Positive Reenforcement
Good story from the Associated Press:
Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Friday running mate Sarah Palin has never asked for money for lawmakers’ pet projects as Alaska governor when in fact she has sought nearly $200 million in earmarks this year.
As I’ve said before, though, the big question isn’t about whether the press writes some good individual stories. The big question is about whether the press creates a narrative. John McCain keeps saying things that aren’t true. So does his running mate. So do his campaign ads. So do his surrogates on television. When does that become a narrative? When do we get stories about how the McCain campaign has been “dogged by questions about its honesty?”
Needless to say, ThinkProgress’ coverage of this very same incident is even better than the AP. Plus, Matt Corley’s got the tell-tale video:
It just keeps on happening.
25 Responses to “Positive Reenforcement”
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September 12th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
My favorite line is the oft-repeated, “She took on the incumbent Republican Governor! Threw him out on his ass!”
Well of course she did. He was the Governor, and she wanted to be Governor. What was she supposed to do, ask him to step aside and appoint her Governor because she was better than him? What Republican primary opponent WOULDN’T run against a corrupt incumbent with a message of reform?
It’s a really dumb argument and I can’t believe nobody’s called the Republicans out on it yet.
September 12th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
I think the narrative in question is starting to be pretty well-established. Look at Charles Babington’s analysis article for the AP, starting with the line “The ‘Straight Talk Express’ has detoured into doublespeak.” It does exactly what you ask: wrap together all the recent lying into a single narrative.
September 12th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
What will be interesting is whether the View hosts will bring this up tomorrow after a night of fact-checking and public reaction. It would help if they confirm that McCain is a lying liar in front of tomorrow’s audience.
September 12th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
According to McCain Palin is going to “reform all of Washington” as to earmarks (and I assume other budget issues?). She also knows more about energy than anyone. I suppose the hint there is she’ll take care of our energy problems, being the most knowledgeable person available on the issue. She’s going to stare down the Russians, what with her extensive dealings with them while governor of Alaska. So, energy, the budget and our nemesis the Russians are all Palin’s purview and she’ll take care of all three. Why do we need McCain?
September 12th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
So, energy, the budget and our nemesis the Russians are all Palin’s purview and she’ll take care of all three. Why do we need McCain? – Steve Duncan
To be GW Bush to Palin’s Dick Cheney?
September 12th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Actually, even more important than the “narrative” (which really shouldn’t even be part of journalistic practice anyway) is the meta-narrative. There have been many narratives that are quite favorable to Democrats/liberals/secularists/et al. The problem is that such narratives themselves become the subjects of meta-narratives (themselves propagated by the media) about how the media is filled with liberal, elitists out of touch with everyday Americans.
The result is that any particular narrative which paints Democrats/liberals/et al in a favorable light is dismissed as a product of media bias (and even some narratives that you’d hardly think of as being pro-liberal are held up as evidence that the media are out-of-touch, liberal elitists and hence that all liberals are out of touch elitists just like those out of touch elitists in the so-called liberal media) while pro-GOP narratives are met with “well even the liberal media thinks the GOP is right in this case”.
What’s more important than getting the narrative right is that when the media gets the narrative wrong we have our own noise machine that attributes, e.g., the media’s failure to label McCain as dishonest or the media’s pushing pro-GOP narratives as a product of conservative bias. The media’s getting the narrative right doesn’t matter one bit if the meta-narrative is still that the media has a liberal bias.
September 12th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
I mean for God’s sake, her request (seal DNA research included) for 2009 earmarks are on HER WEB PAGE! I mean, that is McCain just flat out lying (again)…
http://www.gov.state.ak.us/omb/09_omb/budget/FFY09%20Summary%20of%20Fed%20Request.pdf
September 12th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Obama has every advantage in this race: he’s running against an extremely unpopular incumbent government and he’s running a polishe, professional campaign with courage and charisma. It should be a layup. Given that, it seems highly likely that the political press views it as their job to let McCain have a chance – covering a blowout would be relatively terrible for most newscasters. Hence slanted coverage. The Gore-as-exaggerator narrative also had the effect of bringing him down to Bush’s level and created such a close election that it was a news event for months after the fact.
September 12th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
This “narrative” — has the press ever consciously, explicitly, in a top-down sort of way, cobbled together a narrative? I don’t think so — maybe they have? — but my impression is that it’s always emerged, collectively, in the way that memes and conventional wisdom sorts of things emerge.
So, it’ll happen or it won’t, but probably not because anyone told the press to make one. In fact, it might even be counterproductive to tell the press to “make narrative X” — once they’re conscious they’ve been going along unconsciously with an emergent narrative, it might cause them to shy away. *shrug* I just think it’s more complicated than consciously deciding to have a common narrative.
September 12th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Narratives are not, generally speaking, created by the press without the initiative coming from one of the campaigns. The whole “Gore as exaggerator” meme was ginned up by the Republican noise machine before it worked its way into the mainstream press.
The Obama campaign needs to run an ad or two that chronicles a bunch of the McCain campaign’s lies, ending with something like, “The McCain campaign: Do they ever tell the truth?” or maybe that AP line above “Straight Talk has become Doublespeak.” Something like that would help push the ball down the field. And then Biden and other surrogates need to go on TV and use the “L” word when discussing the McCain campaign’s tactics.
If Obama and the Democrats think the press is just going to do this for them, they’re dreaming. This needs to be pushed aggressively.
September 12th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
To be fair, McCain’s dishonesty is now rather beyond question.
September 12th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Douglas Beach,
That is happening as well. Obama’s “No Maverick” ad accused McCain/Palin of lying about their records. And in response to McCain defending his “lipstick on a pig” attack on The View, Obama’s spokesperson just released this statement:
September 12th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Between the email ad and Obama’s remarks today in NH, I think he is starting to put forth a narrative: John McCain is old. Calling him a liar won’t work. Too many people (even many who should know better) still think he’s honorable, and every politician lies anyway doncha know. But you can still take McCain’s misstatements and with a sad shake of the head say they’re a sign that he’s confused, living in his own reality, in a fog, etc.
I like the suggestion made elsewhere that he be tagged the Make-Believe Maverick. It mocks the idea that he’s actually a reformer while simultaneously implying he’s losing his grip on reality (not a good thing at his age). Every time he makes yet another statement that’s demonstratively untrue, he just reinforces the narrative that he’s increasingly disconnected from reality. The only way he can defend himself is to admit he’s lying.
Works for me.
September 12th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
please stop saying “reenforcement” and “re-enforce.” It’s wrong, and it’s not a typo; you apparently believe that it’s an actual word. It’s not. The word is “reinforce.” I’ll keep calling you on it. Just saying.
September 12th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
The acid test: how many of the Sunday talk shows make McCain’s brazen penchant for lying Issue One this week.
September 13th, 2008 at 12:56 am
Matt-
Let’s talk about a hospital that just gave Michelle a $200K/yr raise- getting a “special delivery” $1 million earmark from her baby-daddy.
Let’s look at the “disbursements” of the $150 million spent during Obama’s tenure with the Annenberg Challenge- which even Obama agrees was entirely ineffectual.
Did Obama’s community organizing accomplish anything other than enriching Tony Rezco?
Let’s ask Obambi himself about “community organizing“.
Obama spent three years in housing projects in Chicago and — according to his book, Dreams of My Father — even he couldn’t explain what he was doing. “When classmates in college asked me just what it was that a community organizer did, I couldn’t answer them directly,”
Three years… ZerObama accomplishments!
September 13th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
One of the positive things with this campaign is that it actually seems like the policy-oriented blogs like this now have at least some power to create these narratives.
By constantly repeating the McCain lies here, you are spreading the word and increasing the chance that mainstream media will one day start calling McCain out on his bs.
What is happening right now is basically that McCain says “one plus one is three”, and then the Obama campaign points out that they are, in fact, wrong about that, and then the news story becomes “Obama campaign attacks McCain for saying one plus one is three”. That type of pointless pseudojournalism cannot go on forever. A change is gonna come.
The fact that racist lunatics like “Fletch” in the comment above this feels obliged to spew rubbish on a blog like this must prove that the Think Progress blogosphere is having an increasingly big impact.
(Is this, by the way, refelected in visitor stats?)
September 16th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Sarah-
I simply laugh at you calling me a racist!
Did you offer a “rebuttal” to my facts… I must have missed it…
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