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| Dull and Duller | | | | Our columnist offers five ways to put the camp back into campaign | |  | Did the media do too much with too little?
 | | | | By Gersh Kuntzman
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE |
| | | Nov. 5 — What if they had an election, but no candidates who wanted to say anything? Well, we’d get the midterm election, which, thankfully, concludes tonight. |
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ACROSS THE board, this has been a dismal campaign, highlighted mostly by impotent candidates, a disaffected electorate and a media that don’t know what to do with either.
Such a boring, issueless campaign is an amazing thing considering how many important issues are in play right now. Should we go to war with Iraq? What should we do about the economy? How can we improve public schools? What can we do to develop new sources of energy so that we don’t have to be in hypocritical alliances with countries like Saudi Arabia? | | |
You know it’s a dull political season when the public debate over guns isn’t reignited even after two snipers terrorized the nation’s capital with a rifle they bought legally at a gun shop.
The problem, of course, is today’s political candidates. This fall, Congress spent most of its time passing a resolution authorizing force in Iraq, but couldn’t find time to pass a budget. Yet when all those congressional candidates went back to their districts, the primary issue that constituents wanted to talk about was the economy, stupid.
Inside the Beltway, Iraq is an easy topic, but fixing the economy is difficult. It’s political suicide to talk about raising taxes—even though it could be argued that President Bush’s tax cut got us into this mess in the first place.
Still, you can’t always blame the candidates for wanting to say as little as possible because whenever they do say something, it invariably comes back to haunt them. Down in Florida, for example, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill McBride thought he was going to slide past Jeb Bush, until the Dems’ gains got lost when he said he supported smaller class sizes in schools—then couldn’t explain how he was going to pay for it. But that’s the country we live in now: a politician can’t say he’d be willing to raise taxes to provide better services to the people paying the taxes. Yet every single day, someone in America complains about something—whether it’s an unswept park, a clogged highway, an overcrowded classroom, an undrinkable municipal water system—that could benefit from more spending.
The public’s hypocritical approach to politics showed up in many different polls. My favorite survey from this season was a poll that asked voters their opinions of the two main political parties. Fifty-five percent said they had a “favorable” opinion of the Republican Party while 55 percent said they had a “favorable” opinion of the Democratic Party. At the same time, a different poll indicated that only 42 percent of the country thinks the GOP has a “clear plan” for the country and only 31 percent think the Democrats have such a plan. If that’s the case, why do so many people have such a favorable view of the parties? Is it because we’ve just become comforted by the sight of elephants and donkeys?
Another telling poll—done by NBC—indicated that 31 percent of Americans believe GOP control of the Senate would be a “good thing” while 41 percent think it would be a “bad thing.” If those numbers are to be believed, why was this election even close?
But, more important, what should we make of the 25 percent who think it would make “no difference”? Clearly, the “no difference” crowd is wrong—GOP control would mean quick confirmation on many of Bush’s stalled judicial appointments, as well as significant shifts in environmental and social policies—but the fact that there are so many people who think that both parties are basically the same goes a long way toward explaining why candidates don’t dare take a strong stand on anything important.
In the end, the media must bear most of the blame for a moribund political season. Ever since the advent of the 23-and-a-half-hour news cycle (it would be 24 hours, except for our daily “Seinfeld” rerun), the problem with the media has been far too little news and far too much time in which to report it. All news coverage nowadays is filled with “experts” or “former thises” or “ex-thats” who do nothing but fill the dead space.
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National results
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Tuesday’s political coverage offered the same fact-free diet. I discovered as much when I popped on MSNBC to find Ashleigh Banfield live from Jeb Bush’s campaign headquarters in Florida covering the arrival of camera crews, a band rehearsal (“Wow, that must be something like a 20-piece band!” she enthused) and the inflation of red, white and blue balloons (campaign workers had blown up 2,500 balloons in just an hour).
Campaign coverage like this is rampant, which makes HBO’s Election Night airing of “Journeys with George” even more subversive. At its core, the movie—shot cinema-verite style by then-NBC field producer Alexandra Pelosi—is about the complete lack of substance in America’s campaigns today. Pelosi’s camera captured all the pomposity and circumstance of America’s campaigns, from their staged photo ops to their empty, issue-free speeches (remember “Compassionate Conservative” or “Reformer with Results”?) that are delivered to the faithful. | | |
Not that Pelosi’s movie is going to change anything (except that reporters will no longer be allowed on campaign buses with their mini-DV cameras). This year’s campaign was much of the same—and clearly, even the president was bored. During his 15-state swing, President Bush delivered the same stump speech—changing the relevant candidate’s name, at least—every single time. And it was always big news in each town’s papers the next day.
Why doesn’t he just send that speech—the one about how Candidate X “doesn’t need a poll or a focus group to tell him/her how to think”—to the letters to the editors page and stay in Washington getting some work done?
Clearly, the time has come to put the electricity back into the election and the camp back into the campaign. Here are my suggestions for five simple ways to make elections more exciting:
1. More Dan Rather: I knew which channel I’d be watching on Election Night when Rather opened his 6:30 newscast by saying that “the race for the Senate is as tight as a Botox smile.” This ornery Texan has become the highest-paid loose cannon in television. | | |
2. Allow more pinch-candidates: When ethically challenged Democratic Sen. Bob Torricelli was losing badly in New Jersey, he dropped out and former senator Frank Lautenberg jumped into the breach. Lautenberg was expected to win handily over GOP candidate Douglas Forrester, who had been allowed to spend the previous six months saying, “Vote for me because I’m not Bob Torricelli.” Once required to offer positions on issues, he fell apart.
3. More coverage of fringe candidates: I mean, don’t you want to hear more from Stan Jones, Montana’s Libertarian candidate for Senate, whose flesh has turned a silverish-shade of blue from drinking colloidal silver because he feared that there would be an antibiotic shortage in 1999?
4. Eliminate political advertising: It’s never informative and it’s never fair. My favorite was Texas governor Rick Perry’s attack ad on opponent Tony Sanchez. The ad explained how Sanchez hadn’t exercised his right to vote (or, judging from the distorted black-and-white picture, anything else) several times over the course of a decade. If Tony Sanchez doesn’t vote in Texas, the ad said, why should Texas vote for him? I, for one, think Rick Perry’s voting record as governor is more important than Tony Sanchez’s voting record as private citizen.
5. Eliminate all coverage that does not either provide vital news for the voter or an irreplaceable perspective on current events. As such, for the good of the country, I am declaring this column over.
Gersh Kuntzman is also a columnist for The New York Post. His Web site is at www.gersh.tv
© 2002 Newsweek, Inc.
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Newsweek: Elections 2002 Newsweek |
