Networks Fall Over Themselves Getting it Wrong

 by George Shadroui  

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Elections are about issues and about serious solutions to the problems our nation confronts, but the networks have focused almost exclusively on speculating about who is up, who is down, who is out, who is in.

Give Barack Obama this much: we do need a change.
 
Let's start with the way the networks cover the elections, which over the past week or two has been so abominably bad that it is embarrassing and infuriating to millions of Americans who care about the future of our nation.
 
Elections are about issues and about serious solutions to the problems our nation confronts, but the networks have focused almost exclusively on speculating about who is up, who is down, who is out, who is in.
 
And so Obama and Huckabee win a small caucus in Iowa and instantly all the pundits are predicting the demise of Romney, the fall of Thompson, the end of Hillary. Did anyone really believe it? And yet for four days, all we saw was Huckabee and Obama and a resurgent McCain. Why McCain was resurgent for coming in fourth in Iowa is anyone's guess. My guess is the media wanted him to resurge because they like him.
 
Same thing in New Hampshire. McCain wins, Romney is finished. Hillary wins (which was no surprise to me), but suddenly she is the comeback kid. After all, she only has the entire power structure of the Democratic Party behind her, so of course she had to be considered an underdog.
 
Meanwhile, Huckabee finishes a distant third and he gets 10 to 15 minutes of air time to discuss his campaign as the media continues to treat him as a rising star in the Republican primary. Meanwhile, Giuliani and Thompson, who have consistently done better in national polls, are nowhere to be seen or found.
 
Fox News and MSNBC are equally guilty in trying to instantly handicap every movement in the campaign. Here's a thought: how about letting the voters decide the election. Or another crazy idea: how about covering the election instead of trying to determine the outcome before the American people have spoken?
 
I don't agree with John Edwards on a lot of issues, but good for him for staying in the race. The man has a message and people have a right to decide whether they agree with his Mario Cuomo view of America. Good for Romney for saying he will go the distance — the notion that a couple of small states should eliminate him or anyone else from consideration is absurd on its face, yet many pundits are making the claim.
 
Some of us remember Bill Clinton in 1992, who lost so many primaries we lost count. Some of us even remember 1976, when a dead and dormant Ronald Reagan was able to reenergize his campaign with a win in North Carolina; he wound up barely losing to incumbent Gerald Ford. Four years later, he was elected.
 
The endless chattering about the horserace is troublesome for another reason. Because the networks won't talk about serious issues, about where the candidates stand on those issues and whether their positions really make sense, because they will not invite experts to talk about those issues in a thoughtful and sustained way, Americans who turn to television for their news are not getting informed; they are simply being misled (repeatedly) about what each primary means.
 
Maybe Fred Thompson and John Edwards are done, but they are smart men and good politicians and they should go the distance if they can muster the will. Frankly, I was sorry to see Joe Biden do so poorly on the Democratic side, for he made more sense on foreign policy than most of the Democrats combined.
 
One guy who has seen this charade for what it is and spoken out emphatically is Rush Limbaugh. He has said, rightly, that the GOP race is wide open and that Hillary was far from dead, and that the media, as usual, was getting it wrong.
 
So hunker down. This campaign has a hard month to go and anything can still happen. There are a lot of questions to ask and a lot of positions to be dissected. Remember Reagan. It ain't over until it's over or until Rush Limbaugh sings.

Elections & Political Parties

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