Colin Powell may have provided the swing-vote endorsement, but if Sen. Barack Obama should find himself delivering a victory speech on Nov. 4, he might want to include a shout-out to Philo Farnsworth and Vladimir Zworykin, two of the men most commonly considered the founding fathers of television.
Not since the Kennedy-Nixon race has television played such a significant role in a presidential election. The "Saturday Night Live" skewerings, the David Letterman-John McCain feud, the political meltdowns on "The View," the Gov. Sarah Palin interviews, the Joe the Plumber interviews, Obama's World Series lead-in (if there's a Game 6) and, of course, the debates. Even ancillary players experienced what television, augmented by 24-hour news stations and the eternal playback feature of the Internet, has become: Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) found herself pleading for folks to stop sending money to her opponent after she accused Obama of being anti-American on MSNBC's "Hardball."
This year's race has, at times, felt like it was as much about the media as about the candidates -- the Chris Matthews-Keith Olbermann convention coverage meltdown, Sen. McCain canceling on "Larry King Live" after CNN's Campbell Brown pushed too hard about the choice of Palin, etc. So it became easy to think that the real power lay with the relentless nature of the 24-hour news cycle and our obsession with video-heavy websites such as Politico and the Huffington Post.
But without television, YouTube would have much less to say about this election. Television is a very particular filter with a very specific power, and if that power was ever in doubt, all one had to do was watch the third presidential debate, preferably on a station utilizing a split screen. Obama looked so calm, cool and collected you half expected him to break into the opening strains of "Summer Wind." Meanwhile, McCain spluttered, blinked and twitched, possessed by a cacophony of physical tics that were, by turns, frightening and laughable. Yet seconds after the debate ended, even liberal pundits conceded that McCain had made some good points, perhaps a direct hit or two.
And then the poll results poured in, giving the night's victory overwhelmingly to Obama.
...[The] McCain campaign hasn't been very smart about television in general. In fact, you have to wonder if any staffers actually watch it at all. As Bachmann and vice presidential candidate Palin have lately discovered, the term "anti-American" doesn't play so well on TV -- the McCarthy hearings were televised too. Palin, like Obama, looks darn good on camera, and her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention last month made everyone stand up and take notice. But since then the closest she has come to owning the medium was when she good-naturedly chair-danced along to a rap song satirizing her candidacy on "Saturday Night Live." Certainly her few televised interviews have been less than successful.