The brilliant idea underlying the Republicans’ overall political strategy for the past couple of decades is a consistent two-pronged strategy for dealing with the media.
First, denigrate your opponent’s character non-stop, while holding your candidate up as an embodiment of traditional, simple, heartland-of-America values. Those are the best kind of values, because they can be expressed in simple platitudes and one-liners that make your opponent seem foolish for not supporting them. (Which he does, most likely, but the implication is that he doesn’t.) If your opponent tries to defend himself against your smears, accuse him of going negative, and being desperate.
Second, while leading the media around by the nose, dominating every news cycle with a fresh, well-coordinated attack, always keep complaining bitterly about the Liberal Media Bias. This provides cover. Anyone who wants to believe the smears can ignore any fact-checking the media might rarely do, since he knows they are only trying to keep the truth from him. Those who may not be quite convinced the smears are true will still develop doubts about their object, because again, they can’t be sure the media is not just trying to snow them.
And since reporters don’t want to be thought of as biased, constantly saying they are pushes them to make efforts not to be. It’s called “working the refs” when coaches do it in sports. You complain about a few calls, and the refs make an adjustment and stop coming down as hard on your players.
Here’s what I think about Liberal Media Bias. I’d say it exists, at least to some extent, and in some media outlets. It would be hard to miss it on MSNBC, for example.
But it doesn’t matter. It just not as important as conservatives make it out to be, and is not the nearly the threat that conservatives would like us to believe.
It certainly doesn’t keep them from being able to tell their side of any story. The Bush Administration has no problem getting attention when they’d like to say something. There are plenty of conservative talk radio hosts presenting their views all across America every day, and conservative TV networks, newspapers, and magazines, too. Not to mention the Internet.
And what effect is the LMB supposed to have ever had, exactly? Is the Liberal Media to be blamed for affecting the results of elections anywhere or at any time? No specific charges to that effect seem to be part of the argument against this terrible scourge. Surely the mere fact that Bush has such dismal approval ratings, yet a guy who has claimed to vote with Bush 90% of the time is still competitive in this election, would indicate that the Liberal Media just don’t have much influence over voters.
But just for the sake of argument, let’s accept what Anne Coulter tells us, and simply agree that yes, the media is terribly, terribly biased. Reporters are a bunch of arugula eating socialists. Where does that leave us?
Well, it doesn’t prove that the conservatives are right, does it?
It doesn’t mean that their approach to government must be better than the liberal one. It doesn’t mean that they have a better grasp of foreign policy, or that they would do a better job defending our nation against its enemies. It also doesn’t mean the McCain campaign hasn’t been relying on an unprecedented barrage of lies to grab voters by the short attention span since the Convention, and that these fallacious attacks are having just their intended effect.
The Liberal Media Bias concept has been one of the most useful and effective tools Republicans have ever had. They complain about it only because that’s how it works. It has to be complained about to be an effective tool. It has been helping them win elections for a long time.
Thus, we discover that the Liberal Media Bias does actually influence voters. It makes them much more suspicious of liberals. Which is exactly what the conservatives invented it to do.
I must say, the strategy is brilliant. You’d think people would catch on, after a while, but apparently not.
