Love Is in the Air
Monday, November 21, 2005
Printable FormatTHE NATIONAL JOURNAL
By William Powers
So I was listening to a Barack Obama podcast the other day, and ... Wait, did I write that? Yup, it's that time again. The 2008 White House campaign is taking off, as media people scan the landscape for would-be, could-be presidents, and see talent everywhere. Even Al Gore is having a micro-comeback.
Why now? The first year after a presidential election is a dead zone for political journalists, a time when they must hang up their silly campaign hats and focus on serious matters of national policy. Words like "statecraft" begin to seep into the coverage. It's painful.
When November finally rolls around and the year is over, it's like a little bell goes off, signaling that the fun - the race! -- can start again.
This time the bell was really loud. Journalists like their politicians on the upswing, not the down. With President Bush sucking air, naturally they're on the hunt for rising stars, rock stars, and all of the kinds of stars that presidential aspirants get to be.
Here's Time magazine's Karen Tumulty on one of them: "Democrats are starting to think that outgoing Virginia Governor Mark Warner may finally have figured out what it will take for their party to start winning in the South again... Shouts of ''08!' greeted his entrance at [Gov.-elect Tim] Kaine's victory party last week."
One of the most sacred rituals of presidential-campaign journalism was observed last weekend, as Warner and Sen. John McCain made "news" by going on one of the Sunday shows and not saying anything about whether they're running for president. "I have not made any decision," Warner said on CBS's Face the Nation. McCain said he would make a decision in a year. This coyness is intoxicating to the media -- drives us wild, makes our hormones race. "McCain and Warner Won't Rule Out '08 Run," said the headline on the Boston Globe's Web site.
McCain scored the cover of Newsweek this week. True, it's not a political cover, it's about the debate over torture. And McCain, the world's most famous torture victim, turns in a passionate, bylined essay. But we all know what's also happening here. McCain is a hero to the media class, the guy who is always real with us and always calls back. Seeing him in the '08 race is one of our tacit dreams.
The other is Obama. True, media handicappers tend to dismiss him as too young, too inexperienced, strictly VP material. When National Journal recently asked congressional and political insiders, "What political figure do you think has the most potential to be president 20 years from now?" Obama blew away the competition.
But 20 years is a long time, and media mojo has a short shelf life. Despite all the other names being thrown around -- Warner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Evan Bayh, et al. -- Obama is the one Democrat who elicits a McCain-type response from media people, right now.
I went on Google News this week and ran a search on Obama's name. It produced about 2,100 recent news stories. That was far lower than McCain's number (8,100) and Hillary Clinton's (3,700), but still a high level of coverage for a freshman senator. Another freshman senator who's been in the news a lot because of Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana Republican David Vitter, appeared in only 1,150 stories.
A Google search is unscientific, and quantity of coverage says nothing about the content itself. But what's really striking is the tenor of Obama's clips, the magic he works on and through the media. It began the moment he gave his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, and news outlets gave him a kiss so long and deep, even he made fun of it.
The swoon has continued. Everywhere he goes, Obama becomes the story. Here he is after Hurricane Katrina, on This Week with George Stephanopoulos:
Stephanopoulos: Up next, Barack Obama. In his first network interview since Katrina sparked a new national debate on race, America's only black senator speaks out.
Obama: There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America. There's the United States of America.
Stephanopoulos: And later, the Dalai Lama.
Later, indeed. There is Obama at Rosa Parks's funeral. Look, now he's on The Daily Show, and very deft on the irony front, too.
And let's not forget the nice little mentions that lately stud the political news columns. In a Los Angeles Times story about the way the two political parties are changing, for instance, Ronald Brownstein says of the Democrats: "Contrary to popular perception, the problem isn't a shortage of ideas. Consider the energy issue. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., recently offered an innovative deal in which Washington would relieve the auto companies of some of their retiree health care costs in return for the companies' accepting higher fuel-economy standards." A front-pager in The New York Times, about rich people running for high office, notes: "Blair Hull spent $29 million last year against Barack Obama in the Illinois Senate race, but could not even win the nomination."
Big ideas. Giant-killer. Biracial. And don't get me started on his podcasts -- the guy has this medium down like nobody else in national politics. Not since FDR's fireside chats has a -- See what I mean?