* Negative campaigning, as we all acknowledge, is something we all abhor. It brings out the worst in us. Why not focus on a candidate’s positives, rather than traffic in opponent downgrading? Why? Because negative ads work.
Hillary Clinton consultant Harold Wolfson put it this way: “There is very little awareness of (Donald Trump’s) business record, or other aspects of his career. I think when a story runs about the number of lawsuits he’s been engaged in or the number of people he’s sued or the number of people he’s stiffed payment, that’s new information.”
And Walter Cronkite once put it this way: “Most people are not interested in all the cats that did not get stuck in trees today.” What is not the norm is newsworthy–to media, to news consumers–and to voters. The unbribed judge, the uncrashed plane: not news.
The unconscionably unprepared, grifter presidential candidate: That better be news.
* Among young Democrats getting national media attention–as in being mentioned in the context of HUD Secretary Julian Castro and Massachusetts Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy III–is Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum. The 33-year-old African American, the son of a construction worker and a school bus driver, was elected in 2014. Prior to that the FAMU grad–and former student body president and first student member of FAMU’s Board of Directors–had been a member of the Tallahassee City Commission. In fact, at 23, he was the youngest person ever elected to the TCC.
Florida Dems have not had an impressive bench of late, and Gillum could be a major player in an upcoming cycle.
* What with a presidential campaign, Brexit and ISIS dominating the news, President Obama’s recent modification of the Freedom of Information Act received very little media coverage. That it will give the public greater access to government documents and records is noteworthy. The new law that the president just signed means federal agencies will have to operate under a “presumption of openness” standard. The previous presumption was that of secrecy.
It matters. It should now be harder to withhold information.