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Running Thoughts: Wagging Political
The pre-editing version.
This past Sunday having been the first Sunday following Karl Rove’s announcement of his impending resignation as White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Mr. Rove enjoyed prominence on my usual political talkshows, whether as guest or as topic. What was a discourse common to both David Gregory on Meet the Press and John McLaughlin on The McLaughlin Group was the question as to whether Mr. Rove was engaging in one last bit of press-related political puppetry as he went. Meanwhile, over at The Daily Show this Wednesday night, John Stewart was asking Illinois Senator Barack Obama about his reactions to the press’ own manipulations of the words of his campaign. Has the media reached a new bit of meta-realization, I wonder, or is this level of operation old hat (pre-dating the very word, even)?
Mr. Gregory, filling in for Meet’s usual host Tim Russert, questioned Mr. Rove regarding an interview he gave on Rush Limbaugh’s radio program. Mr. Rove had called Senator Hillary Clinton a flawed candidate, asserting that she was the Democratic front-runner but that her negative polling was unprecedented among potential presidential candidates. He explained to Mr. Gregory that what he’d been getting at was that the public seemed to have made up its mind about Mrs. Clinton, as she has been in the public eye for “16 or 17 years”, and that, in that particular scenario, “it’s hard to change opinions”. Mr. Gregory then asked him outright if he, and the Republican party as a whole, were attempting to set Senator Clinton up as the Democratic candidate. In fact, he asked him twice. “Is there a desire by the Republican Party for her to be the nominee? Is that who you want to run against?” He thus effectively gave Mr. Rove a platform upon which to enumerate Senator Clinton’s flaws as a candidate. Yet when Mr. Gregory asked Mr. Rove, “Has Barack Obama measured up to the hype surrounding him?”, Mr. Rove deflected, demurring, “you’ve got an excellent panel coming on, I think, later in the program. Why don’t you ask them this question.”
Who won in this exchange, if there was a way to win? Did Karl Rove set out to discuss Hillary Clinton’s flaws, while setting her up against Barack Obama? Did David Gregory play right into his hands? Or was Mr. Gregory’s assumptions correct, that Mr. Rove actually wanted Mrs. Clinton as the Democratic candidate, possibly because he believed that she could be beaten in the general election?
Meanwhile, over on The McLaughlin Group, host John McLaughlin asked Eleanor Clift, Newsweek Magazine’s Contributing Editor, a question along similar lines: “Does Rove's attack on Hillary benefit her more than it hurts her?” Ms. Clift replied by calling Mr. Rove “a Svengali [for Senator Clinton] to campaign against,” adding, “ . . . she's disciplined. She's on message. She rolls over the opposition.”
So as the media goes in circles discussing earlier happenings within the media, what effect does the attention have on the ultimate subjects? Is there truly no such thing as bad publicity? Does the opportunity to fight back make for a stronger candidate? Who is really pulling the strings here?
What about Barack Obama as puppetmaster? John Stewart provided the Senator with several newspaper clippings in which his words, or his wife’s, had been twisted or taken out of context. He asked the Senator if he felt that he was stuck in particular “narrative[s]”, specifically ones for which, “no matter what you do, because it’s easily categorized, the media and everyone else will just slip whatever happens into those two narratives.” Senator Obama, presenting the proverbial breath of fresh air, replied that one of his staffers had told him to remember that, in reference to the campaign debates, they weren’t “on the level. I think that really strikes to what people are frustrated with in politics, is that so much of what we talk about, so much of what we say, it’s not true, people know it’s not true, all the insiders understand that we’re just game playing, and in the meantime you’ve got these hugely serious problems which are true.”
The Senator later was given the chance to espouse that his campaign tactics were to “break down these narratives, and get to the heart of the question.” He went on to explain what he thought the public meant when they questioned his credentials as a Junior Senator, “When people talk about experience, what they want to know is does he have good judgment. How do we actually get stuff done, what’s common sense.” The show had gone from a line of questioning regarding the media’s effect on a candidate, to the candidate using the media’s doubts about his background to publish his strengths.
So I ask you, in these scenarios, media vs. candidates, which side, exactly, is the tail that is wagging the dog?
