The "Boys on the Bus" don't like Kerry. Not good news for the Country.
Media Want a Long Campaign
James P. Pinkerton
NEWSDAY
January 28, 2004
Manchester, New Hampshire - If history is a guide, John Kerry's victory here tonight should wrap up the nomination. However, while precedent has great predictive power, the press has great political power. So the race might not be over.
In the past three decades - since the emergence of the Iowa-New Hampshire nomination combo - any Democrat who won both the caucus and the primary went on to win the nomination. That was the rule in 1976, 1980 and 2000.
So maybe that rule will hold true for a fourth time, in 2004. But maybe not, because the media have a huge stake - conscious or unconscious - in making the nomination quest a long bout, and not a quick knockout.
First, many pressies simply like the game. For the Boys and Girls on the Bus, this is fun. A presidential contest is what gets them on the road, gets them an open-ended expense account, gets them on TV, and gets them book contracts when it's over. But, if all this politicking ends too soon, some of these same reporters will be relegated to covering the congressional appropriations process - or, worse, covering the election in Iraq.
Second, although most reporters lean Democratic, most in the media are not particularly fond of Kerry. Many more favor Howard Dean. It was Dean, not Kerry, who got the big buzz over the past year - all those magazine covers and all. Dean has most of the Hollywood glamour; both Martin Sheen and Rob Reiner were here stumping for him in recent days. And his youth vote, too - sexy young people also catch reporters' eyes.
Finally, Dean has had the Hot Issue: his opposition to the Iraq war. He took a huge hit for his "I have a scream" speech last Monday, but that's old news now. The new news is the resignation of David Kay, the Iraq weapons-of-mass-destruction searcher. Kay's conclusion, that Iraq didn't have WMDs on the eve of the war, is seen by many Fourth Estaters as final proof that the Bush administration was wrong to go to war - and thus the final vindication of Dean's opposition to it. By contrast, Kerry voted to support Bush on the war in 2002. How can dovish reporters be expected to like that?
As for the other Democrats, a few reporters sort of like John Edwards, if only because his cornpone act is different for Yankees. Furthermore, to the extent that Edwards is the most "electable" of all the candidates - no Democrat has ever won the White House without carrying at least five Southern states, and few think that Kerry or Dean could carry a single Dixie electoral vote - the North Carolina senator offers the most hope for an exciting general election contest.
These considerations were all at play last night. Yes, Kerry won. Dean lost by double digits, but the media made it seem closer. The "breaking news" e-mail alert from ABC News.com, for example, reported at 8:11 p.m. that "John Kerry and Howard Dean are contending for first place in the New Hampshire primary."
And the Dean people were all over that. Steve Grossman, national chairman of the Dean campaign, said last night, "Howard Dean has his momentum back." Grossman's words echo the "comeback kid" label - applied by Bill Clinton to himself on the night of the Democratic primary here 12 years ago. Back then, the media ate it up; Clinton was the press fave that year. But there was a catch in this comeback scenario: The Arkansan, in fact, came in second in the Granite State. But reporters liked him, and so it didn't matter; the comebacking candidate flew on a media magic carpet all the way to the nomination.
Yet if the press can give, it can also take away. Reporters once buzzed about Wesley Clark, but his incompetence on the stump left them alienated, as well as convinced that he was dead meat in November. And by yesterday, Clark was a fallen star, in sharp contrast to Edwards, who kept his sheen. As for Joe Lieberman, he never caught on with the presidential media; culture-warring allies of Bill Bennett rarely have a lot of pals in the press.
Thus it was easy for the Boys and Girls to anoint Edwards as the "third man" in the race, even though he finished way back, just a few points ahead of Lieberman.
Kerry won last night, and so he is on his way to the nomination. But while he's leading inside the Democratic Party, he's still behind in media favoritism - and the press is hoping Kerry's path to the nominating convention will be, at best, long and torturous.
James P. Pinkerton's e-mail address is pinkerto@ix.netcom.com.
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc. |
