Margaret Carlson self-parody watch.
Margaret "they didn't feed us well enough on the plane" Carlson has an opinion piece on the perks and contradictions of being a Washington Insider:
The only thing the public hates more about the press than watching it harangue officials with gotcha questions is watching it cozy up to those same officials at Washington's annual round of press corps dinners, now in full swing.
Journalists are supposed to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. So how come they're all in formal attire eating lamb and sipping champagne and chuckling with, if not fawning over, the president, the vice president and the sundry members of the Cabinet and Congress they have begged to show up?
It's a good question to which I don't have an answer, perhaps because I have done my share of chuckling and fawning. The latest stop on the circuit was the Gridiron Club dinner last Saturday...
What's the ultimate point of all this self-reflection? That Barack Obama would make a good future presidential candidate for the Dems. Why? Because, in Carlson's view, he was genuinely entertaining at the Gridiron Club dinner. Or, as Carlson gushes: "Occasionally, an over-hyped star proves he's not all hype. That's what happened with Senator Barack Obama at this year's dinner. He had the right mix of skewering the opposition and himself."
In fairness to Carlson, she includes one brief, familiar paragraph on Obama's impressive life story in addition to ruminations on his comedic skillz. Then comes the familiar conclusion:
After John Kerry and Al Gore, and facing the prospect of Hillary Clinton, one of the most polarizing figures in public life, the Democrats may decide to put likeability (and brains) ahead of experience and age. If so, they need look no further than the senator from Illinois.
Carlson can't seriously think Dem primary voters opted for Gore and Kerry because they were old. But, that bit of nonsense aside, we're basically back to that old "likeable" canard. Pundits views about who is "likeable" are of course entirely subjective. As Hendrik Hertzberg has pointed out, it's not really even a matter of opinion. It's a matter of taste. Moreover, pundits' tastes don't always coincide very closely with those of voters as measured in the opinion polls. This newer shtick about "most polarizing" is largely a crock too. HRC-mongering may make for good Regnery sales, but recent polling indicates she draws less polarized responses from independents than Kerry or Gore and is not significantly less popular among Republicans than either of them.
Then there's the problem that (as I argued before) being a press darling is hardly a riskless affair for your average Democratic pol. There was a time (say, 1991-92) when the press flat-out adored Bill Clinton, but that didn't stop them from later trying to distroy his presidency in a fit of insider pique. And there was a time when conventional wisdom held that Gary Hart had the charisma and smarts to remake the frayed, outdated liberal concensus for the post-industrial world. But then the press destroyed him too, over an affair and the possibility of an "open marriage". More recently there was the scandalous and under-analyzed way reporter/pundits turned on Bill Bradley at the end of the 2000 Democratic primary when it became obvious he wasn't going to win (and, worse, was sucking air from that more authentic "maverick", John McCain.) And, of course, there's the punditocracy's concerted and still-ongoing effort to turn Howard Dean -- possibly the most serious conservative outsider to make a run at the Democratic nomination since Paul Tsongas -- into some sort of liberal-wannabe-revolutionary curiosity. The press had spent a lot of 2003 building Dean up too.
But whatever. You won't find any of this in Carlson's faux-self-examination. Her point, as ever, is that the Dems would finally start to win if they'd only nominate someone she could be enthusiastic about.
The only thing the public hates more about the press than watching it harangue officials with gotcha questions is watching it cozy up to those same officials at Washington's annual round of press corps dinners, now in full swing.
Journalists are supposed to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. So how come they're all in formal attire eating lamb and sipping champagne and chuckling with, if not fawning over, the president, the vice president and the sundry members of the Cabinet and Congress they have begged to show up?
It's a good question to which I don't have an answer, perhaps because I have done my share of chuckling and fawning. The latest stop on the circuit was the Gridiron Club dinner last Saturday...
What's the ultimate point of all this self-reflection? That Barack Obama would make a good future presidential candidate for the Dems. Why? Because, in Carlson's view, he was genuinely entertaining at the Gridiron Club dinner. Or, as Carlson gushes: "Occasionally, an over-hyped star proves he's not all hype. That's what happened with Senator Barack Obama at this year's dinner. He had the right mix of skewering the opposition and himself."
In fairness to Carlson, she includes one brief, familiar paragraph on Obama's impressive life story in addition to ruminations on his comedic skillz. Then comes the familiar conclusion:
After John Kerry and Al Gore, and facing the prospect of Hillary Clinton, one of the most polarizing figures in public life, the Democrats may decide to put likeability (and brains) ahead of experience and age. If so, they need look no further than the senator from Illinois.
Carlson can't seriously think Dem primary voters opted for Gore and Kerry because they were old. But, that bit of nonsense aside, we're basically back to that old "likeable" canard. Pundits views about who is "likeable" are of course entirely subjective. As Hendrik Hertzberg has pointed out, it's not really even a matter of opinion. It's a matter of taste. Moreover, pundits' tastes don't always coincide very closely with those of voters as measured in the opinion polls. This newer shtick about "most polarizing" is largely a crock too. HRC-mongering may make for good Regnery sales, but recent polling indicates she draws less polarized responses from independents than Kerry or Gore and is not significantly less popular among Republicans than either of them.
Then there's the problem that (as I argued before) being a press darling is hardly a riskless affair for your average Democratic pol. There was a time (say, 1991-92) when the press flat-out adored Bill Clinton, but that didn't stop them from later trying to distroy his presidency in a fit of insider pique. And there was a time when conventional wisdom held that Gary Hart had the charisma and smarts to remake the frayed, outdated liberal concensus for the post-industrial world. But then the press destroyed him too, over an affair and the possibility of an "open marriage". More recently there was the scandalous and under-analyzed way reporter/pundits turned on Bill Bradley at the end of the 2000 Democratic primary when it became obvious he wasn't going to win (and, worse, was sucking air from that more authentic "maverick", John McCain.) And, of course, there's the punditocracy's concerted and still-ongoing effort to turn Howard Dean -- possibly the most serious conservative outsider to make a run at the Democratic nomination since Paul Tsongas -- into some sort of liberal-wannabe-revolutionary curiosity. The press had spent a lot of 2003 building Dean up too.
But whatever. You won't find any of this in Carlson's faux-self-examination. Her point, as ever, is that the Dems would finally start to win if they'd only nominate someone she could be enthusiastic about.
6 Comments:
Obama's favorable-unfavorables are at 29-8, but the big margin just be because Democrats are more likely to have heard of him than Republicans.
I'm big on the likeability thing, as you might guess, and I think that it plays a big role in shaping voting decisions. But likeability claims need to have rigorous polling data behind them, or else it becomes a subjective mess. (If Edwards didn't have great numbers he does, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be so crazy about him.)
Neil, you can turn anything into a flack for Edwards! (And of course, I agree with you about likeability and polling. But do you think Edwards could wow 'em at gridiron?)
Edwards was my choice in 2004, and still would be. I think Laura underestimates HRC's negatives. In addition to the fact that about 35% of the population wouldn't choose her over ANYbody, she is easy to parody and to turn into a strawman. The same Swift Boaters would have a field day on her, while part of the left wing already considers her a traitor.
nightshift, I agree with you. I don't think HRC is unelectable, but I think she has intrinsic problems beyond the fact that she's totally uninspiring. (And I'm somebody who found Kerry intermittantly inspriring.) She'll be very easy to caricature and the Republicans will simply run a campaign geared at making the white suburban women who switched to Bush in 2004 vote against her. It will be an ugly misygonist campaign and probably very effective imo.
But I don't see much evidence that she's "the most polarizing figure in public life" -- that rank and file Republicans hate her more than they hate any other major Dem to come down the pike in the last 10 years. It's just one of those lazy things pundits assert without thinking about it.
I preface my comments by quoting a Bostonian in 1972: "Nixon won? But everybody I KNOW voted for McGovern!" Point: it is very dangerous to draw conclusions from a data pool that is not representative of the whole.
That said, my personal experience is that otherwise rational, educated men say the following about HRC: "If she wins, there won't be any more elections (e.g. she will do a coup)," "I'd vote for Satan over her," and "She'd ruin this country." (Yeah, like W hasn't done a fine job of THAT.) So, while I'm no defender of the punditry, I have at least anecdotal, directly observed evidence on that point.
I think Hillary is unelectable because of one (so far) obscure fact: she was on the board of Wal-Mart from 1986-1992. That and the flag-burning thing are going to piss off lots of leftists. I know lots of Democrats (i.e., Bradley) served on corporate boards. But at this point, Wal-Mart is a very special case.
Specifically about likability: I give Carlson a free pass on this one because every now and then journalists need to loosen up, or they would go crazy. Every now and then I like to see someone who is generally serious giving themselves permission to dream. But what she means by "likability" is this: that this politician understands me. Which is an ace in the hole for any politician.
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