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July 29, 2004
Great expectations...
I wonder what would happen if a political party decided not to create expectations prior to its convention. What would the press do?
For example, Democrats said they would run a positive convention. And the Kerry campaign apparently asked speakers to go easy on President Bush. Why create these expectations?
The obvious answer is: message control. But how much control over the message can a party be said to have when it hands the press one half of a dramatic dichotomy? What the press will do is go looking for the opposite half--the ying of the offered yang. They do this because the fairness bias demands reporters get "both sides" of the story and the narrative bias demands drama in contention.
If you tell journalists that you intend to be "positive," that guarantees they will go looking for the negative. And they'll find it. In the case of a political convention, it's easier to find than one's own backside.
What would happen if party strategists, handlers, and candidates refused to pre-characterize an event?
For one, it might force journalists to take a little harder look at the substance of the speeches (although I'll bet this is exactly what some of them think they are doing). But here's what we get from Todd S. Purdum's "Political Memo" column in The New York Times:
When Edward M. Kennedy vowed this week that John Kerry's election would make John Adams's famous prayer that none but "honest and wise" men ever rule the White House "ring true again," was he by any chance hinting that he thinks a dishonest dope rules there now?When Bill Clinton declared that, "strength and wisdom are not opposing values," was that just a nicer way of saying that he believes, "You don't have to be dumb to be strong"?
...
When it comes to the Democrats' promise to run an upbeat convention, positive is a relative term. Speaker after speaker has wrapped invective in a veil of indirection, softened what would otherwise be stinging attacks with a smile and slyly bashed Mr. Bush while barely mentioning his name.
"It's the art of the implicit slam," one veteran Democratic speechwriter here acknowledged, speaking on condition of anonymity because he knew he was speaking out of school.
Of course these are slams. This is the typical, dog-bites-man fare of American political address. It's damned difficult--not to mention stupid--not to implicitly compare your candidate to the opponent in such speeches and by such methods. Among the few rhetorical points of such campaigning is to draw such distinctions for the audience.
But by setting up a fuzzy expectation of positiveness, the Democrats have made it easy for the press to follow their own scripts to coverage that ignores the substance of the oratory.
Evil thought experiment: I wonder how the coverage would have been different if the Democrats had said they intended to run a savage and negative convention and then delivered exactly the same addresses? Hmmmmm...and what would that say about journalistic practice and the role of journalism in a democracy?
(Note: Normally, I'm happy to see members of the press do even rudimentary textual analysis. But to be politically useful, such analysis must, in the end, lead to something that citizens can use to make an informed decision. One big problem with Purdum's analysis is simply this: Nearly everyone already gets it. He's not revealing anything that isn't already apparent to the average citizen.) (via Political Wire)
Posted by acline at July 29, 2004 7:42 AM | | Spotlight