By Mark Davis
We all have breathless questions about how the next five weeks will unfold. But with the vast majority of the 2008 presidential campaign behind us, the ink is drying on three lasting lessons no matter who wins:
1. Attempts to change the nature of campaigning are futile.The two things that everyone complains about - the costs of campaigns and their negativity - will be with us for the foreseeable future. I recommend embracing one and shrugging about the other.
Campaign spending is free speech. Candidates have to spend millions because they have to start running a full year before the Iowa caucuses. (Surely you know fundraising meetings are already underway for 2012.) But why lament this? Candidates ask for money, we give it to them, they run ads, and we either pay attention or not. Campaigns start absurdly early because we pay attention that early. The system works.
As for the tone of ads, every candidate's pledge to campaign less negatively lasts until his chops are busted in an opponent's negative ad. Then comes the "you have to fight back" logic, which may or may not be true because virtually no one has ever failed to fight back.
But, again, is this such a huge problem? Plenty of campaign ads stick to the issues, despite the impossibility of thoroughly addressing any issue in 30 or 60 seconds. Since ads are a terrible basis for making a choice in any election, try ignoring them in favor of the more thoughtful exercise of watching debates and reading multiple sources reporting from the campaign trail.
2. In an irony for the ages, liberal bias in the media culture's ivory towers grew to its shameful worst, and it didn't even matter.This is the year a Republican convention crowd mocked NBC with derisive chants because that proud network allowed its MSNBC brand to pass off the hateful spewage of Keith Olbermann and others as fair commentary.
This is the year the likable and respectable Charles Gibson risked that reputation on ABC to lay a clumsy trap for Sarah Palin with the absurd "Bush doctrine" question.
This is the year that the mightiest networks and newspapers shed all pretense of even-handedness and willfully joined the Barack Obama campaign in a blood oath to defeat John McCain and savage Ms. Palin in the process.
This will make a McCain-Palin victory particularly sweet for those of us who have had it up to our eyeballs with the advocacy and outright cheerleading that have poisoned newscasts and front pages for decades.
But even if the campaign staffers posing as reporters manage to succeed, the celebration will soon be dampened by the cold realization that the clout they once enjoyed is fading fast, hastened by the damage they have done to the standards of their own profession.
The "new media" - blogs, talk radio, podcasts - are a cauldron of loosely reined info-bits shot from a cannon that never stops firing. But even with their wildly divergent standards and often spotty reliability, these sources offer balance and insights their dinosaur brethren refuse to provide.
Complaining about media bias is so 1996. Millions have simply moved on. The once-venerable media giants who used to be our only spigot for news may strive to win back audiences by rediscovering objectivity, but one wonders how many will notice that they are even trying.
3. To end on an uplifting note, all the haranguing over gender and race has without a doubt moved us toward the goal of toppling both barriers.No matter which ticket wins, the next candidate of color will have an easier time because of the trail Barack Obama has blazed. The next woman to reach for the White House will benefit from a nation somewhat more used to the prospect because of Ms. Palin's candidacy.
And it is clearer than ever that politics mean far more to Americans than sex or skin color. Plenty of men love Ms. Palin; plenty of women don't. Mr. Obama's count will include more than 90 percent of black votes, yes, but millions of white votes, too. This is nothing but a good thing. The history-making rollercoaster of 2008 should provide a burst of pride for every American.
I would say pride and joy, but the joy part probably hinges on the actual results 37 days from now.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/09/three_campaign_lessons_so_far.html
