Citizen Brand

Horse Race Journalism

As the famous line goes - "We have seen the enemy and it is us."  We want to believe that we are paying attention to presidential candidates and their stands on issues so we can make informed and competent decisions in the voting booth.  But we can't help ourselves.  We get sucked into the "horse race."  Who is ahead in the Zogby Poll today; the New York Times poll tomorrow; and, the Nickelodeon/ESPN/O Magazine Poll due out tomorrow.....

As Super Duper Tuesday approaches, the latest national polling shows Barack Obama surging and closing the gap on Hillary Clinton.  It shows John McCain building a lead over Mitt Romney and it seems clear that Mike Huckabee is submarining Romney by splitting the "conservative" vote.

Polls are instructive.  They do give us a sense of where things stand at that moment in time.  But then we need a new poll right away to keep the buzz going....is Obama still surging?  Is McCain really starting to pull away from Romney or will the next poll tell us something different.

And so it goes.  The media serves as the drug dealer on the corner feeding the horse race frenzy.  Read this piece by Jay Rosen over at Pressthink to go a little deeper on this subject.  As you will see in Jay's piece, the media hasn't faired so well in their horse race predictions this year which has further contributed to this once or twice in a century electoral experience.  Of course the media's lack of success has also caused us no shortage of roller coaster rides as they attempt to fix their errors.  Jay points to one ray of sunshine in this exchange between Tom Brokaw and Chris Matthews on the night of the New Hampshire Primary:

"“BROKAW: You know what I think we’re going to have to do?

“MATTHEWS: Yes sir?

“BROKAW: Wait for the voters to make their judgment.

“MATTHEWS: Well what do we do then in the days before the ballot? We must stay home, I guess.”

Matthews was being the realist: Without who’s-going-to-win, “we” might as well stay home. Brokaw (now long retired as the face of the NBC brand) gave him an apt warning in response: “The people out there are going to begin to make judgments about us if we don’t begin to temper that temptation to constantly try to get ahead of what the voters are deciding.” But he was speaking as if the media had a mind and could shift course."

A novel concept indeed.....let the voters vote and then report on how they voted.

Bush-Clinton Fatigue

Hillary Clinton had a big applause line in the Hollywood Showdown starring her and Barack Obama at the Kodak Theater on Thursday night.  She was asked how she could possibly represent change when the same two families (hers and the Bushes) have been in The White House since 1980.  Her response, while clever, points out why Republicans are praying every night that she is the Democratic nominee.

I paraphrase a bit, but in essence she said it took a Clinton to clean up the first Bush presidency and it would take another Clinton to clean up the second Bush presidency.  It was met with the biggest applause of the night from the glitterati of Hollywood in the audience.  Heck, CNN even went to commercial over the applause as if they had just handed out the Oscar for Best Actress!

Can you imagine what we would think if two families in the United Kingdom, or France, or Germany, or Japan had basically shared executive power for 28 years straight?  Interesting to think about it from that perspective isn't it?

Super Duper Tuesday is coming and it may be the day that the November ballot for President begins to take final form.  There is tremendous interest in this election as there should be.  We all have different motivations for making decisions when we vote.  I have to believe that whether it is conscious or unconscious, there is an underlying feeling in many voters that 28 years of the Bushes and the Clintons is enough.  We will see on Tuesday if I'm right.

An important postscript - it was amazing to see a woman and an African-American sitting side by side knowing that one of them can be elected President of the United States later this year.

 

Not just any old endorsement

Today's New York Times had a special column on its Op-Ed page. Caroline Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama for President. Her piece speaks for itself.

"A President Like My Father

OVER the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama.

My reasons are patriotic, political and personal, and the three are intertwined. All my life, people have told me that my father changed their lives, that they got involved in public service or politics because he asked them to. And the generation he inspired has passed that spirit on to its children. I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was president, yet who ask me how to live out his ideals.

Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.

We have that kind of opportunity with Senator Obama. It isn’t that the other candidates are not experienced or knowledgeable. But this year, that may not be enough. We need a change in the leadership of this country — just as we did in 1960.

Most of us would prefer to base our voting decision on policy differences. However, the candidates’ goals are similar. They have all laid out detailed plans on everything from strengthening our middle class to investing in early childhood education. So qualities of leadership, character and judgment play a larger role than usual.

Senator Obama has demonstrated these qualities throughout his more than two decades of public service, not just in the United States Senate but in Illinois, where he helped turn around struggling communities, taught constitutional law and was an elected state official for eight years. And Senator Obama is showing the same qualities today. He has built a movement that is changing the face of politics in this country, and he has demonstrated a special gift for inspiring young people — known for a willingness to volunteer, but an aversion to politics — to become engaged in the political process.

I have spent the past five years working in the New York City public schools and have three teenage children of my own. There is a generation coming of age that is hopeful, hard-working, innovative and imaginative. But too many of them are also hopeless, defeated and disengaged. As parents, we have a responsibility to help our children to believe in themselves and in their power to shape their future. Senator Obama is inspiring my children, my parents’ grandchildren, with that sense of possibility.

Senator Obama is running a dignified and honest campaign. He has spoken eloquently about the role of faith in his life, and opened a window into his character in two compelling books. And when it comes to judgment, Barack Obama made the right call on the most important issue of our time by opposing the war in Iraq from the beginning.

I want a president who understands that his responsibility is to articulate a vision and encourage others to achieve it; who holds himself, and those around him, to the highest ethical standards; who appeals to the hopes of those who still believe in the American Dream, and those around the world who still believe in the American ideal; and who can lift our spirits, and make us believe again that our country needs every one of us to get involved.

I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans."

Caroline Kennedy is the author of “A Patriot’s Handbook: Songs, Poems, Stories and Speeches Celebrating the Land We Love.”

The nerve of those voters

All of us here at Citizen Brand - that would be me I guess - have to be willing to admit when we may have gotten ahead of ourselves.  But wait, I don't think we did.  Barack Obama still looks like the real thing from this vantage point.  So what exactly happened in New Hampshire the other night?

What happened was nothing more than what had been predicted to happen for a few weeks - Hillary Clinton would win New Hampshire and so likely would John McCain.  And that is exactly what happened when the voters spoke.  It is what happened between Iowa and New Hampshire among the media; the pollsters; the pundits; and the consultants that needs to be questioned. 

Think about it.  Two of the least ethnically diverse and not exactly wildly liberal states in the nation have said an African American or a woman should be President of the United States.  Forget the horse race the media foists on us every four years and focus on what has happened in the first two official contests of the 2008 Presidential election.  On the other side of the aisle, Republican voters have given the nod to a true evangelical and the straight talking, shoot from the hip, Vietnam POW.  Obama, Clinton, Huckabee and McCain are not the kind of candidates we are used to seeing in the race for the White House.

Lost in the shuffle right now are the two guys who we have been conditioned to seeing in the race - John Edwards and Mitt Romney.  Two white guys with good hair and good talking points.  Either one of these guys might make a good president.  But after seven years of the gang that can't shoot straight with us, the USA is ready for a big change.  And the differences on display for us with the Obama, Clinton, Huckabee and McCain variety hour have a little something for everyone.

Thus we have seen a different winner in every contest thus far.  (Wyoming GOP went for Romney by the way.)  Which brings us back to those pesky voters.  In 2008, I believe the more the media and the pollsters try to tell us what they think is going to happen, the less likely it is to happen.  If New Hampshire taught us anything, it may have taught us to wait for the votes to be counted and then see who the winners will be.

Voters are on to the exit pollsters.  After waiting 45 minutes to cast a secret ballot, the last thing any right thinking person should do is tell a complete stranger how they voted and why.  Let 2008 be the death of the exit polls.  Good riddance.

On to Nevada, South Carolina and 20 or so other states by February 5.  This is fun.  And it is important.

Change trumps "experience"

Iowa has spoken.

19 years of Bush, Clinton and Bush have made Americans weary.  More importantly, it has made Americans ready for an honest change.  Iowans took a long and serious look at the dozen or so candidates over the past year and delivered a message to the rest of us tonight.  We need something much different than what we have had for the past two decades.  Iowa delivered a clear message that Democratic Senator Barack Obama of Illinois is the person who can deliver the change we need.

Iowa Republicans delivered a message of their own.  Upstart Mike Huckabee, former Governor of Arkansas, won their straw vote turning back a $9 million dollar ad campaign by Mitt Romney, another former Governor, and put a split into the Republicans that they will need more than a few primaries to sort out.  Even Huckabee's Iowa victory says something about the mood for something different than the status quo of the Bush-Clinton stranglehold on the White House since 1988.

Iowa is only the beginning.  But if we listen closely to the message from the heartland tonight, there is a vision of an America that the days of division and fear need to end.  It is a vision where citizens say to their leaders that you solve the long standing problems we have or we as citizens will start to find people who will.  It is a nation of people who now decide where they will get their information and not wait for someone to spoon feed them only the news someone else thinks is important. 

Now, the question is, will we do more than listen?  Will we bring this desire for change to reality?  I think we will and I think Americans are ready.  If you missed Senator Obama's victory speech in Iowa, take time to listen and judge for yourself whether he is exactly what America needs at this point in our history.

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Iowa Kicks Us Off

That quiet we hear right now is truly the calm before the storm.  As I write this, the good people of Iowa are a few short hours away from beginning to shape the presidential election of 2008.  This is the first election since 1952 - Eisenhower vs. Stevenson - where no incumbent president or vice president is going to be on the ballot.  Since 1980, either a Bush or a Clinton have been in one of the top two spots - obviously that could continue this year.  And the diversity of candidates and ideas appears to be as broad as it has ever been in a presidential race.  This is an important election.

Change seems to be in the air.  Iowa will help to either validate that or quash it depending on the outcomes.  There is a long way to go after Iowa, but the quirky caucus system used by that state has served as a good indicator of who the nominees of both parties will be come November.  And as the final push begins to get people out to the caucus sites, the nation's attention turns to the heartland of the nation to see what the Iowans have to tell us.

Record numbers are predicted which is a great indicator of the interest we all have in this important election.  Regardless of your political affiliation, a big majority of this country is ready for new leadership that is more hopeful, more positive and ready to solve real problems.

So let's see what Iowa has to say this time.  Should be an interesting evening.

What happened to Lincoln and FDR?

Since we have already had most of this year to vet the candidates running to become the next President of the United States, maybe we should just go ahead and have the election now and be done with it.  Of course, that would require us to actually be ready to put one of the vast herd of senators, governors, former governors, former mayors and at least one actor and a former first lady into the White House.  And that is not something we seem ready to do yet.  Good thing we have another year.  I'm sure another year of canned sound bites and made for TV debates will clear everything up.

Think I'm sounding a bit cynical?  Guess I have to plead a little guilty.  But I wonder if we are all going to experience presidential election burnout because we do have almost a full year left before we cast votes.  Makes me wonder how far off base the story in Thursday's The Onion might be.......

"Americans Announce They're Dropping Out of the Presidential Race"