Two weeks before election day, the hardball-savvy Rothenberg Political Report had this to say: “A big wave for Obama might be too much of a burden for Republican congressional candidates to bear at a time when they are already saddled with an unpopular Republican president and an unpopular Republican brand.”
In a year when the dominant media spin has been upended time after time, this is the latest twist of political storylines that have been rendered pretzel-like long ago. In a piece posted Oct. 21 on the CNN website, Stuart Rothenberg and Nathan L. Gonzales note: “McCain’s nonexistent coattails run counter to the initial conventional wisdom that said his moderate style and crossover appeal would lift Republican candidates down ballot.”
And so, as the long-running media saga of Barack Obama versus John McCain enters its final days, it’s apparent that the news media expectations for the 2008 presidential race have been routinely far from prescient — so distant from prophetic, in fact, that media watchers might have done better to flip a coin after asking for predictions about future developments.
Arguably, the current “unpopular Republican president” and “unpopular Republican brand” would have become even more unpopular sooner without the basic leanings of the news media. Since the days seven years ago when, in early autumn, the news media suddenly began comparing George W. Bush to Franklin D. Roosevelt in the immediate wake of 9/11, the horrendous follies of President Bush have — overall — been downplayed by the major media.
While Bush lost favor in many editorial offices and newsrooms, the distaste in such quarters tended to lag behind what was occurring at the grass-roots. That might be one reason why the present-day depth of dislike for Bush — and for the presidential candidate widely seen as his ally, John McCain — goes much deeper than many journalists had anticipated.
At this writing, the latest polls show Obama way ahead of McCain — and indications are growing that dozens of GOP candidates for House seats will lose on Nov. 4 despite the fact that this fall began with the conventional wisdom placing those seats in the “safe” Republican column.
What’s about to happen seems to be much more than the usual pendulum swings of politics. Something more fundamental is going on.
An era dominated by “trickle down” economics began in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan as president. Twenty of the following 28 years had a Republican in the White House — and, for the other eight years, President Bill Clinton did much to undermine the kind of New Deal principles that had at least vaguely undergirded a lot of the Democratic Party’s approach to national policies.
On the whole, the news media didn’t just cheer on Reagan’s — and, in recent years, George Bush’s — massive tax cuts for the wealthy. Mainstream journalism also urged President Clinton to imitate Republican talking points. And when he did, as with his “welfare reform” legislation that became law in 1996, most of the media establishment applauded.
As president, Clinton famously announced that “the era of big government is over.” Along that line, the deregulation of the banking industry that President Clinton helped to launch — when he championed and signed the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 — was, like the top-down assault on welfare, an effort to dismantle more of the New Deal apparatus.
The dismantling accelerated under the George Bush administration. And, in general, the news media portrayed such dismantling as appropriate. But the crash of the economy this fall has jolted the trajectory of American politics.
In just the last few weeks, an option that had scarcely been on the national media radar since the early days of the Clinton administration — a potential commitment to sizable federal jobs programs — has reappeared on the political horizon. It’s not just that the composition of Congress will shift in January 2009. Concepts of what is necessary and what is possible have scrambled since early autumn. The news media have been behind the curve, but the story is apt to become a big one in the months ahead.
