By William Powers, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, Feb. 6, 2004

There's something deeply wrong with the campaign coverage. Everyone senses it lately, watching the media's bogus handicapping, the embarrassing mood swings over the various candidates, the need to be always building somebody up while taking somebody else down.

Nobody wins the White House at the retail handshaking level, or through the machinations of strategists and consultants.

The media appear clueless and insecure, unable to decide what matters most, or should matter, about any given candidate. His policy positions? His legislative achievements? His polls? How much money he raises and from whom? His childhood? His temperament? His marriage? His Botox rumors? The odd sounds he makes at pep rallies?

The problem is that campaign journalism is at once seriously old-fashioned and wildly postmodern. At the old-fashioned end, you've got a bunch of reporters moving around with the candidates themselves, breathing the bottled air of the campaign terrarium, and trying to convey this world in their reports. Watch Candidate X as he bounds into the requisite greasy spoon, shakes the requisite hands, and makes the requisite small talk about the requisite big issues. This is American politics at the micro or "retail" level, and You Are There.

Thus, a story on the front page of The New York Times this week, about John Kerry's new, improved public persona, gave us this moment:

In North Dakota on Sunday, as Mr. Kerry addressed a rally of 600 people in the stuffy Fargo Air Museum, relaxed in a tattersall shirt and brown corduroys, an older man near the front fell to the floor.

"I think we have somebody who's fainted there," Mr. Kerry said, hopping off the stage to check on the man as the murmuring crowd made way for him. Moments later, he reclaimed the stage and said calmly: "Ladies and gentlemen, he's all right. He's all right. He's a World War II vet, and he's been standing for a while on his legs and he needs a little air and a little water."

"You should be president!" a woman in the crowd called out.

Matthews: But how do you explain this guy that nobody really ever was in love with exactly? He's a competent politician and legislator, but what made him so -- what gave him the star quality the last three weeks?

Trippi: Six point four million big ones.

Matthews: He spent it well.

Trippi: He wrote himself a check for $6.4 million.

Matthews: Was it from his ads? Bob Shrum's ads?

Trippi: No. I mean, I think it bought him a lot. But...

Matthews: Those ads are good.

Trippi: No money and broke going into Iowa, you're dead. He wrote himself a $6.4 million check.

But neither gets at the place where the really decisive part of a campaign happens. Nobody wins the White House at the retail handshaking level, or through the machinations of strategists and consultants. A presidential election is ultimately decided between these two poles, in that very public space where candidates go to connect with the mass of voters.

That space is the media, of course, so it's strange that news people are not very good at helping us understand who's connecting and why. But it's a huge, complex piece of turf. Like the retail beat, it's old-fashioned, in that it's all about individual voters and their choices. And like the insider beat, it's very sophisticated, in that it's about a media-age transaction so elaborate that Marshall McLuhan would have trouble explaining it.

There's no Nielsen system for tracking the day-to-day media performance of candidates, no reliable way of knowing how each of them is registering at any given moment in the brains and emotions of the voting 100 million. The closest approximation is the polls, and we know how reliable those are.

Last Sunday, The New York Times ran a smart front-page piece that tried to explain the fall of Howard Dean, which so few in the media had foreseen. The writers, Jodi Wilgoren and Jim Rutenberg, argued that one of Dean's key problems was he sold his message instead of selling himself. The piece quoted an anonymous "major supporter," who said: "Howard never built a relationship with the voters on a fundamental, gut level.... When Howard needed to make the sale, I believe that required him to be more human, more self-revelatory, more personal with people, and Howard is a very private person."

Dean himself referred to this story in a remarkable interview last weekend with NBC's Tim Russert, calling it the best analysis of what went wrong for him. It also points to a diagnosis of what's wrong with the campaign media. "The sale" isn't happening in the diner, or on the phone with pollsters -- it's happening in the great American gut. How about some more coverage of that?

William Powers is a staff correspondent for National Journal magazine, where "On The Media" appears.

[ On The Media Archives ]

Need A Reprint Of This Column?
National Journal Group offers both print and electronic reprint services, as well as permissions for academic use, photocopying and republication. Click here to order, or call us at 877-394-7350.