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Thursday, June 5, 2008
McCain, Obama: It’ll be brutal
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Hillary Clinton’s supporters, especially women, are — to use the old fashioned word — sore with the media because they think we suck up to Barack Obama and that we’re so caught up in the “first black” narrative that she could never catch a break.
Pioneering feminist Gloria Steinem, a Hillary supporter, is convinced a woman won’t occupy the Oval Office in her lifetime. That’s a fully believable assertion. Steinem’s 74 years old. But her point is that it’s easier for a black male to win the office than a white female.
“For 35 years people have been asking me if there will be a female president, and I have always said, ‘not in my lifetime,’” she is quoted by the Associated Press. “I still feel that way. The patterns of history are that, at the upper levels, we see different varieties of men first. The female comes later.”
She blames Hillary’s narrow defeat on the media’s preference for Obama. “The media was in love with Obama,” she said, “and in hate with Hillary, hands down.”
The fall race against John McCain will be a real test of the media’s ability to avoid picking up that narrative to the point of bias. Bias would be easy in a race that pits Obama against McCain.
Obama is easily the more media-savvy. Too, he’s an inspiring public speaker, while McCain is awkward, low-key and sometimes boring. It’ll be awfully easy for the media, and for the rest of us, to get swept up in style over substance. McCain’s obviously aware of that. On Tuesday night, he challenged Obama to join him in 10 town hall meetings between now and the Democratic convention in August, starting a week from today in New York.
“I don’t think we need any big media-run production, no process question from reporters, no spin rooms,” he said. “Just two Americans running for office in the greatest nation on earth, responding to the questions of the people whose trust we must earn.”
It’s a setting that could work to McCain’s advantage, which is obviously why he suggested it. McCain’s at his best in the town hall settings, while Obama is at his worst without the prepared script and the teleprompter.
The fear that the media will give Obama an easy ride, starting with the story of his pal Tony Rezko’s conviction in Chicago Tuesday on charges of fraud, money laundering and bribery, will give rise to a host of independent political action groups, the so-called 527s, this fall. Hillary could never hammer him on his Chicago connections and on his views because she risked alienating the constituency she needed. McCain may not have the stomach, either. But independent political action groups need no permission to raise money and buy air time to get a story out that they think has been insufficiently addressed in campaign coverage.
McCain can certainly propose, as he did, that he and Obama can just sit down and air their policy differences, with no “big media-run production, no process question from reporters, no spin rooms.”
That may be the way the campaigns starts. And it may be the way the campaigns finish.
But in between it’ll be brutal.
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