Too early to call

S.J. CAHN

In the past three weeks, two presidential front-runners -- both once

crowned by the media as locks to win their races -- have plummeted

remarkably from the ranks of the sure-to-be-elected. The first of

these, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, needs a miracle to win the

race for the Democratic nomination that was supposed to be his by

now. The second, President Bush, is not in such dire need, but his

poll numbers, now at about 50% approval, have collapsed, and in some

surveys, he’s running behind the new Democratic front-runner, Sen.

John Kerry of Massachusetts.

There has been plenty of hand wringing, not to mention

name-calling, among the media for assuming knowledge of how voters

would act in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two stops on the

nominating trail.

A succinct critique was put forth by former St. Louis

Post-Dispatch Editor Cole Campbell: “[T]he campaign press corps’

stories citing all these factors, causes, dynamics and developments

[after the Iowa caucus] never mention the centrality of the campaign

press corps in picking what counts and doesn’t count in explaining --

or explaining away -- political reality. The campaign press corps

pretends it doesn’t exist, except to observe and explain. It pretends

it is a political innocent.”

This chastisement boils down, essentially, to a common complaint:

The media cover the “horse race” aspect of politics while failing to

delve adequately enough into the “important” policy positions of the

candidates.

That is, as a friend of mine would say for emphasis, a true fact.

And there are plenty of reasons for it.

The central one, I believe, is that policy makes for boring

stories. Above all other real or perceived bias of the media is this

one: The media love exciting stories (or at least what they see as

exciting). Handicapping the presidential candidates and delving into

how they are planning their campaigns, which media consultants are

about to be fired, and why one candidate is clicking with voters are

all far more interesting than who says what about the state of

healthcare or a similarly weighty topic. This bias is why we’re

likely to see a long string of stories about Bush’s service, or lack

thereof, while with the National Guard. An AWOL president? That’s

exciting news! And it wouldn’t matter if the person in question were

Republican, Democrat or Ralph Nader.

And so the media, heading into elections, fixates on who’s in

front, who’s doing what to win and who’s messing up. And they pretty

much can’t help setting up front-runners or announcing who’s out of

the race.

What’s reassuring is that they are so often wrong. The media’s

mass belief that Dean had the nomination is only the latest example.

The best, I say, is from 1991-92, when the first President Bush was

considered a lock to win reelection as he enjoyed soaring approval

ratings after the Gulf War.

It’s the best not because Bill Clinton rewrote that conventional

wisdom. It’s the best because the media were already making the exact

same mistake again this year, with yet another President Bush and

another war in Iraq. No, it will be a long, rough road to the

November election, I think. And I doubt Kerry will prove to be a

Michael Dukakis by any stretch.

All that aside, it is not solely the media’s fault that campaign

coverage is as it is. Just as members of the press corps find policy

stories tedious, so do readers. And until they up and demand boring,

policy-laden stories bulging with jargon language, the media will

continue to serve up helpings of handicapping reports.

Is there a solution? I’ve long thought that journalists should use

the more exciting pieces of the stories -- the personalities, the

quirks, the battles -- to draw readers in and then also provide more

meaningful information. It’s kind of like a spoonful of sugar helping

the medicine go down.

WHAT’S IN A CAUCUS?

On a related matter, a member of the staff here asked me during

the past week what the difference is between a primary and a caucus.

The anticaucus brigade will tell you the difference is given

voters their rights versus treating them like a part of a sham

Central European vote during the Soviet Era.

And that isn’t exactly wrong.

According to the Iowa Department of Economic Development, caucus

is an American Indian word, possibly Algonquin, that means a

gathering of ruling tribal chiefs. Today, of course, it’s a gathering

of political party members.

Why some see it as a sham is at the heart of how it differs from a

primary, which involves the classic American “secret ballot” kind of

voting.

A caucus, on the other hand, involves groups of people meeting and

publicly voting, often by the old-fashioned hand-raise or by

splitting into different groups -- the Deaniacs over here, the JFKers

over there, the Edwardians off there. (This is where anti-caucus folk

cry foul, arguing that it takes away from the one-person, one-vote

base of American democracy. If you run into any of these folks, you

can hold up the Electoral College to them as another fine example of

where our individual votes don’t exactly count.)

If you already knew all this, maybe this will come as a surprise.

Folks in Iowa caucus ever two years. Those off-presidential years

focus on the party’s platform and, not surprisingly, tend to have a

lighter turnout.

* S.J. CAHN is the managing editor. He may be reached at (949)

574-4233 or by e-mail at [email protected].