Voters are burned out. But why?
The New York Times has an article today about voter burnout already in the presidential campaign. All the usual suspects -- from Iowa corngrowers to senior citizens in New Hampshire -- are quoted.
Bleah.
As predictable as the day is long, is that the media -- yep, that's us -- would roll our eyes and proclaim "it's too early" while we do stories day in and day out that give voters almost nothing on which to make a substantive decision. If this sounds familiar, it's the same technique used by the media to keep Paris Hilton in the news, even if the way they kept Paris Hilton in the news is to ask aloud "why the media insists on keeping Paris Hilton in the news?" The same people who could "just say no" couldn't.
Leave it to a blog commentor to point out that which escapes the Michael Falcone on his excellent NYT blog, "The Caucus."
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I appreciate the attention on how well these candidates can organize and raise money, but as with the last two elections, this was the focus and look at the state of our nation at this point in time. It hasn’t been worse in for a long time. You have a responsibility as a news organization to bring us more than just where these candidates are travelling to, how much money they’ve raised, and the repetition of poll-figures.
Point taken. Point ignored.
The Associated Press has been running some fine campaign stories in the last week. They're analysis. And they have almost nothing to do with the issues, and everything to do with the issues at the same time.
For example, today there's one on Barack Obama. Is he ready for primetime? One could argue that 's a real issue.
But more often than not, it's not really analyzing the candidate's positions, it's analyzing the candidate's strategy, as in the piece on Rudy Giuliani.
Covering presidential politics is hard for a reason: people, for the most part, really don't care until Labor Day before the election (trust me: I'll show you the online traffic statistics for our own campaign sites over the last 10 years). And yet, there are reporters hanging all over any candidate who steps into a cornfield in Iowa or a coffee shop in New Hampshire. By the time that Labor Day comes around, however, reporters are sick of covering a presidential campaign that the main street voter is just starting to pay attention to.
So it's hard to argue that the voters are already "burned out", given that most haven't even started giving a rip yet. More likely: campaign finance reports and caucus campaigning mean nothing to these voters. That news only appeals to the political activists, who already have a horse in this race.
One of the things that has struck me, for example, as I've put together the 2008 version of Select A Candidate (which should be out later this week), is that John McCain still hasn't articulated a health care plan? Huh?
And yet, there is he on some talk show every other Sunday, and nobody presses him on why a candidate who's been running for president in one form or another for 10 years still doesn't have a vision for health care in this country?
Part of the dynamic here is that broadcast media is no longer the place to get information on issues, that's where online is eating their lunch and will continue to do so right up until the very last buyout. I stumbled across an interesting "compare the candidates" application today, by the way. WCVB in Boston has it. It's a nice start.