No, it probably won’t get much better. Pop culture, technology and the modern marketplace will likely co-opt major changes for better presidential-candidate media coverage. But having said that, too much is at stake to just surrender to the celebrity-stoked, bottom-line times we live in.
What we’ve been seeing–in this presidential primary season starring, so to speak, Donald Trump–has been a perfect societal storm of media enabling. It’s beyond embarrassing, especially for any journalist.
Not that we haven’t seen it coming.
Recall John McCain’s veep choice for his 2008 ticket. The shrilly uninformed Sarah Palin is now a cautionary tale–as well as a Trump hustings surrogate. Being in the wheelhouse of Fox and a godsend for Tina Fey should not amount to candidate bona fides.
But there’s also this: Palin was vetted more than Donald Trump. The latter is a bullying billionaire con man with his own brand, millions of Twitter followers and a simplistic take on all issues who’s never been elected to any office. Embarrassment morphs into shame.
Let’s reflect on other eras for broader context. FDR gave us iconic radio. JFK was pitch perfect on television. They were using the media of their day to communicate with Americans.
But fireside chats and press conferences were means to an end: Get us through the Depression; get us through the Cold War. They were riveting, rallying and even entertaining. But ultimately, they were about substance and being presidential.
As to campaigns, go back to 1960, when Howard K. Smith moderated those black-and-white, John Kennedy-Richard Nixon TV debates. They were never compared to carnival side-shows–although Kennedy’s good looks and cool demeanor, as well as Nixon’s 5 o’clock shadow and facial sweat, were well-noted optics.
But no manhood mockery. No stature put-downs. No liar taunts. No spouse abuse.
Now let’s go back a few months, to August of 2015. Ten Republican presidential candidates were on the big stage for the first debate, which was hosted by Fox News. I can still remember the words of Megyn Kelly before ending the pre-debate portion a couple minutes before 9 o’clock. “Please stay with us,” she implored the record audience. “We’ll be right back with the show after these messages.”
She actually said “show” and no one either caught it–or thought it of note. It was, indeed, a preening audition, a “show”–hardly a serious exchange of views among statesmen. It has only devolved since, with the media, as we’ve seen, more caught up in its own snapshot polls, gotcha questions, conflict-incitement, viewer numbers, ratings, sponsors and Trump-chasing.
Obviously, none of this media hustle is good for meaningful democracy. Obviously, it doesn’t seem to matter.
It’s enough to make one nostalgic for that imperfect period that pre-dates mass video–whether online or TV–dominance. When political coverage was primarily the purview of print journalists–and not network personalities with market demographics and ratings mandates–the goal was information aimed at consuming readers. It was about viable candidates and their platforms, strategies and supporters.
And, yes, there were pandering, red-meat quotes, intimations of back-room intrigues and plenty of horserace scenarios. The human condition finds a way. Newspapers–broadsheets and even tabs–printed it, side-barred it and analyzed it via editorial-page opinions and op-ed commentary.
Network television, which used to consider news a public-service loss leader back in the day, gave it images and immediacy and 15 early-evening minutes. TV’s role was manifestly limited–to entertainment and headlines. It was, as a certain popular comedian of the time once noted, “a medium: neither rare nor well done.”
Yes, before there was Jon Stewart and John Oliver, there was Ernie Kovacs.
No, there’s no going back, but we as a society–and as media–can still make this a better “show.” We don’t have to fall for bombastic con men. We don’t have to allow candidate manipulation because someone is great copy, however devoid of substance. We can spend more time, for example, explaining “super delegates” and how national committee convention rules can trump, as it were, certain delegate-gathering scenarios. We can demand answers to valid, necessary questions on domestic and foreign-policy issues.
We surely don’t have to play foil or straight man to the ultimate, ego-maniacal, misogynistic, empty-suit candidate just because he calls an ad hoc press conference or does a self-serving town hall. We don’t have to settle for the best Khardashian.
And we don’t, in the words of New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, have to become “lap dogs, not watch dogs.”