Preparing for the Showdown

[Librado]

By Marie Cocco, February 26, 2008
Washington Post Writers Group

WASHINGTON -- Someone's halo has to slip and when it does, the fall will be jarring and the crash unusually harsh. The national media have two anointed sons in Barack Obama and John McCain, each the repository of extraordinary favor and each now poised to become the presidential candidate who may well be chosen to be an object of unrelenting scorn.

That is how things tend to play out in modern presidential campaigns, from at least the dawn of the stage-managed Reagan era if not to the beginnings of John F. Kennedy's Camelot. Who will be the next Al Gore, ridiculed and reviled for his intellectualism, his mannerisms, the color of his suits and the kiss bestowed upon his wife? Who is the next George W. Bush, the candidate of seemingly limited potential who somehow became imbued with what seemed like limitless appeal?

There is no impertinence in saying that Obama and McCain have both been media darlings. Obama has, by one empirical measure, gotten the most favorable press. A study released last October by the nonpartisan Project for Excellence in Journalism found that Obama, in the early stages of the primary campaign, was the clear recipient of the most positive coverage when compared to all presidential candidates, Democrat or Republican. "Taken together, nearly half (47 percent) of all stories focused on Obama were positive. That is roughly three times the percentage that were negative (16 percent) and exceeds the 38 percent of stories that were neutral in tone," the study found.

During the same pre-primary period, McCain received uncharacteristically negative media attention. But most of the negative tone involved coverage of the financial and political difficulties the McCain campaign was going through at the time, according to Marion Just, a Wellesley College political science professor who was one of the study's authors.

...

Soon comes the showdown. There are gaping differences between McCain and Obama on policies ranging from Iraq to taxes to health care. Yet the sorry journalistic track record of recent presidential history suggests that these will fade for at least one candidate as matters of personality and style -- and of course, the obsession with the horse race -- take precedence.

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