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May 26, 2003
: Tell a different story...
Today's entry concludes my series on the press-politics of the pre-primary campaign. I will conclude my argument that, to be politically useful to citizens, the press must cover more policy and less horse race from now until the primary season begins.
I saw an interesting moment on Hardball with Chris Matthews last Friday. MSNBC pollster Frank Luntz was questioning a panel of voters. His opening question: "Regardless of who you’re voting for, what characteristic do you want in a Democratic nominee?" After several people responded, Luntz said (with my clarifying remarks):
We’ll [the press] talk about personalities for the Democrats and you [the panel] all keep bringing it back to policy. That’s an interesting dynamic. Up until now, people [who?] were looking for, as you used, bold leadership, honesty, a vision for the future. [Luntz turns to the camera] And yet they’re all talking policy. [To the panel] Is that where the Democratic nominee is going to go, rather than focusing on attributes, they’re going to focus on policy?
Luntz continues to mention, with a sense of wonder, the panel's interest in policy. Matthews and his guests ignore it. Here is Luntz's concluding remark that Matthews cuts off to return to his guests:
I asked them to talk about candidates, talk about attributes and they kept coming back to issues. That says to me that there’s no Democrat out there that’s really captured the hearts and mind of the public as an alternative to George Bush. It is early, but there’s no one out there that’s got a clear...
In other words, the panel's interest in policy, the day-to-day stuff of governance that affects peoples' lives, is proof that no candidate has a convincing presidential image. And the logic in that would be what? I would say this is proof that, at the moment, no image created by the campaigns or the press has completely usurped their abilities to comprehend their own political interests.
Luntz wants them bow to the press' master narratives. But these citizens realize there is another narrative to be told, a narrative largely ignored during campaign coverage: The story of how policy affects the lives of average Americans.
During the pre-primary campaign, candidates raise money and hone their images in preparation for what many believe is the process in which the candidate will be chosen. But, as Prof. William G. Mayer has demonstrated, the choice will be made before the primaries begin because the leader of the last (Gallup) poll before the Iowa caucuses wins the nomination. That means the most important part of the nomination campaign is happening right now.
The polls reflect choice. How are those choices made? If one relies solely on the press, especially television, that choice may be influenced by the press' assessments of political viability based on fundraising, master narratives, and poll numbers. Policy, and its affects on the lives of average Americans, plays very little role.
In other words, horse-race coverage (especially on TV) forces voters to deal with image. Because the concept of viability plays such a crucial role in voters' decisions, the press effectively chooses the nominee by deciding who is viable based image, and voters react to these mediated images.
The press applies a narrative structure to ambiguous events in order to create a coherent and causal sense of events. I assert that the press, to be politically useful now, must give more attention to another narrative--the story of how the candidates' former and proposed policies might affect the lives of average Americans.
In this series:
Who wins and when...
Long, hot summer...
The Search for drama...
Stable process = lack of choice...
Poll position is crucial...
A good story...
Writing the plot...
Primary instability paradox...
The choice is theirs...
Posted by acline at May 26, 2003 9:45 AM | | Spotlight