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Normally when I see a vast difference between my interpretation of an event and the media's interpretation, I just put it down to spin and stupidity. However, in this case, I have been shocked not by the media's bias in favor of Bush, but by the fact that the polling and punditry following both debates is actually much *more* favorable to Kerry & Edwards than I would have been.
What can explain this Bizarro world? Well, a few things:
You and I and everyone else who's on this board have spent a fair amount of time tracking Bush's doings and we have seen him do some pretty stupid shit. Many's the time we have marveled at how he is able to get away with it. And so in comparison with 4 years of stupid shit that Bush has pulled, Thursday's performance was really actually not that far out of the ordinary. It didn't produce a moment nearly as bad, say, as that "sovereignty means...uh...you're sovereign" gaffe at the minority reporters' gig, or the "OB-GYNs sharing their love" gaffe; nor will anything, in my mind, ever be as bad as that fucking 'trifecta' joke he was constantly trotting out.
However, we have been made aware of many of these little gems through alternative channels--mainly the internet, the blogosphere, and all that, but also cable news, which, I would point out, *a whole lotta people don't watch.* I don't have cable, so I only know about Tweety et al. from what I read on this board. Most people who don't have cable may watch CNN once in a while in an airport and that's it. The cable news channels do increase their impact indirectly, by setting the agenda for the majors. If you are just watching the Big Three networks--and never reading a paper, as many of our fellow-Americans don't--then you haven't seen Bush do most of this stuff. Usually by the time an image of him hits the big time, it's been edited to within an inch of its life.
So for the fencesitting undecided voters, those 90 minutes must have been a pretty big shock to the system. It's the first time that most of them have had the opportunity to watch Bush in a situation where he has to deviate from a script. Bush did just as poorly at his last couple press conferences as he did in the debate--but 90% of the people in this country weren't watching at that point. Now they are; and precisely *because* they haven't been paying attention, getting a dose of what Bush is basically just like on any day God sends must have been a tremendous shock to the system. "Oh my God!" they must have thought. "Our president is an idiot!" We have known about his idiocy for so long we're desensitized to it. For the Undecided Voter, it clearly was new information...because let's face it, if you knew what Bush was really like, would you be an undecided voter?
From the media's perspective, I think you have to explain it another way:
We all know the corporate media are all about style over substance. The truth is not their job any more, at least as they define it; it's all abotu packaging and selling images. Well. If you look at the coverage of Bush's debate, what they keep coming back to is their shock and amazement at how *bad* a job Bush did of packaging himself. They have been handling pre-prepared Rovian events for so long that they just got used to the idea that this administration is slick, smooth, and lookin' good. To suddenly be faced with Bush In The Raw (ow! My eyes!) and to have to STARE at him for 90 minutes must have offended every last sensibility they had. Oh my God, you can hear them saying. How did I never notice that this guy is a fucking DISASTER? Well, they never noticed because since the 2000 election they had never been forced to sit through 90 minutes of pure Bush goodness without any banners, backdrops, inspiring music, teleprompters, interesting costumes, fake halo effects, or adoring audience members pitching softball questions. And from their point of view, well, world-destroying policies you can handle...but the badness of Bush's self-packaging was a tremendous affront to the power of the televised image, and for these people, that's the only unforgivable sin.
On to the Cheney/Edwards debate, where I was kind of disappointed, but where all the pundits seemed to think Edwards had come out of it very well. Here, it just shows you the power of expectations. Liza and I had very high expectations of Edwards; everyone else appears to have been expecting him to crumble or to look like a lightweight. Also, again, we have been forced to follow Cheney enough that we are inured to his ghastly appearance, child-scaring snarl, and lifeless, grumpy monotone; for people who haven't been paying attention since he went into the undisclosed secret location, it must have been rather startling to compare Edwards on one side and the Walking Undead on the other.
Either way, this is an unexpected ray of light, and I think it is very important, for several reasons:
* Now that there's blood in the water, look for the feeding frenzy to begin. We all know that they all run around after the same stories like a school of demented fish. And they like it that now Kerry is making a comeback, because it makes the race more exciting. A come from behind finish will play very well to them as a narrative, especially when coupled with a dramatic crash-and-burn gruesome traffic accident story such as what's happening now with the Bush administration.
* As I learned when my beloved Cubs were eliminated from the playoffs last weekend, it doesn't matter if you had the lead going into the final stretch; what matters is that you have the lead when the season is over. Kerry was smart to wait until later to make his move. And barring Osama's head on a platter--which would still be too litte, too late, and too conveeeeeeeenient--I don't think the Bush administration is going to have the time, the will, or the smarts to figure out how to turn the car around in time for the election.
* Something I have seen mentioned in a couple of the reports jibes with something I have long wondered about. I saw someone, and I can't remember exactly who, speculate that maybe Bush's problem was that he has been shielded from criticism for so long that he was just surprised to encounter some and didn't know how to deal with it. The question has long been on my mind: how much of the micromanaging of Bush's campaign events, etc. has to do with protecting his media image, and how much of it has to do with protecting him? In other words, are they screening all these events and enforcing their "free speech zones" not so much because they don't want protest footage on the evening news, but because they don't want Bush to *know* how badly he's doing? Is is possible that, in fact, they have locked him into a fantasy world of spin, and he is under the impression that everything really is going great and everyone in the country still loves him? And if that's true, there are two possible reasons: 1) They don't believe that he is emotionally strong enough to handle criticism, and fear that he will snap as soon as he encounters it (as one might argue he did last Thursday. Or, 2) They want to keep him dependent on them so that he doesn't start prying into what they've been doing while he was out at Crawford. Or, 3), both, and more besides.
Either way, it bodes well for Friday night. Everyone will be watching now because they want to see the 'rematch.' Good luck to Kerry taking 2 out of 3.
C ya,
The Plaid Adder
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