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N.H. upset shows media focus should be on issues

BY ERIC ALTERMAN | Eric Alterman is a professor of English and journalism at Brooklyn College, CUNY, and the author of the forthcoming, "Why We're Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America."

January 13, 2008

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Raise your hand if you can name a single pundit/ pollster/professional pontificator who accurately predicted the results or even described the dynamic that led to Hillary Clinton's victory over Barack Obama in the New Hampshire Democratic primary on Monday. I sure can't, and given the proclivity for people in this business to pat themselves on the back for their perceived perspicacity, it's a good bet that if anyone had called the race correctly, we would have heard about it by now.

Think about it: Roughly 99 percent of the commentary that appeared in our newspapers, news weeklies, cable chat shows, Sunday morning bull fests, Internet Web sites and the like concerned who would win this primary, why they would win it, what that would mean and how it might ultimately affect the November election.

Before Obama's surprise victory in the Iowa caucuses, nearly all of this commentary assumed Clinton would win in a state that had been so crucial to her husband's presidential aspirations in 1992. All of a sudden, following Iowa, Clinton was considered finished. For much of the media, moreover, it was not a moment too soon. In a "Dewey Defeats Truman" moment, the conservative Weekly Standard splashed "The Fall of the House of Clinton" on its cover.

But it wasn't just conservatives. Virtually all of the media were eager to crown Obama as king of a new, post-racial America. Not since the media fell head over heels in love with Mr. "Straight Talk," John McCain, in 2000 - a romance that has waxed and waned but never entirely dissipated - has anyone so captured the hearts of the press.

Even in liberal circles, one sensed relief at being able to finally be done with the psychodramas associated with the Clintons, even if many of these were manufactured out of whole cloth in the fervent imaginations of Clinton-obsessed pundits like Maureen Dowd, Chris Matthews and Andrew Sullivan.

This was one instance, moreover, where the blogosphere was no help. While more and more blogs like Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo, The Huffington Post and those associated with print publications like The American Prospect's "Tapped" are investing in reporting, and doing so in ways that fill gaps left by traditional reporters, they, too, were reading the same polls and falling into the same traps.

Where was the drama in Iowa if New Hampshire voters did not change their minds following Obama's stunning upset there? If they didn't, then all Iowa represented was Iowa - and not even that - since most Iowans do not make it to the caucuses to vote. Imagine, all those millions of dollars spent, both by candidates and the reporters who followed their every word, every swallowed corn dog, dutifully noting their carefully choreographed home visits and paeans to the power of ethanol, etc., etc., and it all meant nothing at all. New Hampshireites did what they were going to do in the first place.

Today we are treated to self-serving postmortems from the same people who screwed up so royally. Hillary Clinton won New Hampshire because "she pretended to cry," says the newest New York Times columnist, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol. "Can Hillary Cry Her Way Back to White House?" asked his fellow Hillary-hating colleague on the page, Maureen Dowd.

Let's be clear. I do not claim to have been any more prescient than anyone else. I expected an Obama victory in New Hampshire as well, and was just as puzzled when it didn't materialize. But all the questioning of why the media were wrong about the result begs another question: Why is the "winner" and the pure horse-race-related reporting allowed to dominate our discussion in the first place? After all, the question of who's going to win each party's nomination is going to answer itself eventually once the voters have had their say.

In the meantime, journalists could be doing the country a favor by illuminating the issues that the candidates are debating, and giving voters both the information and the opportunities for conversation that would allow them to make their choices as intelligently as possible.

If there is a single issue that ought to dominate political coverage of this election, it is how each of the candidates is likely to address the myriad challenges that face America in the post-Bush era.

Aside from making asses of reporters and pundits when they're proven wrong, poll-driven, pure horse-race coverage does nothing to fulfill the press' vital role in a democracy for the citizens who must make it work.