Gigolos on the Campaign Trail
By Prof. WALT BRASCH
Special to USAfricaonline.com
The presidential candidates, once promising eternal love to Iowa and New Hampshire, have deserted their betrothed faster than a gigolo ditching a plain rich girl for a plain richer one. Together, Iowa and New Hampshire have less than 1.5 percent of the American population, but because the states figured out how to be the first in the race for delegates, and because there isn't a lot to do in January, the candidates and the bus-bound media hordes saturated the two states with their personality-drenched presence. For three months, the candidates walked around the non-voting homeless to infiltrate every bar, restaurant, and fire hall, kissing babies, pumping the flesh, and dribbling campaign trinkets of every price category.
In Iowa, the candidates ate corn and pork chops, and talked about the need to help farmers. If pigs could vote--the state has five times as many pigs as people--the candidates would have preached a doctrine of forced vegetarianism. In New Hampshire, they slopped maple syrup onto their pancakes and talked about why government should stay out of people's lives. By the time they waddle into Pennsylvania in April, they will be proclaiming that the perfect food is cheesesteak hoagies and that the Eagles really should have won the Super Bowl--if they could only have made the play offs.
By the November 7 general election, they will have spent about $275-325 million, the equivalent of the human resources and education budgets of a small country, or enough to significantly reduce poverty in America.
CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC cleared their schedules to give almost 24-hour coverage to the Iowa and New Hampshire campaigns, significantly more air time than any of the news media gave to the Midwest flood of 1993 that caused about $20 billion in damage, and forced several hundred thousand out of their homes. Unable to focus upon issues, probably because the Iowa and New Hampshire winters freeze brain cells, the media threw six-column headlines above gossip and conjecture to question John McCain's mental stability for having spent several years in a Vietnamese POW camp, and Bill Bradley's irregular heartbeat.
Instead of detailed coverage of Bradley's chest, the media should be cutting into the heart of politics by dissecting the who, how, and why of campaign financing, perhaps looking at the George W. Bush campaign war chest to see if "Dubya" has any of his soul left that he hasn't sold.
The TV media, with journalists an almost extinct minority among what passes as their news staffs, think the best way to cover the primaries is to display 10 seconds of a candidate's visit to the Rotary Club luncheon, then shove in another 45 seconds of public comments about the candidate who probably didn't say anything of substance to begin with. The Iowa and New Hampshire voters were so media-savvy that they no longer had to ask what slant the reporters wanted for their stories.
Print media reporters spend as much as five minutes with a potential voter, condensing the comments to about 30 words. For variety, the reporters quote each other and the pride of pollsters who hover like trash-dump flies around political campaigns and the media circus. They eruditely declare that if Candidate X doesn't do at least so much percent in the vote, then he's finished, and if Candidate Y wins the election but doesn't score at least so many points ahead of the next candidate, he's also toast. But, if Candidate Z does better than "expected," he's "in the race" and "ready for the long haul."
The candidates are now wooing the voters of the 16 states in the March 7 "Super Tuesday" primaries. Like they did to their jilted lovers in Iowa and New Hampshire, the candidates are again whispering sweet-nothings that are overheard and published by the media who, in the movie-script scenarios that have become politics, are cast as lovable klutzes who never get the girl.
Most presidential candidates are good people caught up in the show
that has become politics. On stage, bathed by the media glow, they
are "warm and fuzzy," having already compromised their integrity for
political expedience. Perhaps, it's time for Martin Sheen, who plays
the president on "The West Wing," and Aaron Sorokin who writes and
produces one of TV's best dramas in years, to run our country. At
least until the ratings slip, we'll have more intelligence and
honesty in fiction than we now do in the political process.
Brasch, a national award-winning journalist who has covered
numerous elections, is professor of journalism at Bloomsburg
University, Pennsylvania. He is a contributing editor of USAfrica The
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