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We’re in the midst of the earliest campaign season ever. Or are we? Historian Michael Kazin makes the case that not only has permanent politicking being going on for years, but it's actually part and parcel of the electoral system itself.
Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani is known as “America’s Mayor.” But reporters who covered him as Gotham’s mayor know there’s more to Rudy than one day in the rubble. Newsday’s Ellis Henican and The Village Voice’s Wayne Barrett talk about covering Giuliani.
Congressman Dennis Kucinich is again seeking the Democratic nomination for the President. He’s serious, but the media, when they cover him, are not. This despite the fact that his anti-war position is far more popular in ’07 than it was in ’03. We speak with Kucinich and his former media advisor Jeff Cohen about getting treated like an oddball.
The first presidential primary is a year away, but that hasn’t kept the press from sizing up the frontrunners’ prospects. So far, the main criterion is not so much policy or fundraising ability as electability. Are the media playing at king-making? We ask Wall Street Journal reporter Jackie Calmes.
Election-night graphics had barely faded from TV screens before the media rushed in to explain what the vote meant. One narrative was that the Republican base turned against its party because it felt betrayed. Another was that the electorate was registering its disgust with the war. But Time.com Washington editor Ana Marie Cox tells Bob that many of those explanations are, in fact, myths.
Media were all abuzz over Barack Obama when he revealed on "Meet the Press" that he would consider an ’08 presidential run. Coming on the heels of a Time cover story and Obama’s well-received second book, media across the political spectrum were chanting Run, Barack, Run. National Journal columnist William Powers has anatomized the rise of candidates in years past, and tells Brooke that Obama is right on course.
Whoever ends up running in ’08, observed Paul Waldman on TomPaine.com, Obama offers Democrats a "lesson in how powerful rhetoric can capture and exploit a political moment." Waldman is a senior fellow at the progressive think tank Media Matters for America. He tells Brooke that Obama cannily established his personal and political identity with two early speeches that hark back to Reaganesque oratory.
’Tis election season - a time for the press to explore the issues, like vote fraud and voter suppression. Only the challenge for newsrooms is how to inform the public about the problems with voting without discouraging them from going to the polls. Michael Waldman is the executive director of the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law. He joins Bob to discuss the fine line between news and hysteria.
