George Packer has a great post at the New Yorker lamenting the horse-race style of political news analysis. You know this style well: it’s one in which we tend to not get substantive coverage of the thing-itself (be it health care legislation, the stimulus, etc.) but just the highlights of the Washington debate about the thing; how politicians are using recent polling to take control of the narrative surrounding the thing; or (we can get as meta as you like here) how the tone of the debate of the thing will affect the public’s perceptions of the thing and how that might impact the fundraising prospects of this or that politician which in turn might wreak havoc on the electoral map.
For example, on health care, when death panels were all the rage last summer, we didn’t get much reporting about whether there was actually a provision in the bill that created a bureaucratic murder board. Instead we got a lot of coverage about the “death panel controversy”, and how the political parties are scrambling to take advantage of it. Lots of: “In Washington today Republicans continued to accuse the Democrats of wanting death panels. Democrats continued to deny the charge. Now let’s go to our death panel roundtable where they will take a look at our recent death panel polling data….” We never do learn whether death panels actually, you know, exist.
Every policy debate can be rendered into these meta terms. This sort of news coverage is so ubiquitous that we rarely even notice it. It’s appealing to the media and to media consumers first because it’s easy: to follow along requires no substantive knowledge of the underlying issue. But also, meta-political debates are fun! Campaign-style absurdities are awesome. There’s a reason that throughout 2008 I wanted to race home by 5pm every day so I could see Chris Matthews lean over his desk making his rabid spittle-face, breathlessly telling me about the latest psycho-dramatic twist in Hillary Clinton’s campaign, or what Obama’s batshit-crazy pastor was up to. It’s a serial soap opera for political junkies, and it’s irresistible.
But as Packer notes, it would be odd indeed if we treated every policy issue like we treat political campaigns:
It would be strange if the Times’s coverage of the financial crisis, which has been stellar, focussed entirely on things like Richard Fuld’s handling of his P.R. problems while Lehman was going down. And it would be strange if the paper’s coverage of Afghanistan, which has also been stellar, focussed entirely on things like Hamid Karzai’s use of traditional Pashtun rhetoric in his effort to ride the wave of public anger at the Americans.
Strange indeed, unless you work for Politico. There just so happens to be an item today about the financial crisis; specifically, about Hank Paulson’s new memoir, in which he apparently makes fun of the bumbling ineptness of Republican politicians during the TARP negotiations. Politico chimes in at the end: “But the Republicans might have the last laugh….” Hmm, ok, why I wonder. Because TARP is a spectacular failure and the U.S. banking system has collapsed? Er, no:
TARP is, arguably, the most unpopular federal program in recent memory – and voters seem poised to punish Democrats for passing it, even if Republicans like Cantor eventually signed off.
Ahh, TARP stinks because it’s unpopular. And the voters are poised, or, sorry, seem poised. Politico doesn’t happen to inform us whether TARP did or did not stabilize the U.S. financial system, or how the infusion of liquidity may have helped loosen the credit market, or whether the investment banks have already paid back all or most of the bailout money. All we’ve learned is that this entity called TARP is unpopular and Republicans are laughing about that.
What’s also interesting about this sort of coverage is the implict condescending exclusivity of it. We can read endlessly with detached haughtiness about “the voters” or “the public” without considering that we ourselves are voters and members of the public too. When Politico tells us what “the voters” are “poised” to do, implicit in that is, “we don’t mean you, dear Politico reader; you are not “poised” like those other voters are. We’re all just talking above their heads here at the adult table.”
This sort of detached condescension is the main feature of all tv cable news. We relish glimpses into what “the public” thinks, what it’s doing, who it might vote for, what new irrational nonsense it has been led to believe. But there are always two publics in mind: the one watching this sophisticated pundit show, and the other rubes out there who aren’t. We enlightened few who are watching reflexively exempt ourselves from the patronizing analysis being offered.
It’s harmful enough treating health care policy as a campaign, or foreign wars as a campaign, or averted economic collapse as a campaign. But Chris Matthews wrote a book a few years ago whose title declares that Life’s a Campaign, and he went on the Daily Show to talk all about it. John Stewart’s takedown of this frightening, fatuous proposition is absolutely classic. The book’s terrifying maximalist claim is really the inevitable culmination of treating serious public policy as all-contrivance, all zero-sum, all horse-race, all the time.
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