I would have enjoyed a Rudy Giuliani nomination. It's not even because of the number of times he dressed drag or kissed Donald Trump, because if that's your thing, then that's your thing. He would have been a fun opponent partly because he thought that using the NYPD to walk his girlfriend's dog was a good idea, mainly because of the way people liked him less the more they actually saw him and how his candidacy was showing the weakness of an "all 9/11 all the time" rhetorical strategy.
A Huckabee nomination would have been a royal treat, a complete carnival from start to finish. Once again I wish conservative Christians had the strength of their convictions rhetoric and actually voted for the guy in enough numbers to put him at the top.
McCain as the GOP nominee isn't going to be fun. I think the Democrat face it, Obama, will win, but down-ticket races will be harder, and the Presidential election is going to take more work and money than with any other nominee. The reason isn't because of John McCain himself; he's nearly as unpleasant and uninspiring in person as Rudy Giuliani and actually has a record of more flip-flops on more issues than Mitt Romney's most fevered dreams. And there is his conservative problem. I don't mean people like Rush Limbaugh or other of the Right's scores of entertainers posing as human beings with particular beliefs and convictions. The Religious Right, while they will of course dutifully support whoever the GOP nominee is, will do so for McCain with much less enthusiasm than in elections past. Without a red-hot Religious Right running to the polls on election day, the GOP always does poorly, and it doesn't look as if anti-gay discriminatory laws are going to do the trick this time around.
But if John McCain is the GOP nominee for President, the Democrats' main opponent ceases to be the GOP nominee.
The media becomes our main opponent, of course. Pundits and reporters love John McCain. With an extremely safe Senate seat in Arizona, McCain has long treated the media as his true constituency and has lavished far more attention on reporters than any of the so-called Independent thinkers of Arizona who keep sending their beloved Maverick back to DC, over and over again, so he can spend another six years logging more hours on Meet the Press than he does within the borders of the state he claims as his own.
It's possible that this cozy relationship will sour, of course, as McCain the outsider becomes the ultimate GOP insider as their nominee. Possible, but quite unlikely because of the family system which operates in the current media environment.
By "family system" I'm specifically referring to the branch of therapy known as Family Therapy, which focuses not upon individuals as individuals but as part of various systems of relationships. And it's clear to me that the problem with the way the media covers politics isn't with individuals. Not even the Unholy Trinity of Russert, Matthews and Hannity are actually responsible for the deplorable state of journalism in this country.
In keeping with the tenets of systems therapy, I would suggest that almost any of the most troublesome journalists and pundits, if we were to move them from their current setting into one that rewarded accuracy, honesty and substance, would become responsible journalists dedicated to pursuing their craft with integrity. However, if we did that and then put them back, no matter how strong their convictions, they would almost certainly revert to snickering middle school gossipers within seconds. The system is stronger than the individuals.
It's been this way for a while. For a myriad of reasons, almost none of which have to do with journalists' personal political opinions, the media environment has been incredibly hostile to Democrats. The reasons for this have been discussed and dissected and really aren't important here. What is important is that in 2000 the Democrats ran against George Bush and lost - blah blah Florida, it shouldn't have been that close - because our real opponent was the media. In 2004 Kerry ran against George Bush while Bush hardly did anything at all, because Kerry's opponent was the media environment, the established narratives about Democrats.
Democrats have been trying to get their message to the voters, while the GOP has been working on getting its message - that is to say, the message it actually wants to get out - to the media, because they know that the media will then do its job and dutifully spread their message for them. Therefore, while I do believe, again, that Obama will be our next President, the only way that we can really put McCain away, the only way we can have great success with downticket races and the only way that we can ensure a better media, and therefore political, environment for President Obama and the Democratic Congress is to focus upon our nation's media.
It means letters, emails and phone calls. Lots and lots of letters, emails and phone calls. It means US newspapers, from the NYT and WaPo to your local daily, need to be deluged with letters to the editor correcting mistakes and calling out uncritical repitition of conservative spin in their articles. It means ombudsmen need to be under siege from dedicated progressives who take their newspapers to task, not for "bias" nonsense, but for factually untrue statements, for letting McCain get away with lying, for relying upon "he-said, she-said" articles when one side is claiming the sky is green and 2+2 = 9/11.
It means advertisers receive an unprecedented number of complaints and threats about where they choose to market their products. It means producers and station owners hear constantly about the hateful things their entertainers say, about the lies and distortions their pundits perpetuate.
And it all needs to be about lies, distortions, stenography, complaints at a lack of substance, etc., not vague yet vicious attacks over bias. That's the method the Right has used, and while it's effective in its own way, employing the same methods from the Left isn't going to do anything to change the system.
Our news focuses upon missing white women, Lindsay Lohan's breasts, Obama's middle name and headgear and all the rest because for all they know that's what people want. So we need to change that. Every time some reporter, pundit or editor pauses before reprinting a GOP press release or passing along pointless gossip, we win. Every time an advertising sales rep has to spend time dealing with a skittish client over what some blowhard like O'Reilly, Limbaugh or Beck says instead of using that time to sign up new clients, we win.
This is concrete action that each of us can take. It doesn't take money, it doesn't take connections, it doesn't even take that much time. And I'm making it one of my goals to regularly provide our readers with information to get the word out that the current system simply isn't acceptable.
