Media Criticism

National Public Radio held a Democratic radio debate several weeks ago that was unheralded in recent election cycles. NPR bucked the trend of television primacy by allowing all of the Democratic candidates a chance to speak about the issues without bells and whistles. It is no shock that NPR had to cancel a planned Republican debate set for January 16th in South Carolina due to a lack of candidate interest. Republicans feel that the NPR crowd is not their target audience and 90 minutes on stations at the bottom of the dial is a waste of time.

I think both sides are at fault here for the failure to get a public radio debate going. The Republicans are short-sighted in their ambivalence to speaking to the nation via NPR. The idea that public radio is the exclusive purview of liberals and academics is unfair to libertarians, conservatives and independents who want to hear all sides of American politics. Campaign managers should be leaping at the opportunity to get free advertising for their campaign in media markets throughout the United States. The failure of candidates to clear out 90 minutes for a simple debate shows the lack of dynamism in the Republican Party.

National Public Radio does not leave unscathed when assigning blame for the failed debate. NPR editors should have taken the example of previous debates where candidates did not attend by pressing on with the people who were interested in speaking about major issues. The debate should have taken place closer to the January 19th primary to promote a sense of urgency for Republican campaigns. In the end, the Republican Party and NPR are missing out on an opportunity to expand political dialogue beyond current stereotypes of public radio.

Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado was running for president. No, seriously, he was running for the Republican nomination for the past few months. The man who wants to completely shut down American borders and hinged his entire career on immigration issues was trying to win the nomination for the Republican Party in a year when Democrats seem to have an edge. I say he “was� because Tom Tancredo dropped out of the race today to avoid the embarrassment of finishing behind Alan Keyes in the Iowa caucuses.

In the same way that fellow conservative Sam Brownback left the race a few months back, Tom Tancredo went out quietly. You may not have known about Tancredo’s exit if you weren’t watching CNN at the right time. Tancredo immediately endorsed Mitt Romney for the nomination which was a sign that Romney’s rhetoric on an American First immigration policy was working on one sucker. Unlike Sam Brownback, Tom Tancredo had a tangible effect on the Republicans.

The YouTube debate and forums featuring Tom Tancredo focused in part on stemming the tide of illegal immigration. Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney have been positioning themselves on the right along with Tancredo during the fall to capture the true-blue conservative vote. Tancredo’s ridiculous campaign commercial featuring a hooded terrorist entering a building may have been questionable in its content but brought out discussion of terrorism as an issue of immigration. Candidates will continue to “out-Tancredo� Tancredo through the primary season to appeal to the primary constituency.

Will Tancredo’s endorsement mean anything for Romney? I think endorsements in general are questionable in their influence. John McCain has been endorsed by the Des Moines Register and Joe Lieberman with his polling numbers behind Romney, Huckabee and Giuliani. Tom Tancredo is not a heavy hitter and his influence in Colorado politics probably won’t help the Republican nominee beyond his district. Tom Tancredo’s candidacy will become a deep footnote in this historic election left for political nerds and historians to analyze in the recesses of a university library.

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.

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney gave a much anticipated speech on Thursday regarding the role of his Mormonism in a potential Romney White House. Romney gave a well-orchestrated speech that did not delve into the specifics of the Mormon belief system while trying to reassure voters that his beliefs would not influence his decision making. There are a number of reasons his speech on Thursday will be totally irrelevant in the long run, not the least of which is the fact that Romney did not speak about his actual beliefs in any detail.

The fact that Romney did not go into the specifics of Mormonism is not as troubling as Romney’s judgment about his role in the Republican Party. Romney is not an overwhelming favorite nor is he a lone front runner in the primary season. The fact that Mitt Romney felt the need to give this speech presumes a stature in the Republican Party that does not necessarily exist. This speech will be long forgotten if Romney fails in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Romney’s speech did not reveal anything to the American public that they could not have gathered from the primary debates. Romney peppered in references about fighting terrorism and other right wing values that had nothing to do with Mormonism. This speech was just another stump speech without redeeming value for Romney’s campaign, the future of the Republican Party and the status of religion in politics. I only hope that Iowans and Granite State voters are smart enough not to be swayed by the media hype around this speech.

Romney’s JFK moment was just another campaign appearance in a bloated, money-driven campaign by a man who flip-flops more than anyone in politics. I don’t care how significant the media says this speech was; the election coverage hypes everything out of proportion to fill time until actual votes are cast.

I am clearly behind the ball in responding to Wednesday’s CNN/YouTube debate with the Republican presidential candidates. I spent Thursday and Friday taking care of other topics that arose and I felt that a few full viewings of the debates would clear my head. I watched the debate twice in its entirety and feel that this endeavor may have taken a few years off my life. I am just hoping those are the bad years at the end of my life.

CNN got hundreds of YouTube questions and could have chosen a diverse range of topics to cover. The good people at CNN chose to pick questions asking how many guns the candidates own and addressing specific questions to candidates (I am thinking of the Mike Huckabee question about the death penalty). The most egregious error by CNN was focusing almost a third of the time on questions of immigration. My problem is not over the debate on immigration as the issue of guest workers and border security are worthwhile questions. I object to the Tancredo effort on each of the candidates and the tone of the conversation.

My problem with the YouTube debates for both parties is that technology is thought to equal full democracy. In the end, however, a major media outlet like CNN was able to reign in full democracy with its usually cock-eyed filter. Anderson Cooper spoke at the top of the debate about which YouTube videos would NOT be featured in the debate. CNN is guilty of vetting questions in the same way that candidates are guilty of packing their public events with supporters. Accessible democracy through technology should not mean an effort at purposeful mediocrity.

The winners and losers in the CNN/YouTube debate are pretty clear. Media darling Mike Huckabee was thoughtful in his answers in the midst of chaos and CNN got the ratings it so clearly wanted from this debacle. The losers were the American public and supposed frontrunners Rudy Giuliani Mitt Romney. I cannot believe I spent this long thinking about this debate but it is part of my job as a media critic.

I saw this piece in the New York Times Caucus section this afternoon that indicated that Ron Paul won a straw poll among New York Republicans. Since there hasn’t been a strong Republican since Thomas Dewey was governor in the 1940s, I thought it was strange that the Republican Party even met in the Empire State. As I suspected, Ron Paul’s victory in New York was relatively hollow as a total of 60 Republicans narrowly placed Paul ahead of second place Rudy Giuliani.

I have railed against the use of straw polls in past articles especially when Mitt Romney funded his victory at the venerable Iowa straw poll this summer. Ron Paul’s supporters have been incredibly active on the Internet as well as street corners of city nationwide promoting their candidate. This grassroots campaign should be successful in straw polls in restaurants, convention centers and homes throughout the United States. I know that Ron Paul has been successful in raising a substantial amount of money as well as garnering the support of independents and Democrats but an exhaustive list of straw poll victories means nothing. Paul better win in January 2008 (or December 2007, depending on changes in primary laws) if he has any hope of turning potential into reality.

Straw polls are like any other poll: flawed and misleading. Hillary Clinton’s bloated lead in national polls, Giuliani’s lead in national polls for Republican polls and the diffuse nature of American politics heading into 2008 make statistical analysis impossible. Howard Dean was leading heading into the Iowa caucuses in 2004 and a smear campaign by John Kerry, Richard Gephardt and DLC Democrats helped derail his populist campaign. If Ron Paul gets any more support before the caucuses, expect Mitt Romney to use some of his money to find faults in Paul’s platform. I say enough with straw polls and lets leave the polls to political pundits that need to fill 24 hours of cable news space.

While the Democrats and Republicans focus their attention on Iowa and New Hampshire, both national parties are contending with issues of scheduling. The Democratic Party seems to be victimizing itself at every turn by adhering to the ridiculous legal mandates within Iowa and New Hampshire state law dictating their place in the primary process. DNC Chairman Howard Dean and others have indicated that Florida and other states will not have any delegates at the national convention next summer if they hold their primary ahead of the party’s schedule. Candidates are signing pledges not to campaign in Florida, Michigan and other states in order to provide legitimacy to their primary efforts.

Howard Dean may think that he is establishing discipline but the DNC and the RNC aren’t legal bodies. Political parties are organizational tools established at the will of the people to help define (or divide, depending on your perspective) political thought. If states want to pass laws that move their primaries to Christmas, the Democrats need to recognize the legal reality. I am not a fan of Iowa and New Hampshire acting as the initial political determinants for the presidential campaign but their legislatures are autonomous from the ideas of political parties.

The Democrats will suffer greatly if they persist with the policy of keeping delegates of violating states out of the convention. Democratic activists feel that 2008 is a slam dunk but the party has screwed up in the past (just look at the 2004 convention when they played patty cake with President Bush). An article in Salon today points out the frustration of activists in Florida which may lead them to sit out the presidential primaries or choose a Republican candidate in November 2008. Dean’s image as the grassroots hero, cultivated in 2004 and in his 50 state campaign of 2006, is greatly damaged by his bureaucratic overreaching.

We have too many problems in America to allow the national party committees to derail the political process. Future problems with Iran, Social Security, health care and dozens of other issues mean that the Democrats and Republicans need to allow the primary process to happen organically. If voters dislike the process, they can speak with their state legislators and vote out legislators that support an acceleration of state primaries in the next election. The DNC and RNC need to begin planning their conventions and laminating passes and allow politics to play out amongst the states.

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 Christian right in the tangible form of the Council for National Policy met over the weekend to discuss the state of the conservative politics in America. Anyone that has followed the Republican presidential debates understands the quandary faced by earnest conservatives. Mitt Romney is a pretty face and loaded financially but the Democratic media machine would certainly use the “flip flop� attack on Romney in a general election (to good effect). Rudy Giuliani’s run for the presidency brings forth the pain of 9/11 and his inexperience in national politics only seems to be overmatched by his moderate leanings.

The Council for National Policy put out a statement indicating their worries about a Giuliani campaign by stating that they may find it necessary to run a third party candidate. Newt Gingrich has recently declined to run for the Republican nomination but he would seem a likely candidate given his recent attacks on partisanship. Other possibilities include Chuck Hagel from Nebraska and Ron Paul from Texas if they feel like Paul’s momentum would have an effect.

In the same way that the movement of liberal Democrats into Ralph Nader’s camp in 2000 threw the election into turmoil, a Christian right candidate outside of the Republican Party in 2008 would certainly give America a Democratic president. The Republican Party would experience a split in its ranks that it has not experienced in a long time (Reagan and Ford in 1976 or even Taft and Roosevelt in 1912 beyond that). If the Republican Party wants to maintain its conservative principles and avoid kowtowing further to the Christian right, they should stand by their principles and nominate someone to lead the Republican Party instead of the American Christian right.