The Difference-Makers
I’ve been a little bit surprised by the number of liberals who’ve been eager to proclaim John McCain’s 2008 campaign to be the most vile and dishonorable thing they’ve ever witnessed. It struck me as less vile and dishonorable than the other presidential campaigns (2004, 2000, 1996) that I remember. At any rate, Brad DeLong says:
# Yes, John McCain ran a dirty campaign. But it was a less dirty campaign than any Republican has run since… well, since the memory of man runneth (with the possible exception of Ford 1976). The difference this year was that–for some reason–this year a fraction of the mainstream press called them on it rather than ignoring it entirely.
I think the “for some reason” here is pretty clear: It’s the infrastructure, stupid. Organizations like Think Progress, TPM Media, The Huffington Post, Media Matters, and Progressive Accountability have ensured that there are dozens of people working, every day, to shoot down bogus storylines and to highlight especially egregious behavior. And those institutions are connected to a vast web of individual or small-group blogs that together form a sea in which long-existing progressive publications like The American Prospect, Mother Jones, The Nation, and The Washington Monthly all swim, all reaching much broader audiences than they could in their strictly print days. New, more progressive columnists with ties to those institutions like Harold Meyerson and Paul Krugman have joined The Washington Post and New York Times op-ed pages. Television programs open to progressive ideas hosted by Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow have appeared on cable.
To make a long story short, the Obama-McCain matchup is taking place in a very different media context from the Kerry-Bush matchup in 2004. And Kerry-Bush happened in a very different context than Gore-Bush in 2000. And I think it’s no coincidence that as progressive infrastructure gets bigger and stronger, it gets harder and harder for conservative media strategies to work. The press’s all-out war against Gore galvanized people and have created institutions designed to fight back against that kind of garbage.
48 Responses to “The Difference-Makers”
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November 4th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
An intriguing theory, one I hope is true. My cynical side says that the “powers that be” decided that the Democratic candidate was worth a shot this time around and issued the appropriate talking points. But I am always quicker to believe in complicated conspiracies than much simpler, and more logical, ideas.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
It wasn’t so much the dirtiness as the lies and flip flops. McCain and Palin just lied and lied and lied, and were never called on it. The media just parroted what they were fed. Compare, of course, to 2000, when the media actively promoted the lies about Gore (and, of course, swallowed all Bush’s lies).
November 4th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
I don’t know if it was more reprehensible, but maybe more ludicrous. Willie Horton ad: reprehensible, but within the bounds of plausibility. Bill Ayers ads: bugnuts crazy.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
I agree that I have been puzzled by the idea that this year has been particularly nasty. With someone like Andrew Sullivan I thought it was just that he was not bothered by the nastiness in previous elections because he had not turned on the Republicans yet (at least not so thoroughly). But TPM has also been pushing the idea that this is particularly nasty. But how does it compare with launching a states right campaign at the site of the murder of civil rights workers in the name of state’s rights.
But my guess is that McCain has been called on it less because of the media changes than the fact that it hasn’t worked. The media does not insult voters by calling out these attacks, because the attacks aren’t actually swaying voters. When the attacks work the media seems less willing to call them illegitimate because they work.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
The infrastructure is helpful. But remember also that since 2004, there have been a whole lot of stories emerging about how the Bush administration blatantly lied to the media. Warrantless wiretapping; the Libby/Plame affair; the runup to Iraq; the politicization of DoJ. Eventually the media got tired of being treated as fools and decided (about 4 years too late) to start pushing back against Republican lies.
Tough for McCain, who was neither the first nor the worst of the liars. But good for America.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
also:
1) mccain’s unpopularity with republicans deprived him of a lot of surrogates who would normally do the dirty work (how often did you see republican governors get onto the shows to lie for him?) this meant he had to do the dirty work himself–especially after obama called him out on it–and this hurt him badly. this on top of the fact that he could not use the white house, which normally would be a huge advantage to the incumbent party.
2) the regular media felt jilted by him, and responded with the fury of a woman scorned. he had been their attentive lover, and he stopped sending roses.
look, matt–the progressive media-sphere is great. but you are underplaying the role of joe klein and his ilk. they still carry a lotta lotta weight.
as it happens, they soured on mccain this year and started treating him the way they normally treat democrats. but that’s nothing to count on.
what i’m saying is: i’d like to believe your story of structural change. but i think the traditional media is still very strong, and the main driver of voting behavior for low-information voters.
they punked mccain for their own narcissistic reasons. but the old media could still pull a war-on-gore at any time.
and i’m afraid it will be coming up soon, as soon as obama wins.
if i’m wrong, and the progressive infrastructure really has changed the battlefield environment, that will be a great thing. i just don’t think it follows from what happened to mccain.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
hm, spoken like a true, professional contrarian. is this campaign ‘dirtier’ than the one Bush ran against Kerry?
by a long shot, yes. far, far dirtier.
its nowhere near close. I guess that all depends on what you see as being particularly bad behavior, but I don’t see anything comparable to the Palin witch-hunt rallies, calls for Obama’s death, nonstop insinuation that Obama’s a foreigner, terrorist, terrorist sympathizer, idiot, and brazen liar.
the Swift Boaters were awful, but the media gave them their platform more than anyone, and nasty as they were, it wasn’t anything close to the race-baiting we’ve seen from McCain and his henchmen. not even close. the worst thing about Bush’s campaign were those disgusting purple heart band-aids at their convention. again, horrible. and again, nowhere near as bad as what has been thrown at Obama.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
I do think that the McCain campaign was unique in the sense that a much higher percentage of the sleeze (a) came from the campaighn itself, and (b) came from the candidate himself. Though IMO that was probably a mistake. Let the sleeze come from people outside the campaign, or, if it must come from the campaign, not from the candidate himself.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Strangely enough, I think one of the big turning points for the traditional media was the VP pick. It seemed like the McCain campaign spread quite a bit of misinformation about Lieberman and then Pawlenty, to keep Palin as a genuine surprise. And
that misinformation got the reporters ticked off; then Palin
refusing to give any press conferences compounded the offense.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
I can’t agree. I’ve voted in seven presidential elections, counting today, and this one run by McCain and various groups associated with the Republicans is the worst I can remember.
Anti-American. Socialist. Pals around with terrorists.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
But how does it compare with launching a states right campaign at the site of the murder of civil rights workers in the name of state’s rights.
Since the whole “ZOMG!!! Reagan + Philadelphia, MS = KKK!!!11!1!11one!1″ is a retcon worthy of John Byrne, I’m not sure there’s any useful comparison to be made there. (And I say that as an Obama supporter.)
November 4th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Sorry, the second paragraph shouldn’t be italicized.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Perhaps the dirty tricks have moved to the internet email rumors that we all get from our less critically-thinking relatives. I try to send them to Snopes, but it doesn’t do any good.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Maybe I’ve become too vested in this election to see clearly (or perhaps it’s my natural affection for W), but I simply don’t buy the premise of this campaign being less vile than its predecessors. I don’t remember Bush saying anything comparable to the claim that Obama would happily lose the Iraq war for political gain, or that he doesn’t put country first, that his allegiances are in doubt, or that McCain was the “American” president, or that the blue parts of the country were not “pro-American”. And of course the Ayers stuff, and pretending that academics like Khalidi are extremists simply because they have Middle Eastern names. The 2000 primary was certainly ugly, but I think 2008 wins for most dishonorable general election campaign in the past 20 years.
Even leaving that aside, I wonder how you would quantify the watchdog aspect of the blogosphere you described here. McCain and (especially) Palin continue to lie with impunity for the most part. The press did turn on them at some point (without necessarily pointing out specific falsehoods), but I’m not sure how you would trace this back to the blogosphere’s efforts.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
I thought it felt dirtier because of the nature and frequency of the charges. They made allegations about the candidate’s loyalty, treasonous or criminal conduct (terrrorism), and religion; they played the race card. It was thus at the level of McCain’s supposed black child, Willie Horton, and McCarthyism, but more frequent and varied. Gore’s inventing the Internet or Kerry’s windsurfing feel tame by comparison. Perhaps indeed it’s one reason this year’s smears were harder to pull off.
Still, I agree it’s not worth dwelling on the uniqueness so much as to keep insisting it’s business as usual for the right. And also that the other question, why the media often complained, is the more interesting one. It’s a good post, and the Internet no doubt was a factor (if the blogger does say so himself). Still, the mainstream media’s own role needs more explanation.
Part may be the quality of Obama’s campaign, although we can exaggerate that. For a while bloggers were demanding he stop playing cool, and if his cool strategy hadn’t worked, they’d be blaming it on him. It worked because others kept the pressure on, while he was looking presidential.
Part may be that the media are cut-throat, and if they smell a loser, they don’t want a part of it. With the war and the economy, McCain started off as a loser.
And a lot is McCain’s incompetence. When Dowd this weekend complained about losing the McCain she knew, she was really saying he wouldn’t be open in the sense of giving people like her access and a sense of privilege. Bush was smart enough to feed Bruni well and make Judith Miller feel important. In lurching to the right, McCain felt he couldn’t expect typical voters to agree, so he went the staged, astroturf route, forgetting that playing control freak had to make an exception for the ego of the morons who feed us the news.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
You know, it’s worth quoting Kevin Drum’s take here, which rings true:
November 4th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
McCain’s campaign was the vilest, foulest, dirtiest presidential campaign in a long while.
But the big difference is that, this time around, it didn’t work.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
I like blogging lady poster better than the super plumber poster.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
I can’t count how many times the front page of Digg’s 2008 section was filled with mostly HuffPost stories, almost all of them correctly marked as inaccurate. The HuffPost served to both start and amplify lies and smears, as did some or all of the other sites listed and, of course, the MSM.
Once again, MattY is so completely, absolutely unable to understand what’s going on that’s he’s almost committably delusional.
And, of course, MattY helped. Here’s a comment from last month:
Just recently, I pointed out how MattY helped someone else smear two people… based on data that was a decade out of date. MattY has still not issued a correction. The original smearer has posted a correction of a sort: by deleting those pointing out his error and locking the thread.
See also my comment here:
yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/09/
life_begins_at_conception_and_ends_at_death.php
November 4th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
I believe that Dr. Delong’s explanation, which is more plausible, is that the mainstream media upon learning that John McCain’s straight talk express was a hoax and that he planned to run a typical Republican smear campign became offended at being duped into thinking McCain was above such political tactics. The pushback against McCain was the result of the media arrogance, not any desire to promote the truth.
Now McCain is no Bush, and W. would have easily won this campaign by constantly saying Obama’s middle name, running the Reverend Wright sermons, and really the terrorist label stick. Maybe McCain was still smarting from the shalacking Bush and co. gave him in South Carolina eight years ago, and perhaps he just couldn’t let his campaign sink that low, but that just means he was never ready to be the Republican nominee.
November 4th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
I’m not so sure that this one was so dirty, it’s more like there just wasn’t much to the McC/P campaign except the dirt. McC/P just seemed to lack any issues that they could press to their advantage due in no small part to the dominance of the economic crash and burn.
It’s like the joke: If you have the facts, argue the facts. If you have the law, argue the law. If you don’t have the facts or the law, call the other guy an asshole.
November 4th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
I don’t recall MY covering governor’s races much, if at all, on this blog. Given that state government oversees so many issues of direct relevance to our lives — schools, roads, crime law, family law, etc. etc. — why not apply all this “progressive infrastructure” to the more local campaigns? The presidential race is glamorous, but little that Obama does will affect my daily life. (I’m not an immigrant, not poor, not old, not sick, not a homeowner, I have no military connection)
November 4th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Bob Dole ran a respectable campaign against Clinton. He kept bringing up unresolved Clinton sleaze and wondering “where’s the outrage”? It was a fair question, but people preferred a somewhat ethically challenged but basically competent Democrat to an honestly conservative Republican.
November 4th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
The comment
“Since the whole “ZOMG!!! Reagan + Philadelphia, MS = KKK!!!11!1!11one!1″ is a retcon worthy of John Byrne, I’m not sure there’s any useful comparison to be made there. (And I say that as an Obama supporter.)”
gets at another reason why this election seems particularly dirty, and that is because we tend to cleanse our sense of the earlier ones. Already those on the right believe that the Swift Boat ads were confirmed upon investigation, and it is only the bias of the media that has made swiftboating a negative term. In 4 or 8 years, there will have been a campaign to suggest that the idea that this campaign was particularly dirty was another campaign by the liberal media, and with people not directly invested in it there is not likely to be the same push back, so the voices defending the McCain campaign from these charges will be louder than the ones pointing out the actual events as they happened.
And so, there was an attempt a year ago to make the case that the veterans of southern politics who were invested in a strategy of poaching the voters alienated by the civil rights movement, forgot that Philadelphia Mississippi happened to have a significance to the voters they were trying to woo. And that that significance happened to turn on the phrase on which they were launching their campaign, and so they were embarassed to find out that oops their mistake happened to be to the advantage of the strategy they were undertaking at the time. Sometimes people can be so forgetful about the things that they are most focused on at a given time.
And of course if one thinks of 1980 as a disassociated historical era from 1963 (as people like myself who were born between the two times are apt to do) then the idea that the Reagan team was intentionally courting opponents of the civil rights movement with that speech can seem ridiculous. Well, actually that isn’t quite right. Obviously they were courting opponents of the civil rights movement with that speech. What was unintentional would presumably be the reason that it had resonance. After all there was no reason for veterans in Southern politics in 1980 to see the resonance of something that happened in 1963, at least not of like me they were 13 at the time. And I have no idea how old just dropping by is, so the effect may be stronger with him.
Twenty years from now one hopes that we will advanced enough that charging the McCain camp with playing to racist attitudes towards arabs seems as silly.
November 4th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Things may have in fact changed. People have only now gotten over the (mis-quote) Gore/Internet thing. By the old standard, we should all be habitually referring to “Blackberry” McCain.
November 4th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
Actually, it’s not so much how “vile” the campaign was as how STUPID it was.
This is the main reason my prediction that Obama would lose didn’t come to pass – along with the other main reason, the economic meltdown which, as Matt has correctly said, is always disadvantageous to Republicans (at least it if happens during their administration).
If McCain had run a half-way intelligent campaign, Obama’s lead at this point would probably be statistical only – not overwhelming. But McCain acted like a complete idiot, and his ploy of choosing Palin, while momentarily successful, proved to be a disaster as the campaign wore on.
Still, McCain can lay the blame on his loss on Bush and Cheney – who didn’t manage to get off an “October Surprise” at all, as I thought they would.
I’m not sure WHY there was no “October Surprise” except possibly that the economic meltdown suddenly took precedence in damage control in the White House just as it took precedence over Iraq and foreign policy in the campaigns.
Now that the elections are over, however, as others have warned, Bush and Cheney really have nothing to lose and everything to gain by starting new wars in Iran and Pakistan. They can’t be blamed for sabotaging the Republican election potential and they can tie the hands of the incoming Democratic administration by presenting them with fair accomplis in foreign policy – wars that Obama and his foreign policy advisers really can’t criticize because they’re on board with most of them. They can also insure that their cronies in the military-industrial complex keep getting fat contracts in the new administration.
The impending strike on Iran
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JK01Ak02.html
The Limits of Change
What to expect from the Obama administration on the foreign policy front
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13709
November 4th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Pseudo liberals think the campaign was dirtier because they are more invested in the Dem nominee. If Palin was talking about HRC killing Vince Foster or being a lesbian I don’t think the outrage would be nearly as high.
November 4th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Could Matt, or anyone, explain what was so dirty about Dole’s race? Attacks on Clinton’s character were perfectly legitimate, given Clinton’s lack thereof.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
I think it was because so much of the dirt came right from McCain. George Bush didn’t do a lot of his own sliming. A lot of it wasn’t even done by his official campaign, but rather by proxies. McCain, especially early on, was personally and almost purely dishonest and vicious.
November 5th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
1996? Really? True the Right as a whole was frothing at the mouth obsessed with Bill Clinton’s destruction during his tenure, but I remember the actual ‘96 election as a tame affair. I don’t think Bob Dole ever sank his teeth into the viciousness of the times the way the House Republicans and talk radio did.
November 6th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
I agree with comments #7 and #14. I think McCain ran the dirtiest campaign I’ve seen, not so much because of the attacks on his opponent, as because of the reckless disregard for other people, who are not even connected with either campaign.
That culminated in comparing Rashid Khalidi to a neo-Nazi. I have never heard Bush or Dole or the other Bush say something as vile while campaigning. (Bush 41 did allegedly say that atheists shouldn’t be citizens, which is just as vile, but he didn’t say it in a public speech and not while campaigning.)
The “palling around with terrorists” line also implicitly accused everyone who ever worked with Ayers. It may cause tangible problems to some of those people.
All in all, McCain engaged in a high-speed chase and couldn’t care less for bystanders.
And he called it “Country First”.
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