Media Criticism

The obvious jokes about Fred Thompson’s lethargic campaigning style and his occasional quips (remember when he schooled a moderator about raising hands?) have been made by about a thousand different bloggers today. Thompson’s disappointing finish in South Carolina this past weekend has led the former senator and current actor to leave the race in a blaze of mediocrity. I thought for sure that he would announce his exit on Jimmy Kimmel’s show just as he announced his entrance into the race to Jay Leno.

The parity of the 2008 Republican field is the only reason why Fred Thompson was ever a factor. If Thompson had run in the year 2000 with moderate John McCain and establishment favorite George W. Bush running, he would have run a distant fourth behind Steve Forbes. The effort to turn Thompson into another Ronald Reagan shows the desperation of handlers and advisors within the Republican Party to stave off the inevitable: the Republican Party must cast off its political detritus before rising again. If Thompson would have won the nomination in some act of desperation by primary voters, he would have been handled by anyone in the Democratic field save Mike Gravel.

Talking heads have speculated what Fred Thompson’s exit from the race will mean for the remaining candidates. The speculation that Mike Huckabee is a natural candidate for Thompson’s conservative acolytes may not be accurate. Huckabee has floundered significantly since winning Iowa. I think a majority of the supporters will head to Mitt Romney who is looking like the conservative alternative for Republicans afraid of nominating John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. I don’t think there were enough Thompson supporters to make much of a difference but the vast independent voter who had not been exposed to the Southern gentleman’s subtle charms may swing to Romney in the end.

Most Americans probably didn’t see the Des Moines Register Republican debates this afternoon because they were at work. Since the final date of the Iowa caucuses was not determined until recently, the newspaper and the candidates for the Republicans and the Democrats weren’t able to finalize a date for the debate. The compromise for everyone involved was 1:00pm Central time on a Tuesday. If you haven’t seen clips from the debates yet, you don’t need to worry too much since there was little of substance that came from the debate.

You can blame two factors on the failure to get much out of the Register’s debate: the moderator and the format. Carolyn Washburn, the editor of the Des Moines Register, acted as moderator for a field of candidates including professional presidential candidate Alan Keyes. Washburn alternated between the weaknesses of past moderators like Anderson Cooper and an overly zealous approach to watching the clock when lesser known candidates were speaking. I am not a huge Fred Thompson fan but I loved it when he snapped back at Washburn for asking a question that asked grown men to raise their hands. Senator Thompson should be lauded for challenging this ridiculous trend in political debates. Ideas should be bandied about instead of relegated to silent nods and hand waving.

The format has been blamed by some pundits for encouraging sound bite responses by all the candidates. You could have any format in a political debate and have it fail miserably. If you give a politician 30 seconds and a microphone, prepare to hear an abbreviation of their stump speech. I like the format’s limitations on direct confrontations since civil discourse often turns into one-upsmanship.

There were a few good things that came out of Tuesday’s debate. Alan Keyes shows what a true 1990s family values conservative looks like and I can’t imagine more than a dozen voters will like the cut of his jib. Mike Huckabee’s frontrunner status finally exposes him to some criticism and critical analysis. I think the winner in this debate was Fred Thompson because he gave off the presidential vibe that many primary voters look for. You should all check back tomorrow for my look at the Democratic debate and a comparison to the management of the debate by the Des Moines Register.

The religious conservatism that arose in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan and in the 1994 Republican revolution promised an increasing role for leaders like Gary Bauer. Bauer failed in 2000 to gain the Republican Party nomination and has focused his attention on affecting change on the party from the outside. This past weekend’s Values Voter Summit gave evangelicals an opportunity to listen to speeches by Republican candidates while leaders of the Holier-Than-Thou club met in private in their version of the smoke filled room.

The conference did not seem to accomplish anything that had not already been determined through televised debates and live events. Rudy Giuliani is a secular devil, Fred Thompson is a conservative, Mitt Romney is religious but the wrong kind of religious and so forth. The New York Times article discussing the Values Voter Summit mentions support among the brain trust for Governor Mike Huckabee which makes sense if value voters are solely concerned about their values.

One reason this type of conference does not work is that Christian conservatives are becoming increasingly irrelevant in politics. The ties of religious conservatives to President Bush at every step of his administration have been disastrous. American voters are worried about those stupid secular concerns like Social Security, health insurance and international affairs that diehard evangelicals are only loosely concerned with. The concentration of the eyes of the faithful toward what is wrong with American politics including the potential evils of two New York politicians gaining party nominations shows that evangelicals are guilty of politics as usual. Americans need to blend the good parts of their religious faith like justice and compassion with their political concerns when they vote for president.

This title is fairly melodramatic but after writing my entry yesterday on Senator Hillary Clinton gaining the lead in the Des Moines Register poll Sunday, I noticed an article discussing Mitt Romney’s polling numbers in the Hawkeye State. Romney won the meaningless Iowa straw poll, has the good looks and charms to win over menopausal voters and seems to have one thing working for him: the Republicans don’t know what they are doing at this point.

While Romney’s ridiculous grin and tough guy talk seem to win over some voters in Iowa, the national polls indicate otherwise. Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani maintains a lead over other candidates on a national level while Romney seems content to weight out the conservative backlash against Giuliani. Republicans and independents that plan on voting for Republicans in upcoming primaries need to look at national numbers when considering the value of their vote.

Giuliani may be questionable in the eyes of conservatives when it comes to homosexuality and abortion but that is not the calculation voters need to make. The pulley system of American politics ensures that both parties will nominate a moderate that looks evil to the opposition party but won’t really do that much for America. This system failed in 2000 and 2004 (I guess the pulleys were off their tracks) but both parties need this election badly. The Democrats need to push their mandate further while Republicans need to get past the failures of the Bush Administration and reclaim conservatism.

The X factor in this election is Fred Thompson. Thompson may not be gaining traction in the meaningless polls mentioned above but he is bringing in dollars. He stands as a conservative pillar among moderates and flip-floppers and I have a feeling many conservatives uneasy about Giuliani for President or a landslide for Hillary Clinton may flock to him. He has everything Ronald Reagan had: a penchant for blindly accepting conservative values and presence on camera.

The Des Moines Register published a poll on Sunday that showed Senator Hillary Clinton gaining a lead on previous Iowa favorite John Edwards and the “it� candidate, Senator Barack Obama. The Clinton campaign and the mainstream media have pushed this recent success by Clinton as a sign that she is emerging as the most viable candidate for the Democrats. My question about this poll and other polls is whether they are a product or a generator of media hype. In other words, does the Des Moines Register poll result from Clinton’s hype in the national press or will the poll generate greater press for Clinton and feed conspiracy theories among independents?

I look back to the Iowa Republican Party’s straw poll as an example of how starved for news the mainstream media is these days. The poll was bought by Mitt Romney and not attended by Giuliani, McCain and Fred Thompson. The hype around Romney’s success and the dark horse success of Governor Mike Huckabee were grasped onto by major newspapers and TV networks after months of exhausting rhetoric. The answer to my original question based on the Iowa straw poll and subsequent straw polls in other states is that the poll is reflective of media attention rather than grassroots support.

Clinton and Romney share a similar problem in a general election. Both candidates would try to point out flip-flopping and political opportunism while failing to address their own flip-flopping and opportunism in the past. The Iowa caucuses are still three months away and there are too many independents in states like Iowa and New Hampshire to claim that Senator Clinton has struck a blow against her opponents. I implore the national press and the voters of early primary states to consider their choices carefully and avoid these polls like the plague.

Alright, my title is misleading because Fred Thompson could have burped out that he was running for president or gone on Carson Daly to announce his candidacy. His appearance on The Tonight Show was another bob-and-weave performance by Thompson who has been content with staying above the fray for the last few months. He joked with show business colleague Jay Leno about how tough it is to get on his show and how America needs a person like him.

I think the reason why I am so annoyed with Thompson is that he has capitalized on the media’s rabid interest in speculation to perfection. He has done what other candidates with the same amount of juice should have done which is wait as long as possible to avoid the grinder of primary debates that have taken place on both sides. Fred Thompson is so damn savvy it makes me sick!

In all seriousness, I take issue with the growing interest in Thompson. He may as well have worn a mask and hid in the shadows for all of the details he has provided on how he will improve the country if elected president. The media defines the buzz around a candidate in proportion to their enigmatic approach to actually announcing their candidacy. Reporters have been beaten over the head with rejections by Al Gore, toyed around with by Newt Gingrich and allowed to peak into the life of Fred Thompson without any possible repercussions because he has not been a candidate until today. Prepare for an enema of questions by the media, Fred. Just think of how nice it was to work as a voice over actor on Racing Stripes.

The overall question is whether Fred Thompson will add any value to the election. The public already complains that there are too many choices. One more white conservative lawyer on the Republican side does not seem to be the tonic for the public’s annoyance. I think Thompson will get crushed in the front-loaded election cycle and will leave much more quickly than he entered. For all those people who say that Ronald Reagan was an actor and look what he did, Fred Thompson is no Ronald Reagan. I may despise what the Reagan Administration did to this country but he was a committed politician for a long time after he left acting. I look forward to Fred Thompson playing a district attorney in Dick Wolfe’s new series, Law and Order: Dead Careers Unit.