspiracy involving beaming control rays right into our brains) fiendishly forced the American electorate to care about only style and character. Phew! I feel so much better now that the scales have fallen from my eyes! It's not Clinton or Obama's fault. It's not really even ABC's fault. How could I have missed it? It's the Republicans' fault. Of course.
TRM,
I didn't say anything about regulatory obligations. This is a strawman argument. My point was about civic obligations.
I also did not say it was anybody's fault. Another strawman.
Hey, here's a radical idea, so-called "moderate". Why don't you try responding to actual arguments, rather than making up arguments to respond to.
On the other hand, it appears to be your position that, as long as the broadcasters don't actually commit crimes, whatever else they do is fine with you. Fine. I'm sure you've never complained about any behavior by any broadcaster unless their behavior breaks a law.
C2h50h- let me get this straight. You said "ever since the GOP started deliberately making the elections about style and character (can't blame them, their real agenda won't bear the light of day), and the media piled on, the Democrats have, in self-defense, made style and character a prominent part of their campaigns."
And you think that TRM was out of line in reading this sentence as blaming the Republicans and the media for the emphasis on style and character in the Democratic race?
Really?
MLS,
As I said originally, I blame the GOP for starting the "character as a defining electoral issue" bullshit, but I pointed out that they had to -- after all, they can't tell the electorate their real goals.
So I exculpated the GOP, but TRM came back with: "the GOP has (probably through a malicious conspiracy involving beaming control rays right into our brains) fiendishly forced the American electorate to care about only style and character."
What part of "strawman" do you not understand?
The last 40 years of political discourse and electoral politics in this country has been been one long race to the bottom, aided and abetted by a lack of leadership in the Democratic party, a puerile and self-serving media, and, above all, a GOP that has been willing to sacrifice every principle they might ever have possessed in order to obtain and keep political power.
The only question in my mind is whether we've reached the bottom and enough people have received the education that will allow them to see through the blinding barrage of bullshit and choose someone who may turn things around.
Feel free to misinterpret this comment as you please.
c2h50h-
I think TRM was trying to use gentle (or not so gentle) mockery to point out the childish simplicity of your world view, ie, that evil Republicans are somehow responsible for introducing “character as a defining electoral issue.” I think you will find that claims about noble and ignoble character have played an important role in many of our elections, even in the days before there were any Republicans.
Personally, I wouldn’t have bothered, any more than I would try to convince Rush Limbaugh that all of our problems aren’t the result of liberal stupidity and/or depravity. Why deprive you of the comforting belief that all character attacks against your candidate are unjustified smears and/or attempts to distract from the “real issues,” while character attacks against opponents are fully justified (all Republicans are evil by definition, anyway) and, at any rate, are merely undertaken in self-defense. After all, it is not only rubes from Pennsylvania who need something to cling to in these trying times.
MLS,
TRM's feeble attempt at hyperbole for effect missed because he mis-stated what I had said. Now you, in your turn, seem to think you can disparage my points by attempting to poke fun at them.
Oh, yes, to attempt to characterize the opposition as a libertine or otherwise immoral has a long tradition in American politics, a hundred years ago or so. This was especially so in the days when every little town had an independent paper and there were no journalistic standards at all.
Then, for a time, there was an outbreak of what we might call journalistic integrity. I really don't think we should allow backsliding on this -- it's not good for the country. I'm also opposed to going back to those days in the area of medical technology, and civil engineering.
You know, I think it's a pathetic method of argument to mis-characterize what another person said simply to attempt to then score points against it. It is a mis-characterization of my comments to say that I said or implied that "all character attacks" are anything, and I'll thank you not to put words in my mouth.
If you weren't referring to my comments, fine, but I am at a loss to understand whose comments you were referring to.
No, I was definitely referring to your comments.
So if I understand you correctly, you believe that elections prior to about 40 years ago (Johnson-Goldwater, Kennedy-Nixon, Eisenhower-Stevenson), were run on issues, not character or style, and were covered honestly and objectively by the press, while elections such as Nixon-McGovern, Ford-Carter, Reagan-Carter, etc., have been fundamentally different in some way. If that is your view, on what do you base it?
MLS,
Personal experience. It wasn't like a switch was flipped, and it hasn't been consistently one side or the other that ran more on character, but, more and more, as the GOP has abandoned its original constituency and principles, it has relied more and more on "character".
We all know that perceptions such as mine are subjective, but that's what I've seen.
The parallel degradation of the media has also been gradual, with upturns and downturns, but what we've got now is not doing an adequate job.
c2h--
I don't consider my arguments strawmen. I think maybe you didn't express yourself very well when you wrote: Sure, the FCC grants them licenses "in the public interest"... (which is simply not true), and ever since the GOP started deliberately making the elections about style and character (which cries out for the odd piece of supporting evidence). Both of these statements are symptoms of at least poor rhetorical hygiene. I happen to think that the level of vitriol being flung about is incredibly destructive. If you're going to indulge your hatred of the other guys, you owe it to yourself to be accurate.
That said, I think something really has changed in the past 30 years. However, I don't think it has anything to do with whether one is conservative or liberal. In my experience, both sides are equally noble, equally craven, equally astute, equally shortsighted, equally brilliant, equally stupid. To think anything else seems to fly in the face of the law of large numbers. If either political philosophy had a significant advantage over the other, I have great faith that the electorate would have extinguished one in favor of the other within a couple of election cycles. Didn't happen. QED.
I think what's changed is that media and communication technology has improved so much that the assumptions under which both political parties evolved are no longer valid. The parties of the 40's and 50's had conventions and rigid platforms because it was the only way to reach consensus about how to govern. From the outside, that looks like an "issues-based" campaign. In fact, it's merely a response to how you message-smith in a world of print media and radio.
TV changed everything, and then the internet changed everything again. Today, we have the technology to detect a political event, disseminate it, accumulate feedback on how to respond to it both tactically and strategically, craft a message, and distribute talking points, all in less than one news cycle. Naturally, the vast majority of those political events are trivial. Unfortunately, failure to respond to all events cedes a distinct advantage to your opponent. Voila! Game theory uber alles. Welcome to the modern political landscape.
Which brings me back to my original point: What are the most recent "political events?" Bittergate, Tuslagate, and CrazyPreachergate. When was the last time that either campaign managed to get on message with anything that you so loftily consider an "issue?" It's been a while.
Given that ABC is a news organization, and that the first three letters coincidentally spell out that n-e-w word, why on earth would you expect anything other than questions about the most recent events in the campaign?
What to do to solve the problem? Stop blaming one side or the other. That's a genuine strawman. Instead, look at the political system as, well, a system. Discourse will improve when everybody understands that they have to use the tools available to tweak the system until it's actually responsive to the public interest. Until then, blaming one side over the other just makes the problem worse. It's silly.
TRM,
Yes, it's silly to claim that all the blame rests with one side or the other, but it is asinine to pretend that the blame is equally distributed.
That's just blind.
You clearly don't remember or perhaps have never read about how the broadcasters were given licenses to use portions of the broadcast spectrum. Perhaps you should educate yourself before trying to educate the rest of us.
c2h--
The misunderstanding we're having about the FCC is that "broadcaster" is defined by the FCC merely as a local station, since the local station is the only licensee of spectrum. The network portion ABC is therefore not a broadcaster and has no license.
It is true that ABC owns and operates ten local stations in various markets. (Here's a list of them.) So I will concede your point for people who happen to live in New York, LA, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, Raleigh-Durham, Fresno, Flint, or Toledo. However, once again, those stations are responsible for their broadcast content, not the network. (Case in point: When the FCC fined CBS for the Superbowl "wardrobe malfunction" a few years back, they fined CBS's owned and operated stations, not the CBS network itself.)
I'll make one more (extensive) attempt on the "who's to blame" question and then I'm sure A.L. will appreciate it if we end the pissing contest.
Elections are very much a free-market phenomenon. More specifically, policy ideas compete for share-of-mind in elections. Bad ideas are removed from the market very quickly. There are lots of ideas from both parties that simply no longer exist. When was the last time you heard somebody make a cogent argument for segregation? For forced bussing? For marginal income tax rates exceeding 50%? For wage and price controls? Until recently, protectionism was off the table, too. (Sometimes bad ideas resurface and the electorate has to re-repudiate them.)
Similarly, there are lots of ideas that are so obviously correct that neither party contests them: Fairly low income tax rates, equal employment and equal housing opportunity laws, participation in global trade organizations, relatively free trade, all-volunteer military--none of these ideas is under serious dispute. Yes, there are extremists on both sides that dispute some of them but the vast majority considers them settled issues.
There are two classes of issues that are contested in perpetuity. The first are the traditional "wedge" issues: Church/state divisions, gun control, abortion, and afirmative action are good examples. These all have the interesting property that constitutional and/or case law constrain the resolution of the issues by the electorate. So these are always nice hot buttons for political demagoguery.
The other class of issues are the really important ones. These are issues where constant adaptation and fine-tuning of government policies is important. What exactly is the proper income tax rate? What is the proper balance between federal and local government? What regulations actually improve our economic well-being? What freedoms can be granted that enhance the health of our society? What is the proper balance between war and diplomacy? All of these questions have answers that depend upon a particular moment in history. It is completely appropriate for two (or more) sides to contend--sometimes viciously--over these issues. That's how the system stays healthy.
C2H, when you advocate passionately from one side of the political spectrum, it's easy to forget that the only thing that prevents the folks on your side of the issue from making excessive changes is that those on the other side are resisting your every move. You may think that they're utterly wrong, maybe even criminally wrong. But when their opposition is weak, your side will inevitably make mistakes. (Cf. the last 7 years for a fine example of what weak opposition does.)
The system works because both sides have fundamental good will towards each other and because a large number of people get to judge impartially who's right. When one side is systematically wrong, society changes a lot. But when society is relatively stable, both sides, by definition, have to be right exactly half the time.
Of course, society is not stable right now. The entire energy infrastructure of modern society is going to have to change over the next 30 years. The geopolitical balance is still out-of-kilter from the collapse of the USSR. And, finally, mass-scale terrorism is a completely new phenomenon. (Note that terrorism has been around forever, but the ability for a tiny group of actors to kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people at a single go is distinctly new.)
This instability means that there are brand-new "sides" to be staked out and contended with. Almost certainly, one side is going to be a lot wronger than the other until we develop a consensus for how best to deal with these new issues. Obviously, you and I will disagree profoundly on the proper way to address these issues. But I daresay that neither of us knows the right answers. That's OK, though. The issues are simply too complex to be solved without a lot of trial and error.
I hope that I am humble enough to remember that the way the system works best is when you and I have passionate advocacy for our own positions and that, through that advocacy, our society will find the correct balance between them. That requires that I not think that you're evil and/or stupid because you disagree with me. It requires the same of you. That is, ultimately, the essence of moderation.
The rest is noise. Style and personality have been in politics forever, sometimes to great benefit, sometimes to huge detriment. I believe that the noise level has increased quite a bit through modern media, to the point where it may be problematic. But I also believe that the invisible hand in the electoral market is alive and well. It is still able to extract important signals from the din that ensues during a presidential election. Relax; it'll probably be OK.
A.L., I hope you don't mind our hijacking your thread for a bit here. We seem to have drifted quite a ways from whether or not George Stephanopolous is a moron.
WHEN WILL THIS BREAKOUT? AT THE CONVENTION IN DENVER, THE NOV. ELECTION, OR THE JANUARY INAUGURATION?
For sure Karl Rove & Co. have done their homework and are cautiously waiting for the precise moment to throw their Molotov Cocktail into the election!
Hannity, O’Reilly and Limbaugh seem definitely ready. The frequency of their not-so-subtle references about a potential scandal going his way increases daily!
Take a moment to listen to this bilingual audio from LaKalle Miami radio . . . . . . You be the judge of the credibility on the tone of voice of the subject being interviewed!
http://www.enriqueyjoe.com/LARRY_SINCLAIR_.shtml
LARRY SINCLAIR ON E&J SHOW (STRONG LANGUAGE) LISTEN TO AUDIO
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