(no subject)
The meteoric fall of Sarah Palin combined with the fact that I start government classes again today (after three years of law - wish me luck!) have me thinking about the reasons this went awry. After all, on the surface she should be everything the public would want to "balance" McCain: she's young, family-oriented, has executive experience, and is a woman which opens the door to claims that the Republicans are diverse - or at least that they embrace the women within the party while the Democrats shun theirs.
And yet from the moment she was announced, there was the sort of backlash that is normally only focused at Michael Moore or some other "fringe" figure with similarly-extreme political views.
So what happened?
McCain Screwed Up
I don't mean in selecting her, I mean in the vetting process. If presented correctly, a politician can take the fatal and turn it into a superficial wound that heals in a few news cycles. Trooper-Gate was hardly a concealed scandal, and she certainly wouldn't be the only Republican in the world (or even in this election) with potential abuses of power around the edges of their candidacy. Where McCain's team screwed up was in not getting the talking points out first and leaving the media to "discover" the not-really-hidden issue on their own. (See part 2 below.) A simple "full disclosure" press release, if done correctly, could have disposed of the matter quickly and effectively, much in the same way McCain dismissed the allegations of lobbyist-favouritism last spring. By leaving it up to the press to "uncover", his team inevitably extended the length of the cycle by allowing the media to continue to poke and prod at officials in Alaska to try to get the whole story.
The second - and at this point, more noteworthy - way his team screwed up was by selecting a "family values" Republican with a pregnant teenage daughter. McCain, long seen as "too centrist" for the fundamentalist evangelicals that largely control the GOP, needed to secure the turnout of the Christian voters on election day with his VP choice. At first glance, Palin would have fit the bill, but there's no good way to back out of having a pregnant unwed teenage daughter with your religious credentials intact. For one thing, it dashes the notion that teaching a child to abstain from sex doesn't guarantee sex won't be had. For another, it gives Democrats a perfect chance to jump up and down on the fact that someone this age, in this situation, should probably not be having a child but was not given a choice by virtue of her family's visibility. Originally I believed the McCain team had simply not done enough opposition research during vetting (after all, it took less than two days for the press to uncover the pregnancy, and they haven't been exceptionally bright or investigative for the last eight years or so), but after hearing McCain say that he knew of the pregnancy before selecting her, I think his people were just genuinely stupid enough to believe that it would stay hidden.
Again, this could have been a Mary Cheney situation, the perfect chance to frame the issue that, while she was dismayed that her daughter had gone against the family's moral teachings, she still loves her daughter and they will get through this together as a family to ensure the best, healthiest future for everyone involved. Instead, McCain ends up looking like he got caught with his pants down.
You picked WHO?
Voter sticker shock would be fading by now.
After all, according to a recent Gallup poll, something like 1/4 of all voters have never heard of Joe Biden (which is just sad, but that's another story entirely). Not having heard of Sarah Palin would be nothing new, really.
But McCain made a crucial error: he shocked the pundits.
After weeks and months of speculation, the result of which was most talking-heads agreeing it needed to be Romney or possibly Huckabee, he selected an unknown from Alaska. They had no stock footage to use as B-Roll, no soundbites to use against her, and very few comments on the record. The extent of the information their poor researchers dug up was her Wikipedia entry (written by a cool guy and all, but he's not CNN's usual source). They were caught off-guard, unprepared, and didn't have a good response except "Who is she?" and "We're shocked!"
Didn't go over so well.
Now, this is hardly the first time a virtual unknown has been selected - hell, even Geraldine Ferraro wasn't particularly known. But she wasn't nominated in an era of 24-hour cable news, with four months of speculation ahead of her nomination, so I suppose that helped her case.
And then she (and Mondale) lost in a landslide, but considering it was against Reagan I'm figuring it's not her fault.
Hey, You, Get Off'a My Newscycle!
This is certainly not the first time that a virtual unknown has been thrust into the political spotlight by being selected for the position that's not worth a pitcher of warm spit. However, the timing of the announcement - while theoretically genius - appears to have backfired as the media forces itself to cover Palin-gate instead of media darling Obama.
You didn't see this kind of backlash against Dick Cheney at the Republican convention, is all I'm saying, and Al Gore didn't exactly give a barnburner of a speech.
If you watched the political coverage last week, and watch it again this week, the differences are so stark you almost have to laugh at it. For the Dems, it was all coverage! all the time! Would Hilary endorse him? Would Bill? Would Joe Biden make a good speech? What would Obama say in front of 79,000 live people and an audience bigger than the Olympic Opening Ceremonies and American Idol finale? Sure, there were hurricanes going on, but meh - it's the season for that. There were protesters, but they were peaceful, so the only thing we really got riled up about was the fact that Fox News is going to get fined for the group chanting "Fuck Fox News!" live and unbleeped.
This week it's like pulling teeth.
They cover a hurricane that killed a grand total of 8 people (because it was about the strength of the so-called "hurricane" that swept through DC my first year down here. It was a windy rainstorm.). They cover the counter-convention for hours at a time, speaker after anarchist speaker. They show Code Pink playing "ring around the rosie". Hell, right now they're showing the president of Americans for Tax Reform speaking in what I can only describe as an angry monotone to an auditorium 1/4-full of bored teens in shorts. When I tuned in last night to see what the speeches were like, not a single news channel showed Cindy McCain and Laura Bush asking for charitable donations. Instead they showed a closeted gay anchor in a raincoat, an irate pundit indignant at the implication that George Bush still doesn't care about black people, and a handful of debates about whether pregnant teenagers were better than teenagers getting abortions.
If they're going to have to cover Republicans - and they wish they wouldn't have to, but if they really really must - they're at least going to make it sexy.
There are plenty of things they could cover if they wanted to. Four years ago McCain admonished Falwell and Robertson and put them in the same category as Michael Moore and Jesse Jackson - what will he say to the Christian Right at this convention? What will Palin say in her first address to the nation? Will McCain separate himself from the Bush legacy of failure in an effort to garner support from the lukewarm republicans who would vote for a quasi-muslim democrat rather than risk four more years of the same? Or will he continue the attachment to the Bush agenda that Obama has so successfully painted him with, in order to try to gain support from the more extreme republican base in the hopes that they turn out on election day?
But all of those things would require giving credence to the current administration, to restate their view, to acknowledge that the goofball is still in office. And who wouldn't rather stand around in a rainstorm than do that?
And yet from the moment she was announced, there was the sort of backlash that is normally only focused at Michael Moore or some other "fringe" figure with similarly-extreme political views.
So what happened?
McCain Screwed Up
I don't mean in selecting her, I mean in the vetting process. If presented correctly, a politician can take the fatal and turn it into a superficial wound that heals in a few news cycles. Trooper-Gate was hardly a concealed scandal, and she certainly wouldn't be the only Republican in the world (or even in this election) with potential abuses of power around the edges of their candidacy. Where McCain's team screwed up was in not getting the talking points out first and leaving the media to "discover" the not-really-hidden issue on their own. (See part 2 below.) A simple "full disclosure" press release, if done correctly, could have disposed of the matter quickly and effectively, much in the same way McCain dismissed the allegations of lobbyist-favouritism last spring. By leaving it up to the press to "uncover", his team inevitably extended the length of the cycle by allowing the media to continue to poke and prod at officials in Alaska to try to get the whole story.
The second - and at this point, more noteworthy - way his team screwed up was by selecting a "family values" Republican with a pregnant teenage daughter. McCain, long seen as "too centrist" for the fundamentalist evangelicals that largely control the GOP, needed to secure the turnout of the Christian voters on election day with his VP choice. At first glance, Palin would have fit the bill, but there's no good way to back out of having a pregnant unwed teenage daughter with your religious credentials intact. For one thing, it dashes the notion that teaching a child to abstain from sex doesn't guarantee sex won't be had. For another, it gives Democrats a perfect chance to jump up and down on the fact that someone this age, in this situation, should probably not be having a child but was not given a choice by virtue of her family's visibility. Originally I believed the McCain team had simply not done enough opposition research during vetting (after all, it took less than two days for the press to uncover the pregnancy, and they haven't been exceptionally bright or investigative for the last eight years or so), but after hearing McCain say that he knew of the pregnancy before selecting her, I think his people were just genuinely stupid enough to believe that it would stay hidden.
Again, this could have been a Mary Cheney situation, the perfect chance to frame the issue that, while she was dismayed that her daughter had gone against the family's moral teachings, she still loves her daughter and they will get through this together as a family to ensure the best, healthiest future for everyone involved. Instead, McCain ends up looking like he got caught with his pants down.
You picked WHO?
Voter sticker shock would be fading by now.
After all, according to a recent Gallup poll, something like 1/4 of all voters have never heard of Joe Biden (which is just sad, but that's another story entirely). Not having heard of Sarah Palin would be nothing new, really.
But McCain made a crucial error: he shocked the pundits.
After weeks and months of speculation, the result of which was most talking-heads agreeing it needed to be Romney or possibly Huckabee, he selected an unknown from Alaska. They had no stock footage to use as B-Roll, no soundbites to use against her, and very few comments on the record. The extent of the information their poor researchers dug up was her Wikipedia entry (written by a cool guy and all, but he's not CNN's usual source). They were caught off-guard, unprepared, and didn't have a good response except "Who is she?" and "We're shocked!"
Didn't go over so well.
Now, this is hardly the first time a virtual unknown has been selected - hell, even Geraldine Ferraro wasn't particularly known. But she wasn't nominated in an era of 24-hour cable news, with four months of speculation ahead of her nomination, so I suppose that helped her case.
And then she (and Mondale) lost in a landslide, but considering it was against Reagan I'm figuring it's not her fault.
Hey, You, Get Off'a My Newscycle!
This is certainly not the first time that a virtual unknown has been thrust into the political spotlight by being selected for the position that's not worth a pitcher of warm spit. However, the timing of the announcement - while theoretically genius - appears to have backfired as the media forces itself to cover Palin-gate instead of media darling Obama.
You didn't see this kind of backlash against Dick Cheney at the Republican convention, is all I'm saying, and Al Gore didn't exactly give a barnburner of a speech.
If you watched the political coverage last week, and watch it again this week, the differences are so stark you almost have to laugh at it. For the Dems, it was all coverage! all the time! Would Hilary endorse him? Would Bill? Would Joe Biden make a good speech? What would Obama say in front of 79,000 live people and an audience bigger than the Olympic Opening Ceremonies and American Idol finale? Sure, there were hurricanes going on, but meh - it's the season for that. There were protesters, but they were peaceful, so the only thing we really got riled up about was the fact that Fox News is going to get fined for the group chanting "Fuck Fox News!" live and unbleeped.
This week it's like pulling teeth.
They cover a hurricane that killed a grand total of 8 people (because it was about the strength of the so-called "hurricane" that swept through DC my first year down here. It was a windy rainstorm.). They cover the counter-convention for hours at a time, speaker after anarchist speaker. They show Code Pink playing "ring around the rosie". Hell, right now they're showing the president of Americans for Tax Reform speaking in what I can only describe as an angry monotone to an auditorium 1/4-full of bored teens in shorts. When I tuned in last night to see what the speeches were like, not a single news channel showed Cindy McCain and Laura Bush asking for charitable donations. Instead they showed a closeted gay anchor in a raincoat, an irate pundit indignant at the implication that George Bush still doesn't care about black people, and a handful of debates about whether pregnant teenagers were better than teenagers getting abortions.
If they're going to have to cover Republicans - and they wish they wouldn't have to, but if they really really must - they're at least going to make it sexy.
There are plenty of things they could cover if they wanted to. Four years ago McCain admonished Falwell and Robertson and put them in the same category as Michael Moore and Jesse Jackson - what will he say to the Christian Right at this convention? What will Palin say in her first address to the nation? Will McCain separate himself from the Bush legacy of failure in an effort to garner support from the lukewarm republicans who would vote for a quasi-muslim democrat rather than risk four more years of the same? Or will he continue the attachment to the Bush agenda that Obama has so successfully painted him with, in order to try to gain support from the more extreme republican base in the hopes that they turn out on election day?
But all of those things would require giving credence to the current administration, to restate their view, to acknowledge that the goofball is still in office. And who wouldn't rather stand around in a rainstorm than do that?