Let the horse race begin…
David Yepsen demonstrates one of the ways the press is a player in politics, not an outside observer. His column demonstrates much of what I tried to explain in my essay about the press coverage of the pre-primary process: the press is largely responsible for the choice of nominee. Here’s now Yepsen begins:
It’s doubtful Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack really wants the 2008 Democratic presidential nominating process to start with the Iowa caucuses. Oh, he may say he does, but deep in his soul he’d love it if the whole thing began someplace else.
Reason? He might run for president himself in 2008. Instead of being a springboard for the hometown boy, Iowa’s caucuses could be a deathtrap.
Here’s how it works: The conventional wisdom is that if Vilsack ran for president in 2008, he would be an early front-runner in Iowa because it is his home state. Everyone would “expect” him to do well and even win big.
First, note the passive voice and pronoun placeholder in the first sentence. Yepsen wants to hide his own pop-psychobabble and apparent ability to peer into the souls of mortal men. He didn’t learn those skills in j-school.
The second paragraph could lead to an interesting discussion of Iowa’s out-sized role in the presidential nomination process. Instead, we get a lesson in conventional wisdom that Yepsen fails to explain is purely a construction of the press. Who is this everyone he speaks of? Everyone as in every citizen of Iowa? The midwest? The United States? No. This mean everyone in the political press and the spinners who feed them propaganda and nonsense. Citizens are not included in “everyone.”
Conventional wisdom is a form of thinking by commonplace that pervades political journalism. Because such thinking is pervasive, opinion journalists pass it along to citizens unexamined. Reporters pick up on it and pass it along in the form of unexamined spin. Citizens are left out of the process, treated in political coverage with the assumption that they also hold the same commonplaces and expectations. Perhaps they do. And perhaps they wouldn’t if political journalists could find a way to escape the shallowness of their own thinking.
My suggestion: Tell a different story–the story of citizens and their experiences with governance, not politics. (via Political Wire)
Yeah, but Yepsen is an Important Local Journalist.
I had a taste of the incentives that create these creatures as editor of a small-town weekly. The president of the state senate hailed from our humble village, and before long I became the metro dailies’ go-to guy for “policy” insight, followed by a regular radio gig, invitations to Important Politcal Functions and visits by Important Political Figures – some of whom are now Bush administration muckety-mucks. Heady stuff for a 22 year old.
I loved it. The publisher loved it. Readers loved it. Fortunately, when my conscience woke up, it hated it.