THE LOW POST: The Return of Evil Campaign Journalism

I bring all of this up because I've started to see the first examples of what I call the "Sweet n' Blow" campaign article hit the front pages in recent weeks. The Sweet n' Blow, as the name suggests, is a no-calorie substitute for real journalism, a gossip column masquerading as political reportage. It's one of the key techniques for use in turning the election into a politics-free character drama. A true Sweet n' Blow piece makes it from the lede all the way to the last line without saying one fucking thing about what the candidate actually stands for. Instead, it will tell you a lot about the candidate's strategy for improving his "image," which incidentally had originally been created, at least in part, by the very reporter writing this new article.

In other words, in July, X reporter says Y candidate "lacks the warmth and charm that voters respond to"; in August, that same X reporter says Y candidate is now "going on the charm offensive." During the same period, Z candidate maybe struggles to overcome a reputation for "flip-flops," and reporter X will spend those months detailing and ultimately arbitrating on the success of those efforts.

All of this bullshit obscures the fact that Democrats Y and Z are essentially the same candidate, backed by the same people and espousing the same positions. But it makes for good theater, and that's the important thing.

There was a classic example of this stuff this past weekend in The New York Times, in a piece by Adam Nagourney called "2 Years After Big Speech, A Lower Key for Obama." The Times, incidentally, is one of the chief producers of this brand of campaign journalism. In every presidential election, the paper manufactures its own story lines around fictional candidate struggles to conquer certain adjectives. They will show candidates fighting for the title of the most "nuanced," wriggling away from tags like "prickly," and racing to great final showdowns of adjectives in the general election -- "brainy" versus "folksy," "emotional" versus "plodding," and so on.

And make no mistake about it, they invent these controversies out of thin air. One of the most conspicuous instances I can recall was December of 2003, when reporter Rick Lyman ran a piece called "From Patrician Roots, Dean Set Path of Prickly Independence" and then ran a piece just a few weeks later in which Dean had to defend himself against Lyman's charges that he was prickly ("I can be prickly with the press corps... I'm not usually prickly with other people."). Reporter calls candidate "prickly," then asks candidate to answer charges of prickliness. Now that's journalism! The campaign press will follow the same formula over and over again, just changing the word -- a candidate will be accused of being too liberal (Kerry), too cold (Hillary), too "lightweight" (Edwards), too "unserious" (Sharpton), etc., until he either cries uncle or drops out. Using this technique the press can basically bludgeon any candidate into whatever shape it likes. When a candidate fails to comply -- when, say, a Kerry fails to demonstrate that he's not too "patrician" for middle America -- he is summarily punished and usually ends up a loser.