COMM 386: Politics, personality, polls, lipstick, pigs ...

A story by Jonathan Martin and Jim Vandehei in Politico.com headlined "McCain, Palin push biography, not issues" oughta be required reading for us. In fact, it now is: I just assigned it.

[I posted this yesterday, and had to update it this morning when the day's news was full of, yep, biography ... not issues. Howard Kurtz, media columnist for The Washington Post, summarized it nicely when he said GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin has "mounted an assault on the narrative of this election, dumbfounding all the pundits who said McCain's pick was "desperate" ... Now it's the media who are scrambling to explain how Hurricane Sarah has transformed the political landscape."]

The original biography-vs.-issues lede, by Martin and Vandehei, that got me started on this tangent:

When John McCain’s campaign manager said last week that this presidential election “is not about issues,” it wasn’t a Freudian slip. It was an unvarnished preview of McCain’s new campaign plan.

In the past week, McCain — with new running mate Sarah Palin always close by his side — has transformed the Republican campaign narrative into what amounts to a running biography of this new political odd couple.

In the duo's new stump speech and their first post-convention ad, the impression campaign strategists hope to leave is unmistakable. McCain is the war hero. Palin is the Every mom. And together, they will rattle Washington.

Considering the big challenges the country faces — two wars and a wobbly economy, for starters — the focus on personal narratives might strike some as jarringly superficial for the times.

How does this fit with what we've been reading in Neil Postman this semester? The Politico story continues:

But the McCain campaign is betting its best chance to win is by aiming for the gut, not the heads, of voters.

This should not come as a huge shock. For one thing, the political climate pretty much demands it.

The Republican brand is in the tank. And despite all his talk about independent-mindedness, McCain actually differs very little from President Bush on the serious issues of the day: Iraq, taxes, trade and health care.

This dastardly emphasis on branding, on image, shouldn't be blamed entirely on the dastardly Republicans, though:

... they got a solid clue on the best way to pull this off from none other than Barack Obama. They saw how his generalized message of change resonated. So while Obama was busy soft-selling the change portion of his campaign at his convention, McCain was busy stealing it — and busy downplaying the sort of issue-by-issue laundry list Obama delivered in his State of the Union-like acceptance speech.

So ... how does this play with the voters? A poll of previously undecided voters CBS News and The New York Times is well worth studying for what it tells us about how voters make up their minds and what it suggests about how they react to issues, "narratives" and political coverage. But first, a couple of key findings:

Among previously uncommitted voters who have decided to back a candidate, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin has been well received: 52 percent have a favorable feeling towards her, while just 18 percent view her unfavorably. Obama running mate Sen. Joe Biden is less well known: 54 percent say they don't know enough about him to have an opinion.

When asked directly what helped them to choose a candidate, 28 percent of these previously uncommitted voters volunteered Sarah Palin, making her the top reason. Sixteen percent volunteered the speeches at the conventions.

Previously uncommitted voters have been paying more attention to the campaign. Thirty-nine percent of all previously uncommitted voters say they have paid a lot of attention in the last few weeks, and 46 percent have paid at least some attention. When they were originally interviewed in August, just 21 percent of these same voters said they had been paying a lot of attention to the campaign in recent weeks.

Interesting. And now, to borrow a transition from Neil Postman, "now ... this" --

Previously uncommitted voters who have made up their minds are far more likely to say Biden is prepared to be vice president (71 percent say that he is) than to say the same of Palin (just 47 percent say yes.) But Palin is far more relatable to these voters, with 71 percent saying they can relate to the Alaska governor compared to 36 percent for Biden.

Hmmm. Why do voters (viewers, readers, media consumers, whatever you want to call us) relate to Palin more than Biden? Does it have anything to do with the politics of personality? Does it have anything to do with Postman's thesis that we cover politicans like we cover showbiz?