A new study shows that candidates who appear on the show get a boost in contributionsIt is a dilemma confronting political candidates of every stripe: To talk with the media, or not to talk with the media? The upside of granting TV interviews is obvious. There is no such thing, for a skilled spin artist, as bad publicity. Except, of course, when there is. As John McCain and Hillary Clinton have both shown in the past few weeks, the benefits of reaching more voters—and donors—through the media must be constantly weighed against the consequences of misspeaking or being misunderstood.
This goes double for those hardy souls contemplating an appearance on the incredibly popular, but politically hazardous, fake news shows like Comedy Central's
Colbert Report, whose host, Stephen Colbert, in a jolly sendup of a cable news blowhard, skewers Republicans and Democrats alike. In a regular skit called "Better Know a District," Colbert gives little-known congressional representatives a national audience if they agree to sit down for some "tough" questions: He famously challenged Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, a Georgia Republican who supports displaying the Ten Commandments in the U.S. Capitol, to name them. (Westmoreland, in the spot broadcast on the show, could come up with only three.) Colbert recently asked Rep. Robert Wexler, a Florida Democrat, to help him finish sentences like "I like cocaine because..." and "I like prostitutes because..." (Wexler responded, with tongue in cheek, but with an anguished look on his face, "because it's a fun thing to do.")
Colbert gets his laughs, of course, but at a cost: Many political experts have come to believe the potential embarrassment of going on a fake news show can't possibly be worth it. Congressional aides have begun steering their bosses clear of Colbert. Even Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, has weighed in: "I wouldn't recommend that anyone go on the show," she advised her colleagues at a press conference in 2006.
These sage words aside, there may actually be a few reasons for politicians to give Colbert another chance—especially, it seems, if they are Democrats. In a straight-faced new study,
James Fowler, an associate professor of political science at the University of California-San Diego, has conducted the first analysis of the political consequences of a candidate's appearance on the
Colbert Report, and he finds that Democratic candidates who dare to go on the show, in particular, experience a huge "bump" in campaign contributions after the broadcast, no matter how silly Colbert makes them look.
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http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2008/04/08/a-bump-from-the-colbert-report.html?s_cid=et-0409
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