Media Shield Law on the Horizon

The NYT is reporting on the development of the media shield law designed to protect reporters from disclosing their sources. The law is required in order to give cover to sources who provide information vital to the public knowledge. The type of law that the NYT is reporting on seems like it might be sufficient protection but much hangs on any potential litigation in the court system.

As reported by the Times,

Under the deal, made public Friday, federal judges could quash subpoenas demanding testimony or information from reporters if the judges determined that the public interest in news gathering outweighed the need to uncover the source of a leak, including, in some circumstances, unauthorized disclosure of classified government information.

Protection under the so-called shield law would also be extended to unpaid bloggers engaged in gathering and disseminating news.

A version of shield legislation was approved by the House in March. But a similar bill has stalled in the Senate, and its prospects appeared to dim significantly in September when the administration, responding to apprehension expressed by intelligence agencies and prosecutors, took a harder line with regard to cases in which the government could claim national security concerns.

With the new agreement, however, the White House has now moderated that position.

The text of the bill is here in pdf.

As they say the devil is in the details. The determination of when a source is protected and when it isnt is made in the courts under a balancing test of public need to know versus need to keep secret. The Senate version of the legislation categorizes three different balancing tests for courts to use in deciding when disclosure is required. There are different considerations for civil, criminal, and national security cases.

In a standard criminal cases the standard required for production of a source is that a preponderance of the evidence shows that the compelling party has exhausted reasonable alternatives and that the source is "critical to the investigation or prosecution or to the defense against the prosecution". the washington post stated that,

In criminal cases, the compromise puts the burden on the journalist to establish in court why the public interest would be harmed by the disclosure of a source or sources. The government or defense attorney would need to show only that the information sought is essential to the case.

This is not quite true. My reading of the law is that the burden is always on the compelling party. They must show that the compulsion of the source for the prosecution of the case outweighs any interest in keeping the source under wraps. there is not a burden shift. It is possible that the way the proposed law will play out in criminal circumstances is that there will be a standing presumption in the courts that the prosecution interest outweighs the interest in keeping it secret but the law as proposed doesnt contain that presumption. In fact it could be argued that the law itself represents the idea that the presumption is against disclosure. In assessing this language the NYT said,

Ordinary criminal cases, as in prosecutors’ effort to find out who leaked grand jury information about professional athletes’ steroid use to The San Francisco Chronicle, would work the same way, except that the balancing test would be heavily tilted in favor of prosecutors. For a judge to quash a subpoena, the burden would be on a reporter to make it “clear and convincing” that the public interest in the free flow of information should prevail.

The language of the law as is available does not use the words clear and convincing in regards to the disclosure and balancing test for journalists. i am not sure where they got this idea as they dont link to available source of text. As currently available the only standard used in regards to disclosure is preponderance. To compel a source the case must be made that the public interest in gathering or disseminating news or information is outweighed by the need for disclosure. Disclosure must "more probably than not" outweigh that interest. It is for the compelling party to prove this. Maybe it is going to be amended to shift and ammend the burden but it hasnt yet.

On the civil side it plays out much as it does on the criminal side. all other options must be exhausted and the source must be one "critical to the successful completion of the matter" and again the disclosure interest must outweigh the secrecy interest.

That leads to the final category, national security. National security had been the sticking point as according to HuffPo,

The administration wanted to eliminate that balancing test in many cases involving terrorism and other security cases.

Under the compromise, the balancing test would be eliminated in classified leak cases where the government can show that disclosure of a source's identity is necessary to prevent or mitigate an act of terrorism or substantial harm to national security. But the government would also have to provide specific facts: it could not make a national security claim and then withhold most of the details.

This change has not yet been made in the available text. As currently drafted the text has the balancing test for national security just as the house bill has. From what i can tell this means that section 2 (a)(3)(A) will be moved outside section 2(a)and new language will be added as to the specificity required for compulsion. Right now it is only a "reasonableness" standard which is a very illusive and slippery burden. Judges would most likely side with the government on these types of cases simply because they wouldnt want a terrorist attack on their heads.

Most of the effects of this legislation will be determined by how high the courts choose to weigh the interests of non-disclosure. Because this is one of the weights in the balancing test an artificially low weight would gut the legislation and a heavy weight would prove very restrictive. Until this is litigated though the answer wont be known. According to Arlen Specter since 2001 at least 19 journalists had been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors for information about confidential sources and that four had been imprisoned for refusing to comply. What he doesnt say is whether any of them would be helped by this law.

Unless significant weight ends up on the journalists side and unless the courts actually hold the governments feet to the fire on national security claims the law could be much ado about nothing.

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No Idea What They Are Talking About

When i read most articles about voters, their motivations, rationales, etc i want to smash my head against a brick wall. Today featured a string of blog posts by respected bloggers steve benen, digby, matt yglesias about exactly who and what independent voters are. These bloggers have gotten where they are today because they tend to write intelligently about things that they know and what they say is accurate. This is in stark contrast to the "reporters" and other media professionals who profess to cover politics.

Digby wrote a reflection that nicely illustrates the ignorance at work

I was listening to all the gasbags drone on all day yesterday about how the "independents" are all unhappy with Obama and are probably going to vote for the Republicans again when just a couple of years ago they were all unhappy with Bush and voted with the Democrats. This was interpreted as a signal that Obama needs to tack right immediately to recapture them.

Does that make sense? Isn't the answer more logically that independents just habitually dislike whoever is in power and think that both parties are incompetent? Why else would they identify as independents in the first place?

I realize that the villagers think there is some sort of "median" moderate voter who believes that the answer to all of our problems lies somewhere between the positions of the two parties. But that's not necessarily the independent's position. They don't like either party true, but it doesn't necessarily follow that they yearn to split the difference. In fact, I suspect that a large number of them are apolitical people who don't really understand politics at all and simply reject whoever is in power when things aren't going well, without regard to party. (In fact, there is great social utility in rejecting party politics and proclaiming yourself unhappy with the whole set-up. Who can't relate to that on some level?) Many independents ideologically fall far enough outside the two parties that they can't consider themselves members of either --- libertarians, greens etc.

The number of independents out there is quite large and all national politicians need to reach them in elections in order to win. But the knee jerk assumption that they are always more moderate than everyone else is probably wrong. They might just be more cranky, more cynical, more uninformed, more skeptical or more impatient. There are a lot of reasons why someone might be an independent in American politics but I suspect that ideology is at the bottom of the list.

It is embarrassing that the media in this country who cover politics daily have such little understanding about voters and their behavior. There is such a lack of sophistication in the coverage. There is a long history of voter theory in political science dedicated to figuring out why people vote the way that they do, how they form their opinions, etc. Yet discussions meant to inform the public and help them gain a better understanding of politics and how things are likely to work takes advantage of non of it.

When was the last time you saw V.O. Key referenced? Or Morris Fiorina? Its not like the basic texts are hard to find. Head over to this site for some summaries of the seminal theories of voting behavior. I would love to see direct references to these works in the predictions made by the pundits and other blatherers on tv. I would tolerate the taking of positions that showed even a minimal familiarity or understanding of the work. The deepest that any of the experts who routinely tell us why one thing is good for obama or this thing is bad is thomas franks' whats the matter with kansas. Though i doubt they have read bartels reply.

Is it too much to ask that the people who are paid to analyze voting and what is likely to affect it to exhibit a basic understanding of it? Digby's comments on independents are not surprising. The media describes things in terms of left and right. short hand for conservative and liberal, democrat and republican. The truth is that things are more complicated and messy than simple two dimensional axis. most people do not have developed coherent ideologies. they are all over the map.

About half said a major reason for their independence is that they agree with Democrats on some issues and Republicans on others, and that they are not comfortable with either party. Four in 10 said not wanting to put a label on their political views is a principal reason for calling themselves independents. Fifteen percent said they are independent because they are simply not very interested in politics.

As benen, yglesias, atrios, digby, all point out, describing independently registered voters or people without a party as being moderate centrists is lazy and its wrong. Being wrong on the scale that the village is damages political discourse, policy making, and society itself. Politicians change their behavior based on the incorrect assumptions of the media. With the failure of the village to provide even basically correct interpretation of voter behavior i am not surprised that papers are going under.

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A Scary New Other

Hilzoy has a post up at the Washington Monthly that reflects on the changes in race relations since the 80's and early 90's. There is a great deal of interesting things to discuss but what id like to talk about is the significance of pop culture and media on the racial dynamic. As a young person i feel justified in expounding on some of the assertions that Hilzoy, and the writers she cites, make.

The first idea put forth for why race relations have cooled is by Josh Marshall who writes,

"American mass culture found a more useful scary other: Arabs and Muslims. That's a key thing that isn't pretty but I think is also true."

Its one of those observations that if you ever want to know who the American enemy is you must simply look to Hollywood. During the days of the cold war the enemy was often a communist or soviet. Then as the geopolitical game changed we saw the increasing use of the arab terrorist as a villain. The use of brown skinned people is a familiar film device,

Parenti (1992) points out that according to the genre traditions, the hero is traditionally a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant male who is saving the Western civilization from threats to its structures and way of life. The antagonist is usually a foreigner, and often his skin color is darker than the skin color of the white protagonist. Parenti (1992) lists Native Americans, black Africans, African-Americans, Russians, Arabs, alien monsters and evil cosmic powers as familiar Hollywood villains. As a character the villain is typically depicted as devil, subhuman, sadistic, anti-American, anti-freedom, anti-capitalist, and of an anti-Judeo-Christian religion (Welsh, 2000; Parenti, 1992; Schatz, 1994).

The villain in action movies is commonly something that people fear. Seeing that fear defeated by the hero is a way to assure the audience of the Wests supperiority and provide hope that good (us) will always triumph over evil (other). Noting this its not surprising to see a new film come out where the villain is actually a bank. Arabs took on a larger role as the other in the white American consciousness.

While arabs were becoming villains on the big screen African Americans were increasingly becoming the protagonists on the small screen. Hilzoy uses The Cosby Show as an example. While i think that might work for some i think my best example is actually Will Smith's Fresh Prince of Bel Air. I remember watching Will and the Banks family engaging in the typical family drama sitcom. It never really made an impact on me that they were Black and that Black people living the lifestyle they lived was something extremely rare.

The importance of portraying Black people as no different than white people is important and should not be understated. By placing Black people into the dominant social narrative television helped to break down any perception in younger viewers that Black people were anything other than regular Americans. As Hilzoy writes,

The general point, though, is: I think that things are very, very different now. A white kid who's now twenty would not have gone to a grade school with no black kids, as I did. She might have gone to a college where people of different ethnicities tended to eat at different tables, but the simple fact that the number of non-whites is vastly higher than it was would have to make interaction a lot more common, and thus no big deal. And black kids who go to Ivy league schools, or end up in investment banks, have many more role models to look to, and so have less need to invent ways of being who they are in those worlds entirely from scratch

I assume that in my life im going to encounter Black people in all different walks of life. Some will be much smarter than i am so more gifted athletically some wealthier. They will be doctors and lawyers and judges, business people. Maybe i'll get to meet the one who is going to be President for the next four years. The point is that as a 20 something i expect to encounter a high number of Black people in positions not available to them during even my father's lifetime. I just assume that not only will they be there but that they should, that it is normal.

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Bloggers v. Authoritarians and Censorship

Political bloggers are no strangers to the ways that the internet is able to circumvent traditional controls on media and information. Nothing could epitomize this more than the story of the man in Malaysia who once controlled the system and the media and now fights against it. A former Prime Minister turned blogger Mahathir Mohamad is a case study in the power of the internet in the furtherance of freedom. Where once he was the man directing the censorship of the press he now undermines it.

We on the tubes that deal primarily with American media and American politics dont always have such a firm grasp on the stark difference between the media we have and the media in third world dictatorships. While it is true that the press has been the propaganda arm of our government on the iraq war and other issues we cannot say the entire media is oppressed or corrupt. We still have some honest people who do good reporting both on tv and in newspapers. Most of the drivel that serves as our national discourse can be chalked up to incompetence rather than outright corruption. This is not the case in other parts of the world and Malaysia is one of those places.

Malaysia is a place where government pressure and intimidation has created a press that is worse than ours. Imagine if all we ever had was Fox News. Now imagine that if you called out Fox news you faced things like imprisonment without trial, attacks in the government-friendly press and defamation lawsuits. It is as if Cheney had a license to simply throw any one in Guantanamo when he felt like it. In an environment like this the ability to disseminate the truth to the population is an invaluable tool in fighting for and securing freedom. This is exactly what Mahathir Mohamad discovered.

In a way Mahathir Mohamad becoming a political blogger fighting for freedom of the press would be like Bush suddenly discovering that the police state was a bad idea after being in power for two decades. He helped to set it up and suddenly when he wants something it gets in his way. oops.

But he has become an irritant and a spoiler five years after stepping down, turning against his handpicked successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and falling victim to the press controls he perfected as prime minister.

“Where is the press freedom?” he asked two years ago, apparently surprised at being suddenly ignored. “Broadcast what I have to say! What I say is not even accurately published in the press!”

He is not a particularly sympathetic character. The NYT piece that relates the story of the Malay bloggers would have done better i to focus on Jeff Ooi. Ooi seems to be the Malay Kos because he has moved the Malay Political Blogosphere onto the ground effecting political change.

In March, political experts said, Malaysia’s bloggers helped influence elections, contributing to the biggest upset that the governing party, the United Malays National Organization, had suffered since independence in 1957. For the first time in decades, it held fewer than two-thirds of the seats in Parliament, and it lost control of 5 of the 13 states.

Among the opposition winners in the national and state governments were several bloggers, most prominently Jeff Ooi, who claimed to have prodded Mr. Mahathir into starting his own blog.

“The government doesn’t have a clue how to handle bloggers,” Mr. Ooi said in an interview. “If I were a dictator, I would be despairing. What do you do against this?”

The fight that these Malay bloggers face is harsher than that of getting Barack Obama elected. While we had to overcome the sleaze of John McCain we really never had to fear that the government would come to our houses and toss us into Gitmo. While our constitution has eroded considerably I think this stuff would be hard sell to the public.

Now, a convert to free speech, Mr. Mahathir is using his blog to champion the most recent victim of government censorship, Raja Petra Kamaruddin, the country’s most prominent blogger, who posts on www.malaysia-today.net, his Web site. The site has been blocked, but readers are redirected to another Web site, which continues to be updated.

The government has fallen back on the kind of tactics that Mr. Ooi faced. It charged Mr. Petra with sedition and jailed him for two years without trial for comments he had posted.

Mr. Mahathir sounded almost like Che Guevara when he said in his blog that the arrest showed “a degree of oppressive arrogance worthy of a totalitarian state.”

Furthermore, jailing people is futile, he said in an interview in his office. There is no way the government can arrest all the bloggers, even if it wants to.

I dont want to glorify Matathir because he helped to put the system into place. That he is a person now trying to bring down the system of injustice is the simple fulfillment of a duty he has to the people of Malaysia. However, his story and the story of the Malaysian bloggers who have made a real difference in the freedom of the Malaysian people deserves to get some attention. The internet and freedom of speech are a powerful force as these courageous people have shown. They should be an inspiration to oppressed people everywhere and they should strike fear into the hearts of the oppressors because what jeff ooi was right when he pointed out the power of the internet,

“If I were a dictator, I would be despairing. What do you do against this?”

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It was all in good fun.

McCain appeared on SNL last night and the skit was pretty funny. Tina Fey reprized her role as Palin and Palin was pretty well trashed in the skit. McCain came off pretty well. Cindy even made an appearance. I think this was clearly the first step in rehabbing his image should he lose, or even win, on tuesday. McCain is hoping that he can simply shrug off the tactics and tenor of his campaign after the election. He will give a shoulder shrug and a simple, "thats politics" and maybe throw in a bit about regretting that "some things got out of hand" but that was all Palin and Schmidts fault. McCain then will probably try and make a big gesture to President Obama, on climate change.

Climate change is the one area that Obama continuously credits mccain with good work. McCain will probably use this as a platform to rehab his maverick image. the media of course will be more than happy to assist in this. They never really believed that mccain was anything more than an honorable man trapped by the evil obama into making dastardly attacks on him...or something. Meanwhile liberals everywhere will be banging their heads against the wall.

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Obama, 9 votes

Compare the story of the rather sad McCain GOTV and volunteer efforts with this video from the obama cmapaign,



If there is one thing that people should take away from the obama campaign is that the media people in it were incredible. I cant actually recall a visual or media screw up like say, mccain's green screen.

so can you get 9 votes?

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Obama's American Documentary

People are calling this several things, "The Ad", "The Informercial", but really this thing plays more like a ken burns documentary than an ad or an informercial. the production values and the stylings and the tone scream documentary. By the way, Obama can narrate very well. Its 27 minutes long and it feels like the documentation for the obama campaigns goals and values. I cant say how many people it will convince to vote for him but i dont think it really hurt his chances.

Some people have really gone contrarily and said it was too good, too well made. This is pretty weak. Olbermann and maddow both brought this up and i really could not have disagreed more. If Obama had a couple more it would certainly be a pbs mini series called, the american experience.

McCain of course followed up with a heavy attack ad buy. i cant help but tink this turned people off especially given the stupid "yet" added to the end of an ad attacking obama for not having enough experience.

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McCain and the Press Coverage

Politico has a story up on the press coverage of the election. Specifically they are addressing the issue of bias in media coverage. The entire post is very interesting and worth a read. Look particularly at the premise of the piece contained in the first line, "thats not balanced". This is a major signal that one group is upset that the stories run are not perfectly equal in tone and tenor. Here is happens to be coming from the McCain campaign.

The McCain campaign would very much like for the stories about the election to be "balanced". Balance is a term of art that means every time you mention a negative thing about mccain you have to cancel it out with one about obama. This of course fails to take into account a situation where one candidate, mccain, is far more negative than the other. McCain has been almost exclusively negative personal attacks since the convention. The only exception might be this socialism stuff he is floating although that is so dubious and lacking in support it really is a personal pejorative. The McCain people are upset because the stories actually reflect reality,

The Project for Excellence in Journalism’s researchers found that John McCain, over the six weeks since the Republican convention, got four times as many negative stories as positive ones. The study found six out of 10 McCain stories were negative.

What’s more, Obama had more than twice as many positive stories (36 percent) as McCain — and just half the percentage of negative (29 percent).

You call that balanced?

No, i call it the truth. The truth is that mccain has been more negative and more personal this election cycle. his attacks have not only lacked effect the have lacked merit. Having been informed of both of these issues McCain has not opted to go the traditional route of apologizing or defending and pulling the ad. Instead what he has done is push on with discredited ads in the face of press opposition. The politico crew call this, the mccain backlash.

One is McCain backlash. The Republican once was the best evidence of how little ideology matters. Even during his “maverick” days, McCain was a consistent social conservative, with views on abortion and other cultural issues that would have been odds with those of most reporters we know. Yet he won swooning coverage for a decade from reporters who liked his accessibility and iconoclasm and supposed commitment to clean politics.

Now he is paying. McCain’s decision to limit media access and align himself with the GOP conservative base was an entirely routine, strategic move for a presidential candidate. But much of the coverage has portrayed this as though it were an unconscionable sellout.

Since then the media often presumes bad faith on McCain’s part. The best evidence of this has been the intense focus on the negative nature of his ads, when it is clear Obama has been similarly negative in spots he airs on radio and in swing states.

Now you can certainly take issue with he idea that Obama's ads have been as dirty and untrue as mccain's ads have been. Obama has stayed on policy, attacking mccain relentlessly on policy and on his policy reactions in the campaign. The part about the media assuming bad faith on McCain's part is certainly true. I dont want to give the politico crew too much credit because they really do try and carry mccain water in a couple places,

It is not our impression that many reporters are rooting for Obama personally. To the contrary, most colleagues on the trail we’ve spoken with seem to find him a distant and undefined figure. But he has benefited from the idea that negative attacks that in a normal campaign would be commonplace in this year would carry an out-of-bounds racial subtext. That’s why Obama’s long association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was basically a nonissue in the general election.

Journalists’ hair-trigger racial sensitivity may have been misplaced, but it was not driven by an ideological tilt.

Rev Wright was a nonissue because it was not an issue. It became an issue because of race. Politico is making the assertion that had it been a white pastor and a white candidate we would be seeing all wright all the time and we know thats not true. See sarah palin and her witch hunting pastor. The truth is that many of the attacks were raced based. anything having to do with his middle name is a racial thing.

Politico finishes the piece with a look at the systemic biases institutionalized in the media and i think this is possibly the most important section.

Beyond the particular circumstances of McCain v. Obama, there are other factors in any race that almost always matter more than the personal views of reporters.

The strongest of these is the bias in favor of momentum. A candidate who is perceived to be doing well tends to get even more positive coverage (about his or her big crowds or the latest favorable polls or whatever). And a candidate who is perceived to be doing poorly tends to have all events viewed through this prism.

Not coincidentally, this is a bias shared by most of our sources. This is why the bulk of negative stories about McCain are not about his ideology or policy plans — they are about intrigue and turmoil. Think back to the past week of coverage on Politico and elsewhere: Coverage has been dominated by Sarah Palin’s $150,000 handbags and glad rags, by finger-pointing in the McCain camp, and by apparent tensions between the candidate and his running mate.

These stories are driven by the flood of Republicans inside and out of the campaign eager to make themselves look good or others look bad. This always happens when a campaign starts to tank. Indeed, there was a spate of such stories when Obama’s campaign hit turmoil after the GOP convention and the Palin surge.

For better or worse, the most common media instincts all have countervailing pressures. Countering the bias in favor of momentum is the bias against boredom. We’ve seen that several times this cycle — an outlying poll number being pumped to suggest big changes in a race that is basically unchanged. There’s a good chance you’ll see this phenomenon more in the next week.

Then there is the bend-over-backward bias. This is when journalists try so hard to avoid accusations of favoritism that it clouds critical judgment. A good example were stories suggesting Palin held her own or even won her debate against Joe Biden when it seemed obvious she was simply invoking whatever talking points she had at hand, hanging on for dear life.

Finally, one of the biases of journalists is the same one that is potent for almost all people: the one in favor of self-defensiveness. That’s why, even though we think ideological bias is pretty low on the list of journalistic maladies in this election, it is not viable for reporters to dismiss criticism out of hand.

I am loathe to run through each of these things one at a time. It suffices to say this stuff is true. it is one of the times that media people actually tell you what they think and why they run a story. They admit here to cherry picked polls to try and create artificial news. They admit to relying on the gossip and process stuff instead of focusing on policy. Everything the press is routinely criticized for is in this last section.

Politico seems to be hanging their hat on the simple proposition that reality says one campaign is winning and the other is losing. They luck out here in a way because even if mccain was actually winning with these tactics he would deserve just as much scrutiny. Sure we might see fewer process stories but i doubt it. Reporters just love that stuff too much. instead of negative wardrobe stories we might being seeing stories on how palins look was helping mccain. his ads however would still be 100% negative. if the presss covered the negativity different because he was winning that would not be right. The entire talk of balancing stories is something that needs to go away. Politico crew sums it up best when they say,

As it happens, McCain’s campaign is going quite poorly and Obama’s is going well. Imposing artificial balance on this reality would be a bias of its own.

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Will the media tell the ground game story?

The under the radar story of the election as far as the traditional media outlets are concerned is the amazing effort and dedication of the obama ground game. It gets references in passing but because it is not sexy or flashy has largely been ignored. This absence of national level attention has not stopped the dedicated organizers and volunteers across the country who have worked tirelessly to elect either Sen. Obama or Sen. McCain. The Obama organization will be one of if not the best in history but because of the way the election is shaping up that story may not be

The story of the ground game is not one alien to dkos, fivethirtyeight, or The Field Readers. These sites have dedicated a great deal to reporting on the ground game and how it is shaping up as well as its possible effects. Sean Quinn at 538 has been traveling the country reporting town by town city by city on the different campaign's efforts in the battle ground states. The Field has done, imho, the best work on the ground game available in the blogosphere and Giordiono's recent post sums up why he finds it so important,

There are ten thousand potential newspaper, TV and radio news stories in those numbers, and at least as many "reporters" in need of a good report, but as during the primaries, the commercial media are leaving the real story of the 2008 United States presidential election to a few intrepid online journalists and bloggers. When on Election Night they will raise their eyebrows and go, wow, just wow, how the hell did that happen?, it will be the Field Hands here, and a very few folks like Sifrey, like Sean Quinn at 538 and Zack Exley at The Huffington Post who will have documented the answer: It was the organizing, stupid!
...
See, the story of the 2008 campaign is not some media creation and caricature like "Joe the Plumber," but those Americans that have done more than "win" the media lottery by having a chance encounter with a presidential candidate. (I put "win" in quotation marks because I have the feeling this isn't going to end well for that Joe, as media scrutiny can be a knife with two edges.) No, the story of 2008 is authentically about "Debrah the Neighborhood Team Leader" and "Glenna the Neighborhood Team Leader," and "Joe the Organizer," and "Jane the Change Crew Chief," and "Jose the Phone Banker" and "Jasmine the Canvasser." The story is that of so many Americans that didn't wait for the media to show up at their doorsteps but stepped out onto the battlefield and did the heavy lifting.

Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

He is absolutely correct on just about everything in there. What i think he misses is that the media will not wonder at how obama won the election. The media will look at the polls, look at the timing of some national level events and write a narrative that fits. I already wrote one that is perfectly plausible and does not rely on the hard work of the ground game.

The problem with this election is that the way it is shaping up it could be a very big win for obama. In that scenario the media will not look to the dirty and gritty work done by those on the ground. they will not give the ground game the credit it deserves for registering and turning out voters because they will make the assumption that the extra effort made no difference due to national level events. They play no part in the ground game and so it cant be important. They will simply attribute the overwhelmingly positive response for obama as the natural outgrowth of the democratic enthusiasm without making the connection that this energy means nothing without proper harnessing.

If Debrah the Neighborhood Team Leader" and "Glenna the Neighborhood Team Leader," and "Joe the Organizer," and "Jane the Change Crew Chief," and "Jose the Phone Banker" and "Jasmine the Canvasser" do not get the recognition they deserve on a national level then true difference between Obama and McCain will not be understood. Obama was able to translate excitement into work while mccain and palin were able to generate this in Columbus Ohio,



(picture by Brett Marty of BrettMarty.com)

Described by 538,

It's fair enough. We're not their biggest priority. They probably assume if they haven't heard of us, how much exposure could photos of their huge phone banks with 40 phones and one lonely caller at their state headquarters three weeks before the election really get?

As for the field offices themselves, we told you about the closed one in Troy. We were ushered out by rent-a-cops in Toledo (the second time I spoke with Levine), and there was a pencil-thin mustachioed rent-a-cop in the HQ where we got that picture.

We'll keep trying in good faith to speak to communications directors and stop into field offices, and if they're fair with us, we'll be fair with them. The problem the McCain folks have is that their offices are empty, and why would you want reporters to do a story on that, or on obviously manufactured volunteer conversations? So, we're not optimistic, but we're not quitting. They'll have to say it to our face.

One lone volunteer and 39 unused phones. That might be one of the saddest images of the campaign and it tells the story in a way words just fail to convey. It makes me feel sad for that lone volunteer, who although i disagree with her vehemently in her choice of candidates, earns my respect for sitting there all alone to make calls.

Getting people to the polls, making phone calls, getting people registered, canvassing neighborhoods, these are essential elements of campaigns that the media overlooks unless the race comes down to a few hundred votes in one state. There is reason to take heart though.

We can push this narrative. Whenever someone talks about the election and mentions the poll numbers or media coverage you should talk about the ground game. when people talk about how mccain lost it the election instead of obama winning it talk about the differences in organization and hard ground level work. the more we push the importance of the ground game in obama's victory as opposed to debates or katie curic interviews the more traction it can get.

Pat Buchanan loves to go on tv and talk about the economic disaster like it is a black swan event and but for that McCain would be right in this thing. This is simply untrue. Obama has legions more volunteers dedicated to contacting voters and making calls, getting his message than mccain does. Reading Quinn's series only seems to prove that in excruciating detail. If there were legions of mccain volunteers dedicated to getting him elected they would not have been scared off by the economy. He still has 40%+ support generally among the populace after all. The truth is that the Obama ground game will have been key no matter the outcome. The ground game can be the difference between squeaking by and a solid progressive mandate.

The story of the Obama ground game is important because, while its primary focus was on electing barack obama, the registration, canvassing and data entry it performed is invaluable to the down ticket dems. The organizing done by the obama campaign is not about just him but about the democratic party as a whole. he put infrastructure in solidly red states as an investment in the future. that's an important story. eliminating the excuses of the congress members who refuse to advance liberal or progressive legislation under threat of filibuster or defection may disappear because of the hard work done on the ground.

I expect all of this to be lost on the media at a large. Whether it is or not you can carry the story about the power and importance of the obama ground game to your community. let people know that their efforts on behalf of obama where essential. That the media is oblivious to this says more about them than the people who spend time on the ground doing this organizing.

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Media Takes Its Direction from Legal Process

I think it is often overlooked how interconnected the fields of law and journalism are. Both are, in theory, supposed to be about the search for the truth. In journalism that truth is supposed to be the events and the objective facts that apply in any given situation. In our legal system it is supposed to be about finding the truth as it relates both to equity and matters of fact. Namely what is the just out come of a case as dictated by law and society? Unfortunately the media has become reliant on a false interpretation of how the legal process works to find the truth.

The media commonly discusses the court of public opinion. they have set up our public discourse to reflect this. our current media works in an adversarial fashion with the 4 actors typical of any trial. We have the attorney's for the plaintiff and the defendant represented by the pundits from the two opposing sides. Then you have your judge, the media figure, who directs the case. Lastly we have the viewers at home acting as the jury. What the media likes to term fair and balanced is actually a bastardized version of our adversarial legal process.

The argument that the media advances is that they, like the judge in a legal case are not present to determine matters of fact. Decisions related to matters of fact are the domain of the jury. The judge is supposed to be the neutral arbiter of the case presented. The media tries to emulate this notion of neutrality, the removal of all bias from the process of getting to the truth. We know though that this is a sadly romanticized view of how things work in both the media and in the courts. there is also an important distinction that illustrates why the legal model does not translate well to the media.

The key is the rules of procedure that govern how the process operates. The court system operates along well defined, concrete rules of procedure that establish base requirements of the actors. One of these base requirements is the element of proof. At numerous points in a suit the defense may move to have a directed verdict that forces the judge to make a call on whether the prosecution has met it's burden of production or proof for its case. at this point the judge has to make a call about on the motion. this does not happen in the media. A debate taking place on tv lacks these features of procedure.

Something else that people fail to understand about the courts when translating the model to the media is that the facts of a case are not always the facts as they actually occur. They are rather found facts. Like the classic doll test of brown v board that the supreme court fully misinterpreted. The courts are bound by the facts available in the court room, the media should not be bound in this way. There is no limitation on the facts that the media could bring in. Any discussion should be conducted with a full agreement on the facts as they actually are not as they are assumed to be.

Something else that separates how the adversarial process works in the legal system and how it plays out on tv is that getting caught lying on tv carries little repercussions. getting caught lying in court comes with potential disbarment. It is true that there are lawyers out thee who lack the desired ethics but these people gain a reputation. The other lawyers and the judges and the clerks and the secretaries all know how they operate and they receive treatment and trust commensurate with their reputation. This is clearly not what happens in the media. People like jerome corsi and bill o'reilly and glenn beck and lou dobbs and sean hannity are allowed to go on tv and spew their views without censor. If tv was like the courts these people would be scoffed at and ridiculed by people like tom brokaw or even brian williams instead they are treated as serious opinion makers. what they said would have no merit to anyone.

In addition to this the criminal justice system has a big problem with favoring the big money players. The ability to hire the right lawyer for your case can be the difference between conviction and freedom. Money plays a role because only those with money can really afford to go to trial in many instances. The courts have serious issues when it comes to dealing with the poor and the indigent. The romantic image of a system where everyone gets their day in court is false.

We live in a litigious society and that is not a bad thing. having people take their problems to court rather than settling their problems vigilante style is fine. its even ok that many cases are settled out of court. Our society views courts and the rule of law as a forum for justice. We accord the images and trappings of this system with a certain deference and respect. It is natural to imagine that we could export the model we so admire to other areas of life, like the media. However, taking pieces of the process like the adversarial nature will not always succeed. This is the case with the traditional media.

Public discourse is not a trial. The public square is not a court room. we should not look to a gladiatorial style combat between adversarial pundits as the best method to find truth. There are not two sides to every issue and we should not force create them to satisfy the desire for a trial of the objective truth. If we are dead set on that path the very least we could do was put every tv pundit under oath. At least that way we can throw them in prison when they lie and subvert the debate.

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What is the role of the media?

Last night Cnn's Candy Crowley defined exactly how the media and the press denfine their job. They make it all about balance. They put out one sides version and the other sides version and say, now you can decide. Here is her performance.



There are many things wrong with this. As Mark Halperin notes the lies of the McCain campaign are more central to his candidacy than are the misstatements and fact stretches of the Obama campaign. What Halperin is citing is called context. Everything has a story behind it that allows people who hear it to understand what really is going on and why it matters. The media generally does not want to do this. They do not want to place the context and tell the viewer, reader etc that there is an objective reality and that not all sides are equal. They claim that that is not their role.

We do not accept this defense in a western enlightened society. This is the media equivalent to "just following orders". It is a process defense. by focusing on the formalistic process and not on the substantive process, the people in the media are allowed to abandon any moral or ethical duty to assert the truth. As long as the rules are followed then everything is legitimate. A soldiers actions are justified so long as he is just doing what he was ordered to do. This has the major flaw of taking into account the realities of the situation. If you have inequality or flawed input the process is not going to simply erase that, it does not make it all better. This type of thinking is all but obsolete in anything other field. Formalism has been replaced by pragmatism.

Media pragmatism should hold the view that because it is their job to inform the viewers any objective truth to a situation should be the foundation of that report. The story should not be what was said but rather that what is being said is not the truth. There should be no doubt in cases where objective truth meets lie. The lie and by extension the liar, should be spotlighted and denounced.

People rely on the press and the media to make sense of things they dont have the time for. Despite sharp declines, partly because of how poorly a job they do with it, in the trust people place in media sources big media ooutlets still have an important role in our society. they wield a legitimacy and not to account for and understand that in reporting should be a crime like "just following orders" is to a soldier.

A duty to report on and serve the truth.

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A Test of the Media

John McCain lies. A lot. So does Sarah Palin. I know it, you know it, they know it, and the media knows it. Palin and McCain continue to brazenly lie in the faces of millions of Americans. They feel that they can do so with impunity. When the the lies became egregious and the idea of calling them out as liars came up i was someone who thought that tactic would not work. The main reason for this was Biden and Obama's continued insistence on what an honorable guy John McCain is. It was really cutting into that point. Since i wrote that Obama and Biden seem to have stopped with this and are instead calling a lie a lie. So now it becomes a test of the media.

For most of his career the media has loved McCain. As Chris Mathews once said, they are his base. There comes a point however when even the base is going to walk away from you. If the media and the people who populate it have any integrity now will be that time. It is a true test of their willingness to adhere to ethics and morals. John McCain is lying around the clock on every subject under the sun. When confronted he refuses to admit they are lies. So the media has a choice. It can do the correct thing and develop a meta narrative that paints mccain as a serial liar willing to say anything to get elected or it can do nothing and let McCain castrate it.

That is really what this comes down to. It has been building to this for years as the GOP pushes the envelope a little farther each election cycle. They try and get away with more an more, becoming less and less discreet about the lies. They are at the point now where they will say anything with the belief that they can get away with it. The media has so far facilitated this type of blatant falsehood tactic by adhering to the strict "balance" idea of journalism.

The balance idea is really the crux of the issue. Right now the press is bending over backwards to find it. Creating false equivalences between the McCain lies and some minor Obama overstatements. They treat the facts as though they are subject to debate. News paper reporters try to avoid including the actual truth at all costs when it would clearly go against McCain. Instead they will couch the article in the classic he said she said terms. They rely on third party fact checks to carry the truth burden.

Now they are in a place where they are ridiculed from both sides. They have ever shrinking credibility. The McCain campaign is hoping to prove that the press is willing to just take anything in order to preserve the current system. McCain is counting on the dedication to formalism, tradition to keep the media from simply hammering him day after day on his tuzla like lies.

The flip side of this is that here the press has a chance to really redeem themselves and to make a statement about their commitment to democracy. Really thats what they fail when they refuse to simply get the truth out there without the caveats and false balance. By making sure that people know, unequivocally, that McCain and Palin lie about everything they can take a big step back towards being a venerable institution.

This situation tests the media in another way. If they do choose to go after McCain we should be able to see the changes in a number of places. His poll numbers are very high right now, including his personal favorable unfavorables. If the media hits him, and hits him hard, those numbers should drop if you think that the media cycle is really important. If they launch a sustained barage on McCain's honesty and the polls don't move then we know that the media cycle is not that important. That would really benefit the Obama campaign as their strategy is not based on the media cycle.

So the media has the test in front of them, passed out by the McCain campaign. Will they take it and Get an A by jettisoning this fake balance and bringing truth to the masses? Or will it be an F continued capitulation to McCain on his numerous and abhorrent lies? My own prediction is a D+. Some media people will discover integrity but the vast majority will continue the path to media impotency.

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Impact of Palin's Foriegn Policy Flub

The first thing to point out is that Palin's mishandling of the question regarding the Bush Doctrine is conclusive proof that she does not belong on the ticket. She is not ready and she proved it. Any one who wants that proof now has it. We need to keep hitting on that. That being said the real test of the long term impact of this is how the media covers it.

I fervently believe that if you approached the average voter and asked them to tell you about the Bush Doctrine they would have no clue. That means that any potential voter evaluating this interview will have no reference for just how important it is. If you want to learn about that yourself i recommend hilzoy's take over at Washington Monthly

The big deal about the Bush Doctrine was that it changed our position radically. We used to affirm, along with all other countries, a right of what has normally been thought of as preemptive war: the right to respond to an imminent attack against us, when we have credible evidence that it is imminent. When a country is obviously on the verge of mounting an invasion or a strike against us -- when its troops are rolling towards the border, or its missiles counting down -- we have never thought that we had to wait for that country to actually attack before we did. But we did once claim this right only in response to evidence of an imminent attack, not to a general sense that another country was in some way threatening. The point of the Bush Doctrine was to change that: to say, as Bush said at West Point: "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long." It was, basically, the acceptance of preventive war: war waged not in response to evidence of an imminent attack, but in response to the possibility that a country that was not attacking us now might attack us at some point in the future.

To anyone who had been following foreign policy in even the most cursory way, but who had somehow forgotten what the name "Bush Doctrine" referred to, Charlie Gibson's explanation would have made it clear what big Bush administration change in policy was under discussion. "Oh, right", such a person would think: "that."

For that reason, one of the most striking things about Palin's response, to me, was this: in answering Gibson's question, she seemed to think that she was accepting the Bush Doctrine, but what she actually said just restated the old doctrine of preemption. When, as Palin said, "there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people", the claim that we have the right to preempt that strike does not require the Bush Doctrine; it just requires the old, and much more widely accepted, doctrine of preemption. That is: in what Palin says here, she's not actually supporting the Bush Doctrine at all. She's just saying what generations of American Presidents and candidates have said: that when a country is actually about to attack us, we don't have to wait for them to actually land a blow before we can strike back.

So it is important. However voters may not know it was important that she know that. The term "Doctrine" linked to a Presidential name is a foreign policy term of art. It is elemental. Not to understand that makes you a real neophyte and Palin clearly did not understand the term. Again, regular voters may not know this. The key is now how the media informs them that this was a serious mistake.

People hate gotcha questions. We all hated the bullshit questions that were asked in the Dem debates, some even by gibson. Given the media circus surrounding Palin McCain will try to spin this as a journalist trying to trick Palin or embarrass her on tv. He will go right after the questioner. If he succeeds in making that case then the voters will believe that the question was a gotcha question and did not reveal anything about how qualified Palin is. If they think it was simply a trick it will make her even more sympathetic.

It becomes a real test of the media. McCain will not be happy he spent his credibility earlier this week on his lies because it only makes it more likely that they do a credible job informing the voters that this was a big flub. Voters dont need to know the Bush Doctrine or exactly how important it is, only that it is important. If they dont know it makes it very likely that they take cues from the reliable source, the tm. The press has a chance here to turn the debate back into substance.

This will get a lot of play right over the next 24 hours so pay attention to the way the coverage shapes up. Will the media dismiss this horrible flub or treat it like the deal breaker it should be?

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The Waiting Game

The conventions are done. This means that the media needs a new event to hype. The press requires something to help build up the horse race and boost viwership. It is simply the way they operate. Wait for this, wait for that. They are going to work on keeping the polls tight in any way they can. Unfortunately for them, this is going to be a period without any defining moments where the candidates are pitted against one another. Yes, you have polls but absent any events the polls will end up settling about a median. We are now, in the waiting game.

The waiting game should be familiar to any person who has been following politics. We are always waiting for something else. Take the primaries for example, We had to wait for Iowa. Then New Hampshire, etc. Each one was billed as the defining moment of the election -- until the next one. We had to wait for super tuesday then Texas and Ohio and then the big wait before Pennsylvania. The grass was always greener just around the bend.

We have had to wait every six months to hear that it takes six more months before we can judge the progress in Iraq of the Economy. We even have a term for that, The Friedman Unit. Everything is built around hype and expectations so that the payoff is never as exciting as the lead in. Political junkies are kind of like drug addicts in that the fix they get is never enough and they always crave a new one.

Maybe instead of the waiting game it should be the Procrastination game. We put off things we know are important, like looking at McCain's record. It will get done once he wins the nomination, they said. Then it was, once the Dems have a nominee. Then it was wait until the convention because thats when campaigns really start. So we waited on the scrutiny of McCain's record. Still waiting.

We are also waiting to see the high powered Obama offense on sustained attack. We see flashes of brilliancy. Brief pulses of urgency. Obama will give us a taste of his ability to hit McCain hard and take the initiative but then he seems to back off. At first we thought he was waiting till he had the nomination. Then we thought, he is waiting for the convention. Now we think he is waiting for the debates.

Surely at the debates Obama is going to just rip into McCain. Put him back on his heels. Surely the debates will showcase Biden's readiness and Palin's incompetence. Ask your self though, has the waiting worked out to well on that other stuff? One of the things i thought Obama was going to do was take it to McCain and conservatism in general. I have been waiting for him to do it in a unequivocal and strong way. It was the hallmark of the Kerry campaign that they waited too long to deal with the scurrilous lies spread about them. Kerry waited 4 years to long before giving a speech that really tore into McCain and conservative ideas.

Waiting on the debates is a terrible idea. It just builds up the expectations game. The media is already telling people to wait for the debates. If you start telling people to wait for the debates, and Obama tells people to wait for the debates, the hype and expectations will get out of control. Palin and McCain will just have to avoid drooling on camera to win.

What can you do to end this terrible waiting game? Volunteer. The only people not waiting are the volunteers. It is the volunteers who hit the streets and the phones for the campaign. Those are the proactive people, tired of playing the waiting game. If your tired of listening to the media tell you to wait, if your tired of waiting for Obama, if your tired of waiting for something to happen, take the initiative. Volunteer. Otherwise, your just going to have to wait.

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The "Liberal Media at Work"

The NYT has informed us that Kieth Olbermann will no longer be anchoring the coverage for MSNBC. The reason for this is very transparent and has to do with the unwillingness of the conservative media to tolerate integrity or honesty. Conservative media outlet nbc appeared to be tired of having Tom Brokaw embarrassed when he touted McCain line. they also really did not like it when he pointed out the politicization of 9/11 during the convention. I encourage everyone to go read the piece by Glen Greenwald linked below.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/08/msnbc/index.html

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Not Ready for Prime time

Can a candidate who is running for the second highest office in the Republic, the back up to the number 1 really be unready to face tough questions? that is the contention of the McCain campaign as they have decided that Sarah Palin is too fragile to answer questions over her record or statements. Palin will instead be hidden away and then trotted out only to give speeches to selected audiences controlled wholly and fully by the McCain campaign. Matt Yglesias has post on it with transcript and video from an interview with McCain campaign manager Rick Davis this morning.

SCARBOROUGH: Yesterday Nicolle Wallace suggested that she was sitting right there and told Jay Carney of Time magazine ‘Sarah Palin doesn’t have to talk to you, she doesn’t’ have to talk to the press.’ … Can we expect Sarah Palin on Meet the Press and other one on one interviews throughout the course of this campaign?

DAVIS: We’re going to do whatever we think is the best to win. We have 60 days left and if we think it’s a good idea to go out there and do those shows, we’ll do them.

SCARBOROUGH: Can you avoid it? Meet the Press?

DAVIS: We can afford anything we want to do. … We’re going to do what we think is in our best interest. If that means access to the press, we’ll give it to you.

If you missed the impetus for this you must read it. It is a testimate to the contempt that the republicans have for the voters and the country as a whole that they refuse to allow Palin to respond to the press.

CARNEY: We don’t know yet and we won’t know until you guys allow her to take questions, you know, can she answer tough questions, you know, domestic policy, foreign policy–

WALLACE: But I mean like from who? From you? Who cares?!

CARNEY: Who cares? I think the American people care.

WALLACE: I think the American people want to see her — I mean who cares if she can talk to Time Magazine? She talked to the American people. The American people want to say, “How am I going to save my home?” She can answer that question. … She took the stage and talked to the American people about things they care about: How they’re gonna save their homes.

You will know only what we want you to know and only when we want you to know it. This way they can trot Plain out in front of crowds and have her lie over and over and over again about things like her role in troopergate or the supposed sale of Alaska's jet on ebay or her purported opposition to ted stevens or he claims about fiscal responsibility or any number of other issues that will come out about Palin.

The McCain campaign is betting that it can force the media into letting this go. They may even be right about that. the media is essentially cowardly. They crave access to candidates like a crack addict loves crack. It is the life blood of their industry. This means that we will start to see the different stages of grief (or withdrawal) coming from them as the time progresses. McCain thinks that the process to acceptance will be relatively short and that the media will ignore the additons to the troopergate scandal as the come out.

I do not mean to suggest that there will be no interviews but the ones conducted will almost surely be done with people willing to lob softballs to her and avoind any potentially indelicate subjects. The fact that these sbjects are paramount to the discussion taking place is irrelevant. The McCain camp knows that Palin cant function without a script in front of her or on a screen so they dont plan to allow it.

If the media does allow this to happen it would be a total disgrace. this makes it all the more likely that it does happen as the media has never been known for avoiding things that make them look weak and ineffective. Palin has real questions that need to be answered and if Dems allow the republicans to get away with this then we might see some big trouble. Palin will be the attack dog and unless they can make her accountable to questions regarding her attacks those attacks will have no basis in fact or reality.

Lets hope the media does their job and forces Palin to take questions and clear her record instead of acting like a spoiled princess unwilling to fill the role required of a candidate.

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Every One Loves a Critic

Occasionally i read something and just love it. Not that often. This is a little old but i thought it nailed the TM to the wall. The piece is a written by LAT TV Critic Mary McNamara and it really deserves a read.

FOR DECADES, political pundits and voters alike have complained about the banality of the national conventions. Gone are the days when the party platforms really meant anything to anyone, when loyalties were bartered and policy deals hammered out in those iconic smoke-filled back rooms by men in wilting white shirts. Now it's just an office party of sorts, a series of scripted speeches and sound bytes signifying nothing. We are, after all, a nation that increasingly chooses its president based on that most ephemeral of factors -- personality.

So basically what we're looking for as we approach the conventions is some wonderful off-mike moment -- a backstage meltdown involving a Clinton perhaps, a racist comment from a McCain supporter, a wonderful/terrible political gaffe from either candidate. Something that would tell us all we really need to know without making us think too hard about the wars or the economy or our rapidly eroding education and healthcare infrastructures.

It is true and worth a look.

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McCain paying price for past soft treatment

Much has been said about the way John McCain does not understand modern technology. He does not understand the internet or youtube or google. This aspect of McCain’s campaign is not due to his age. No, instead this is simply a sign of how little he has had to worry about campaigning in the past. McCain has developed a confidence is his campaign ability built upon his lauded 2000 campaign and his return from the near politically dead last year. He has fallen victim to his own hype. He has such confidence that the media will treat him wonderfully, after all he is John McCain.

The Republican Primary was not an especially great test of skill. Without the Reagan heir apparent George Allen the different wings of their coalition were split. The candidates were flawed and not that compelling. In addition, they lost a great deal of oxygen to the Democratic race. Also missing was any challenge to the ideas being presented. None of those candidates went out on a limb they all wanted to claim the Reagan mantle. McCain claimed the mantle of Reagan and proclaimed himself a conservative. McCain rode the division between the Romney and Huckabee sectors of the Gop to win the nomination.

McCain has really come to rely on the light treatment from the media. When he was campaigning in New Hampshire all we heard about where John McCain’s vaunted campaign skills. He was lauded for his ability to hold town hall after town hall to win support. It might be revisionist but I have to wonder just how good those town halls were. If they were anything like the town hall described in multiple diaries yesterday they could not have been very good. Digging at all beneath the surface of a town hall like that reveals how fragile the McCain mythos is.

McCain relies on never having to answer followup questions on his statements. It is what has come from soft media treatment. The followups are where the scrutiny is. When he is asked to clarify his answers are usually as bad as the original. That happened with his statement about it not being too important when troops are coming home and it happens with his 100 years in Iraq comment. When asked for any depth or insight on his statements McCain cannot offer any. He has never needed to before.

Now he does. In this race his opponents do not care that he is supposed to be a straight talker. His opponents do not care that he claims to be independent. In this cycle Dems will be hitting him on all of the stupid things he says. They will force the media to pay attention. Even if the tm never gets around to announcing McCain is unqualified people will pick it up because every day he will have to respond to another of his stupid statements. Stupid statement like this one

“I will look you in the eye and promise you that I will get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice,” McCain said in response to a direct question from one of the 2,000 people in attendance at the college’s Pemberton campus gym.

McCain said the key to ending the long search for bin Laden was to increase the number of human spies abroad.

“We need better human intelligence. We need people who can swim in the water,” McCain said.

That is a really, really stupid statement.

McCain now has to answer for those types of statements in a way he never has before. Yes the internet has played a role but so has the soft media treatment. It has made him overconfident and sloppy. He bought his own hype and now he is going to pay the price for that.

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