What we are witnessing is a controlled experiment in modern campaigning: eliminate policy differences between two candidates; space out the primary schedule so that it remains empty for seven weeks, thereby creating a political-news vacuum in which the candidates and their supporters continue to give speeches, hold press conferences, or blog nonstop; and subject every word to the scrutiny and amplification of the twenty-four-hour news machine. The predictable result is that two appealing politicians will quickly start to lose their lustre, until, by the time Pennsylvania gets to vote, on April 22nd, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will seem like the smallest, meanest, dirtiest, lowest, most dishonest candidates ever to run for office in the United States. Q.E.D.Packer's conclusion, which I find hard to disagree with:
Blame it on the media (I do), blame it on the campaigns (them, too), blame it on all of us—on a political culture that requires trivial combat to feel alive (plausible; needs more reflection). But before you decide that there has never been a smaller, meaner, dirtier, lower, more dishonest Presidential campaign, pour yourself a drink and read a history of the 1988 race. Or the one in 1972. Or 1968. Or 1952. Or 1864. Or 1828. And then try to calm down.It does give a perspective on things.
Bye bye birdie. I should probably be ashamed of myself for paying attention to this story, but Media Matters, a self-proclaimed "progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media," has obtained footage showing that Obama did not make an obscene gesture that had Fox News and MSNBC chirping and twittering at week's end. The screen grab makes it clear he had raised two fingers rather than one as he was talking about his opponent at a rally in North Carolina.
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