Here’s what I’m learning: For those of us who like the sound of “Internet democracy,” who yearn for political and cultural renewal and “transformation,” the entrenched obstacle is not the old politics. It’s the old media.
Of course the 2004 campaign has been about media all along. If our politics has been about only One Thing since 9/11, I’d say it’s about the fight to rescue a Republic (“of the people, for the people, by the people“) from the temptations of Empire (of the foreign oil, for the corporate class, by the military). But if our politics is about more than one thing, the next most important fight is about voices in this democracy. Who gets to speak? Who gets to exercise more than a vote? Who’s empowered to join the conversation that defines the problem and makes a priority list of responses? Who gets to feel the rush of public engagement? The Internet invites a vast expansion of that expressive franchise. For the Internet-minded, the core issue in 2004 lies outside the party lines or the standard list of left-right choices. As blogger Matt Stoller has written, “we are witnessing a nonpartisan war between those reactionaries who reject the widening spatial boundaries of politics and those visionaries who embrace them.” Not the least of the Internet’s charm is that it reminds us subliminally of a beloved myth, the open American frontier. It reconnects us with both the free-speech and the community of town meetings. It fires up again the self-reliant Emersonian dream of a liberated nation of vocal non-conformists. “The Internet, like the frontier, is about creation, growth and open spaces,” Stoller observes. And for all those reasons, we are seeing, it scares some people and some interests half to death.
The Howard Dean campaign (much more than Howard Dean himself) has come to stand for the possibility of an Internet democracy. From the beginning there was no separating the “political” and “media” tracks of the campaign’s offensive. Didn’t he say early on that he was running for president because the alternative was to spend the rest of his life yelling at the TV set? Dean’s defining thrust was against the war in Iraq, in which even before it began the big newspapers and TV networks were embedded. His first contribution was simply to sound an anti-war alarm that institutional media had muffled. Millions of people knew intuitively that his warning was wise; millions more know it now. He began with a bold exercise in definition–a job of critical journalism that our big media don’t perform these days. In large dimensions and small (like his chippy defiance of Tim Russert), Dean’s campaign was a critique of the somnolent self-satisfaction that runs through our housecat press. And people loved him for it.
My two-track verdict on the Dean campaign to this point is this. The politics of it is powerful, in a real sense triumphant. But the media strategy in it has proved dangerous, maybe terminal in this 2004 campaign. The political machine surrendered to Dean before Christmas. But an ugly media machine has risen up in January and very nearly destroyed him.
First, the politics: the Dean campaign has recharged our limping democracy for a generation, with vivid fresh examples of what citizenship can mean: all that self-starting civic energy, the MeetUp mobilizations, the decentralized consensus, the articulate idealism, the viral activism. Bill Bradley called it the best thing he’d seen in politics for 20 years or more. Is there any question that the model of mayor’s races and Congressional campaigns in the future will be found in the citizen spirit that the Deaniacs put to work? This is the point that I believe old pros like Al Gore and Tom Harkin were endorsing. They’ve seen the future of progressive organizing, and they know it works. In its small-sum fundraising on the Internet, the Dean campaign cleansed the Augean stables of campaign finance when bought politics had come to seem the unbeatable rule. And it put a compelling short list of serious issues on the table for all to argue: the extension of health care, the refinancing and reinvention of public education, responsible realism in a world that wants to respect us. Even as Howard Dean’s vote totals were coming up short, the field of his rivals was sounding more and more like him on the identifiable issues. It misuses the language to call this a political defeat.
For the same reasons, John Kerry’s “victory” in Iowa and New Hampshire seems to me thin in its political dimensions. In his confused reiterations, his no-apology apologies about an unpopular war in Iraq, Kerry has conceded a point to Dean, not won one. A child of privilege and a multimillionaire, two years ahead of George W. Bush in Yale’s secret sanctum Skull & Bones, Kerry makes an implausible populist, no candidate to open up a stuffy Washington establishment. Kerry was an authentic hero of our generation in his twenties–in hellish warfare and then the anti-war movement. But the presidential campaign emphasizes the combat bravado, not the misery of his letters home from Vietnam: “…I will never stop trying to bring to people the conviction of how wasteful and asinine is a human expenditure of this kind,” he wrote in 1968. Where is that insight, that voice, today? Kerry is campaigning this year as Bush Heavy. Sometimes I wonder if he is trying to unlearn his own lessons from Vietnam. In his go-along vote on war with Iraq in October, 2002, Kerry betrayed his past and core peacenik constituency. He was a dupe, and he still can’t admit it. In brief: beside the slippery claim of “electability” and the Bush slogan “Bring it On!” is there any mandate implied in the votes for John Kerry?
No, the results so far are not about politics. They’re about an assault by commercial media on the very idea of a self-willed, self-defining citizenry. Howard Dean scares the institutional media out of their wits–not because of who he is or what he might do as president, but because of what he and “Internet democracy” say about them.
In September, 2002, right about the moment Howard Dean was deciding to run, the nonpareil media critic Jon Katz was writing prophetically on the New York University web page: “The flight of the young has become central for our understanding of what journalism is or needs to be. The young drive our new information culture. They invented and understand new forms of media–especially the Net the the Web… They understand, too, the extraordinary power and meaning of interactivity, and how it is redefining narrative and story-telling… But journalism doesn’t get it, and has resisted the idea fiercely. Newspapers, newsmagazines and TV networks haven’t radically changed form or content in half a century, despite their aging audiences, and growing competition from new media sources. They are allergic to interactivity. Increasingly, it appears they are incapable of it.”
Katz forecast it all. The Dean campaign is everything that contemporary journalism is not. If you believe he is their worst nightmare, it’s small wonder they tried to crush him like a bug. Almost every touch from Big Media has been to cheapen the Dean cause, to miss the point, to find some personal excuse not to notice the Dean movement. “Who is the Real Howard Dean?” Time magazine asked. A week later Newsweek, on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, put “Doubts About Dean” on the cover. Tom Brokaw testified on NBC that he hadn’t been able to discover any Internet effect on the voting in Iowa. On the night of the caucuses, Bob Novak averred on CNN that there never was any such thing as a Dean movement. These are famous last words from dinosaurs. Samantha Shapiro’s cover piece in the New York Times Magazine late last Fall was, oddly enough, a high and a low. She put her finger on the brainy idealism that had drawn young computer geeks from all over the country to Dean’s headquarters in Burlington, Vt., but she and the Times’ photographer also left the strong impression that these were strange barefoot nerds who’d concluded that a political campaign was a way to get laid.
Then came the infamous scream on caucus night in Des Moines. Here’s the simple test of news judgment: if you’d been in the frenzied hall with the Deaniacs that night and heard the candidate’s finale, would you have called home to report it? I saw a performance quite like it the night before in Iowa City, and thought nothing of it. Yet there it was on a ridiculous clip of party tape–a lot less embarrassing than, say, George H. W. Bush upchucking in Japan–but in a few thousand repetititons a new character had been launched, the “red-faced ranter” surrounded by somber doubts that he could be “presidential.”
The TV coverage of the New Hampshire returns was appalling. The big three networks stuck with prime-time entertainment. So we were stuck with cable panelists: hyperactive, all about themselves, not us or the country, a stream of cliches. No end of trite phrases were turned to trivialize Howard Dean and his effort. Though he’d never been credited with courage or forethought in crystallizing the dangers or doubts around Iraq, he could be demeaned now in second place on primary night as a mere anti-war candidate, a latter date McGovern. And of course he was dissed continually as a caricature of “anger,” no matter that a large majority of New Hampshire voters told the exit-pollsters that they were angry, too. William Kristol made the only point I’ll remember: that as long as Iraq remains a bleeding wound, John Kerry’s vote on the war leaves him wide open to Howard Dean’s critique.
Richard Reeves made the shrewd observation on our “Blogging of the President” broadcast Sunday night that something fundamental had changed since John F. Kennedy and television exalted eachother in 1960. What had happened was that the TV networks discovered that American audiences were more interested in football than in politics. Sure enough, we are being conditioned again this week to understand that everything that happens in the Superbowl is more important than almost anything at stake in a presidential campaign.
It’s a dismal moment in American media, and just the right time to be developing a real conversation on the Web. The revolution will not be televised, but maybe it will be blogged.
{ 32 } Comments
“…just the right time to be developing a real conversation on the Web.”
If you are soooo interested in conversation why did the plea go out before Blogging for the Presidency for questions to be addressed and then they were summarily ignored?
Why was Frank Rich’s question about insularity and blogging totally ignored?
Looking back, Ed Cone’s reference to an Internet bubble bursting again was prescient. Jim Moore’s Dot Com piece is golden. In what sense were Dean’s internet advisors yes-men? Do you truly promote an initiative like blogging as a political meme by suppressing dissent, or are you setting the trap for its eventual demise?
DH – blogging = Hubris for Tyros
Yes, the media has treated Dean unfairly, but any Democrat who runs for President these days should expect negative treatment by the media, and plan accordingly. People gave money, time, and endorsements to Dean so he could become the President of the United States in 2004 — not President of the Blogosphere or the Guy Who Would Be President If It Weren’t For That Damn Media.
Geez, Chris you sound as if you will be donning lovebeads and praising the Maharishi soon.
A revolutioin is being televised, just not the one many would hope for—and as much as I see the Internet as a window on a brave new world, I don’t have sense that it is about revolution, more about a lot of people with too much time on their hands time.
Oops many apologies about typos (you might add a preview feature/button)
Version 1.2
Geez, Chris you sound as if you will be donning lovebeads and praising the Maharishi soon.
A revolution is being televised, just not the one many would hope for—and as much as I see the Internet as a window on a brave new world, I don’t have a sense that it is about revolution, but more about a lot of people with too much time on their hands .
While I see a grain of truth in the above complaints, I think Chris’ point basically stands: there’s more going on here than just “internet geeks don’t get the real world” as Robert seems to think, or Seth’s “the media is always tough on Democrats”. Dan has the best caveat, I think: the campaign has done some amazing things so far, but part of its current troubles may be self-inflicted.
Bilge water. I’m sorry that’s an offensive thing to say, but that was my immediate response when I read through this.
According to what I’m reading here, Dean lost because Americans, who voted in record numbers in the primary in New Hampshire BTW, don’t care about politics. Something about more interested in football. Why don’t they care? Because they didn’t vote for Dean.
No, wait a sec — that wasn’t it. It was because Big Media is scared of the bloggers and conspired against Dean.
Not because the people made an independent choice for someone else. Not because they felt that Kerry was a better candidate, or that they also liked Edwards in Iowa. Not because they were capable of seeing through rhetoric and making an informed decision.
No, Dean lost because the people are sheep, or Big Media is out to suppress the blogger’s power. Did I read that correctly?
I originally thought all of this was about picking the best candidate to defeat Bush this fall. I didn’t think the only thing that mattered was making sure we had a candidate who was wired into weblogging.
DH: Speaking as someone who was in the studio filming/observing The Blogging of the President, I think it was an honest mistake that blogger questions didn’t get into the show. It was an experimental merger of old media and new… multiple guests in multiple states, phone calls, emails, too much to cover in two hours. I’m sure the next show, if there is one, will make a point of online-offline conversation. There’s a rich opportunity for tv and radio to do something interesting with blogs here.
I think Christopher is right on about this, although the media story is surely more complex. Howard Kurtz takes a good look at it. Dean didn’t kiss up to the media and give them an easy narrative. He didn’t fit into one of their easily-categorized boxes, so they had to push him into one of theirs, be it “Internet-wunderkind outsider” or “angry doomed freak.”
Of course Dean is partly responsible for his public image, and of course the voters can decide for themselves. But – of COURSE the media is the hugely influential goop between us and the candidates. I look forward to studies that concretely show the negative press mentions of Dean and examine the snowball effect.
Blogs obviously represent a very real – economic – threat to big media. You’d be naive to think otherwise; they’d be naive to ignore it. The revolution will be blogged, if it isn’t co-opted first.
I for one just want to say, I’m with you, Christopher. I listened to The Blogging Of The President on MPR the other night and scoffed at the “bubble bursting” comment, how short sighted. The internet is just ripe for politics, and blogs are the way to do it. There’s a reason every other candidate including Bush jumped on the campaign blog
bandwagon as soon as they could, because they saw how well it
worked for Dean.
To say that the internet had no effect on the campaign or the votes is short sighted, to say that one could find no evidence of a blog effect is asinine. You hit the nail right on the head, these are the words of the ailing dinosaurs of the old media.
And should we really just expect that the media will treat Democrats unfairly? Isn’t the media supposed to be UNBIASED? This is part of the issue here, the old media is waning because we can’t trust them to
do there jobs anymore. When the media is run by large corporations, how can you trust that they will speak to the masses, the people, instead of simply serving the agenda of the few powerful elite that
own them, and have an interest in certain stories not making it on air, or certain people not being president? This is where it gets really critical that we have an unbiased and free media. This is why
the new media needs to be truly democratic, of the people, by the
people, for the people.
The internet is so much more than a bunch of geeks with too much time on their hands, and so is the Dean blog, and internet politics. Think of all the ways the internet has already changed your life and all our lives, then realize what it can do for politics, and organizing in general. People in other countries use it as an organizing tool to fly
under the radar of hostile govts., so can we.
I started a blog just 2 days ago, and the impetus was my rage at the very same top down old media machine. I had had enough of the Dean smear campaign from the supposedly unbiased, non-partisan media. And I decided to say something about it. To me that is one of the great powers of a blog, it gives you a voice in the world. It gives anyone a voice, not just those with lots of money. ANd that’s one of the reasons why I think blogs are creating a revolution. Any amount of belittling, just drives the point further.
I suggest that in 2004 the blogosphere should have hitched its “virtual president” wagon to a stallion — instead of Mr. Ed.
It was a mistake for so many people to affix their own identity to this quirky man simply because an ex-employee was plugged-in. Many people can write good policy and have well crafted ideas. Only one – and yes he must be palatable – gets to be prez.
The web is still working. We’re still here. In 2008, maybe it’ll happen differently. Today, we all have much work to do.
VERY weak argument. Extremely one-sided on all of your subjects, all the way through.
The main thrust of your agenda, it seems (besides for the faultiness of big media), is to attempt to belittle Kerry while making yourself feel better about sticking with Dean. You’ve done nothing to convince me, a still undecided voter, that the Dean machine is marching to a different tune.
“A child of privilege and a multimillionaire, two years ahead of George W. Bush in Yale’s secret sanctum Skull & Bones, Kerry makes an implausible populist”
Strike: Dean grew up in a priveleged family. Dean went to Yale.
“William Kristol made the only point I’ll remember: that as long as Iraq remains a bleeding wound, John Kerry’s vote on the war leaves him wide open to Howard Dean’s critique.
Chris’ analysis is fundamentally correct insofar as the media dinosaurs are concerned. We are all pundits in one way or another and the net will someday find a way to propel clever or emgaging remarks not to audiences but to other particpants. In this, blogs are not yet even the model T.
I look forward to a starting a conversation about how we might structure the process of driving a model T of participatory democracy (or, more likely at first, of a corporate one).
What Chris has written, below, is the most eloquent, and in some ways right now the most bittersweet, detail of the very real contributions of Howard Dean to American politics. I was not a “Deaniac” but I have been a very good observer waiting for things to shake-out, as it were. I have sent this particular piece of your writing to some of these “media types with talk shows” who are banging the funeral drums for Howard Dean. I ask them to consider these contributions you list. I hope you don’t mind. Thank you so much. I hope this graph gets picked up and “beaten to death in the news.” And I think we should all thank and say a prayer for Howard Dean.
Tess
“First, the politics: the Dean campaign has recharged our limping democracy for a generation, with vivid fresh examples of what citizenship can mean: all that self-starting civic energy, the MeetUp mobilizations, the decentralized consensus, the articulate idealism, the viral activism. Bill Bradley called it the best thing he’d seen in politics for 20 years or more. Is there any question that the model of mayor’s races and Congressional campaigns in the future will be found in the citizen spirit that the Deaniacs put to work? This is the point that I believe old pros like Al Gore and Tom Harkin were endorsing. They’ve seen the future of progressive organizing, and they know it works. In its small-sum fundraising on the Internet, the Dean campaign cleansed the Augean stables of campaign finance when bought politics had come to seem the unbeatable rule. And it put a compelling short list of serious issues on the table for all to argue: the extension of health care, the refinancing and reinvention of public education, responsible realism in a world that wants to respect us. Even as Howard Dean’s vote totals were coming up short, the field of his rivals was sounding more and more like him on the identifiable issues. It misuses the language to call this a political defeat.”
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Here’s what I’m learning: For those of us who like the sound of “Internet democracy,” who yearn for political and cultural renewal and “transformation,” the entrenched obstacle is not the old politics. It’s the old media.
I think that, in the 7 years since you posted this, Politics is becoming a more thought of idea after the recession hit, as people start to realise they wont be able to afford to go to the superbowls if their democracy cannot sustain a good economy. Following on, because of the economical crisis, the media is focusing more on the politics. I doubt this will last though…
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Kerry was a dupe? Always has been and will be. Another professional politician, unwilling to give anything, will take everything, and make you think he is doing you a favor.
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DH – blogging = Hubris for Tyros