In a famous exchange on live television in 1974, CBS reporter Dan Rather found himself the center of criticism for “talking back” to President Richard Nixon, who was on a national speaking tour to try to revive his reputation during the Watergate crisis.

At an event in Houston, Texas – Rather’s home town – the White House correspondent was called on to ask a question. Nixon stared at him, apparently displeased, and there was a brief, tense moment. Rather identified himself: “Mr President, Dan Rather, CBS News.” For a few seconds there were some boos from the largely pro-Nixon crowd before Nixon said: “Are you running for something?”

“No sir Mr President, are you?” was Rather’s response.

Nixon resigned five months later.

In our current environment where reporters are painted as “enemies of the people” this anecdote seems from a lifetime ago; but in politics some things never change and we often hear around about this time in each election cycle that it’s a “marathon not a sprint.” Everyone, it seems, wants to run; or at least wants to have people speculate that they’re running, or wish they were running. So before we take a look at this year’s steadily-growing field, it’s also timely that a new movie tells – at least part of – the cautionary tale from another presidential primary contest in our recent past.

The Front Runner is the story of how 1988 Democratic candidate Gary Hart went from being almost a president-in-waiting to leaving politics completely in the space of a few weeks. It’s based on Matt Bai’s book “All The Truth Is Out” and recounts how a crowded primary field – they were referred to as the ‘seven dwarves’, including future VP Al Gore – came to be dominated by the activities and behavior of the former Colorado Senator. (It was also the campaign where another future VP, Joe Biden, was forced to drop out after being accused of plagiarizing a speech by Labour party leader Neil Kinnock).

In the end, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis ended up being the Democrats’ nominee, losing heavily to George H.W. Bush and prompting some significant self-examination within the party.

 

Spinning the electoral cycle

With the record-length government shutdown ending and a further ramping up of the Russia investigation this week, you’d be forgiven for missing that the airwaves are quietly starting to fill up with 2020 presidential hopefuls, as well as debate about others that aren’t officially in yet. One has even already dropped out.

So far ‘in’ on the Democratic side as we look towards the traditional early contests a year from now are a combination of some of the largely expected names – Massachusetts Sen Elizabeth Warren, California Sen Kamala Harris, and New York Sen Kirsten Gillibrand – as well as a couple of perhaps more unexpected entrants; Hawaii Rep Tulsi Gabbard and San Antonio Mayor and former HUD secretary Julian Castro. Somewhat ironically, the candidate who has been running the longest is also probably the least known: Maryland Rep John Delaney declared back in July 2017.

The latest to jump in is another mayor, South Bend’s Pete Buttigieg, a navy veteran and the first openly-gay man to seek the White House.

But just as important as who’s in so far is who’s not in yet – and among them are plenty of other Bs: Biden, Booker, Brown, Beto, and possibly even Bloomberg. The other “big B” though was always going to be Bernie Sanders, and the Vermont independent appears set to try to resolve his unfinished business from 2016.

Also mentioned as possibles have been Minnesota Sen Amy Klobuchar, Massachusetts Rep Joe Kennedy III, former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, or even McAuliffe’s close associate and former presidential candidate, yes, Hillary Clinton.

As well as an interesting gender mix this time out, perhaps the more obvious contrast is in the generational split – Sanders is 77, Biden and Bloomberg both 76, even Elizabeth Warren is 69 and Hillary 71 – with younger candidates perhaps banking on a more anti-capitalist appeal to disaffected voters who may have voted for Sanders or even Trump last time.

Despite potential attacks over their lack of experience, some of the stories about the younger politicians, to be fair, will write themselves; and with many readers these days not going much further than headlines in a feed, we can probably expect more like this one from The Hill:

Looking even further out, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who despite what Fox News might think isn’t constitutionally old enough to actually seek the presidency yet, did her reputation among young voters no harm this week when she called into a Donkey Kong 64 chat stream.

On the Republican side, of course, Donald Trump has been fundraising for his re-election since the day after his inauguration – the ceremony itself even reportedly under federal investigation. Whether he will face a primary challenge is just one more aspect of this unprecedented presidency that is simply unpredictable at the moment. Should it turn out that the president isn’t the GOP nominee, for whatever reason, there will undoubtedly be a line of willing alternatives – perhaps like Ohio Governor John Kasich, who might also think he has some unfinished business, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, or even, despite denials, former Arizona Sen Jeff Flake or newly-elected Utah Sen and former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

The Republican National Committee, chaired by Romney’s niece Ronna McDaniel, has already pledged its “undivided support” to Trump, but clearly it takes a brave pundit to say they know for sure what the political landscape will look like a year from now.

Covering the horse race

Some things are definitely changing. How candidates announce their presidential intentions, for example, as well as more structural changes to the rules: California announced it is moving its primary up from June to join the ‘Super Tuesday’ group on March 3rd. This in turn might force a rescheduling of the earlier contests, and will certainly require candidates to raise more money earlier in the process. While it might favour a home-state candidate like Kamala Harris, it could also backfire on the Democrats if the nomination ends up being decided too early.

But other things will probably not change much. We’re starting to get a sense already that the manner of reporting the campaign will be more of the same and, despite some outstanding individual journalism recently around the White House and the Mueller investigation, the temptation is great for news organizations to fall back into established forms of primary coverage.

NYU professor Jay Rosen reckons the inevitable “horse race” journalism that traditionally accompanies – and defines – political races will be even worse this time than it was in 2016.

Recode commented: “In any election cycle, the resuscitation of the “horse race” model of political journalism – two years of dissecting poll numbers rather than real political issues – would be bad. But for several years, Rosen said, Trump has undermined American political norms while simultaneously waging war on the reputations of journalists, making the situation even more precarious.”

MSNBC host Chris Hayes was even prompted to appeal for restraint in breathless campaign coverage before things get too out of hand.

Peter Hamby writes in Vanity Fair: “At a time when technology is transforming voter behavior at unprecedented speed, this is a problem that the mainstream media, even on its best behavior, cannot possibly solve without a drastic reimagining of what journalism is and how it reaches contemporary audiences.

“But not all hope is lost. If we think about policy journalism as simply the impact of governance on the American condition, the real human consequences of decisions made in Washington, D.C., and in state capitals, then policy journalism isn’t actually “really tough.” It’s just journalism. And in the Trump era, the best of it has grabbed us. So as we search for clues on how journalists can repair the forever broken state of campaign reporting, it’s useful to sort through the moments when meaty policy fights have overtaken the national political conversation, to understand how attention works in today’s media.”

It’s probably worth reflecting that the 2020 campaign is just starting to gear up at a time when journalism as an industry is facing still more institutional pressures – its “worst week in a decade” seeing significant job cuts and reigniting the intractable debate over revenue models.

In an excellent, wide-ranging piece entitled ‘Does Journalism Have A Future?’ Jill Lepore writes in the New Yorker: “Do editors sit in a room on Monday morning, twirl the globe, and decide what stories are most important? Or do they watch Trump’s Twitter feed and let him decide? It often feels like the latter. Sometimes what doesn’t kill you doesn’t make you stronger; it makes everyone sick. The more adversarial the press, the more loyal Trump’s followers, the more broken American public life. The more desperately the press chases readers, the more our press resembles our politics.

“The problems are well understood, the solutions harder to see. Good reporting is expensive, but readers don’t want to pay for it.”

And that’s an issue that’s not going to be fixed anytime soon, regardless of who is sitting in the White House two years from now.

Finally, The Front Runner was playing at the Movie House in the Dublin Road, which is currently showing Adam McKay’s terrific, Oscar-nominated Vice, about the relentless, quiet rise of Dick Cheney. Incidentally, on Thursday the same theater is showing a live broadcast from the National Theatre in London of David Hare’s new play I’m Not Running about an idealistic young female politician who may or may not be seeking the leadership of the Labour party.

Clearly no reference to current events there, then, but it seems that in the big political picture these days, everyone’s running for something, whether they admit it or not.

 

You might also enjoy:

Movies and Shakers – US political movies by Steve McGookin