It is Survivor Not Seabiscuit

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For Campaign 2008, a new genre of political reporting has been invented. The old model for campaign coverage, the insider-savvy Horse Race style, has been sidelined. Welcome to Reality Gameshow journalism.

Stop thinking of this election as a race to the wire to be won by the candidate with the finest pedigree, truest form and best connections. Start thinking of it as a cast of larger-than-life characters, scheming against each other while simultaneously trying to appear attractive to the electorate audience. Week by week the group undergoes media trials such as candidate debates and Sunday morning interviews. Each primary election constitutes another potential elimination round.

The winner gets to be a constant television presence in our homes for four years.

With open contests in both parties, this Presidential cycle offered the perfect opportunity to unveil this new method of coverage. The casting of the contestants could not have been better. In one tribe, as they say on Survivor, there was a handsome Mormon businessman, a colorful big city mayor, a slimmed-down Baptist minister and a crusty war hero. The other tribe had a self-made trial lawyer, a globetrotting Hispanic diplomat, a diligent feminist with that interesting celebrity marriage and an inspirational young African-American.

On television, longtime morning anchor Katie Couric, now at CBS Evening News is the leading proponent of Reality Gameshow journalism. Last fall she launched a series called Primary Questions asking the same array of ten topics to each candidate and then editing the answers to each question in montage form. Some of the topics concerned public policy such as global warming and foreign affairs, but many sought insight instead into the candidates' morality, temperament, tastes and personal background. She said the series is "designed to help you get a better idea of who they are." Couric explained her rationale for this approach when she reported approvingly on campaign consultant Drew Westen, author of The Political Brain, and his theory that it is honesty and authenticity, not policies and programs, that voters are searching for in their candidates.

This journalism is on the constant search for glimpses of the authentic individual behind the soundbites and stump speeches. It prefers freewheeling Straight Talk to the Talking Point of the Day. Its pivotal moment of the New Hampshire primary was when Hillary Rodham Clinton came close to tears in that Portsmouth diner. Comparing the coverage of Mitt Romney's speech on his Mormonism with Barack Obama's speech on his minister -- the former full of abstract platitudes, the latter laden with personal anecdotes of racial stereotyping -- it is no surprise that Obama's made news. Rodham Clinton strikes a chord as the harried multitasking mom by running ads depicting 3am emergencies and blaming her fibs about Bosnian sniper fire on "sleep deprivation."

The main task of television journalism is not so much to cover the race as to create its organizing events. At the start of the primary season these were the debates. Just like weekly rounds of American Idol they provided the raw material of interaction that becomes the fodder for discussion and dissection online. Besides the delineation of policy platforms, the debates provide the glimpses of human interaction that can be rerun in news clips and reshared on YouTube -- "You are likable enough, Hillary" -- like so many overheard snippets from Big Brother.

After the debates, the organizing elements that television news offers are performances, otherwise known as set-piece speeches, and elimination rounds, otherwise known as primary elections. Sometimes one of these events sets off sparks. Obama's speech about Jeremiah Wright certainly did. When this happens, the different criteria used by Reality Gameshow journalism and the Horse Race become obvious. A Horse Race journalist would consult opinion polls to measure the size of the support for each candidate. A Reality Gameshow journalist studies the viral activity, the online buzz a candidate inspires, to see what nerve has been struck -- not the size of the support but its intensity.

In this context, the entire question of favoritism and reporters' bias becomes recast. It is true that there have been strains of Obamamania and Hillarybashing this primary season. But the gameshow model has now found its final trio -- the grizzled old codger, the diligent supermom and the charismatic orator -- and that is not bias. That is casting.

More important, the gameshow structure requires that each major player undergoes severe jeopardy, stares near elimination in the face, enjoys improbable last minute reprieves, overcomes daunting ordeals. Thus Rodham Clinton can enjoy near-inevitability in November only to face must-win crises in March. Obama can seem a post-racial inspiration in winter only to be encumbered by his race-based minister in spring. John McCain even resurrected that old Comeback Kid line.

The abiding interest of Reality Gameshow journalism is not that a given candidate should win but that the contest be dramatic and the ordeal rigorous enough that the eventual winner will be seen to have deserved the Presidency.

To be pompous about it, Reality Gameshow journalism sees a Presidential election as a profound ritual -- more sociological than political -- that allows us collectively to take our national pulse. Sure, the contest is structured as an election: that provides the jeopardy of elimination, the exhilaration of survival, to make it dramatic. But what is at stake is far more important than who happens to be the Leader of the Free World for the next four years. It is about our very definition of ourselves as a society.

Seeing these candidates as characters, demographic archetypes rather than individuals, allows the contest to tap into resonant themes that run much deeper than technical issues of public policy. Thus the Reality Gameshow style enables a proxy discussion on issues that go way beyond a Presidential election: the role of religion in daily life, the glass ceiling facing women, the privileges we should grant our warriors, the virtues of affirmative action, muttered racial resentments, the dislocations of a globalizing society. The stuff that is talked about in the barbershop and around the kitchen table, as the saying goes.

Horse Race journalism has become as passe as the sport itself. I mean! Who visits the $2 window at Aqueduct any more? Horse Race journalism asks: "Who is going to win?" Reality Gameshow journalism asks: "What are the latent enthusiasms and anxieties that this race has illuminated." If it were just a Horse Race, the election could take a few weeks. A gameshow requires an entire season.

And besides, the Reality Gameshow makes for better television.

Comments

[vugo]

Hopefully most people will vote with a different part of the brain than they use for watching TV but your cultural observation is very interesting.

Television is definitely the preferred social mirror. Noting the feedback loop of it's forms is an important part of seeing how it distorts our sense of ourselves and others. Reality TV has a nasty edge of disregard to its concept of elimination. Drama, for example, calls on our insight into characters who we know are not real to entertain; our empathy is our engagement. The modern game show denies sympathy and motive by having such basic competitive rules and no background or perspective on the participants. It is easy to see which better supports the harmony of discontent to which democracy aspires and which is a call to the mob who take comfort in being told that their prejudices are all that is required to understand.

However Reality TV is a new form and will be erroded by examination - The "survivors" will seem less alone when a "making of" episode becomes standard, swinging the camera around from the shipwrecked competitor to the nearby crew of 150 people. Drama will encompass the subject (as it did presciently in "The Truman Show") and show us the Svengalis. By then new forms may be distorting the mirror in other places.

[altohone]

Long post... good comments.

Since reality tv is often scripted yet sold as improvised, the analogy is apt.


I must wonder if the horse race model was dropped this year by the corporate media just because the establishment choices for us aren't running first and second.
It all seems very convenient that the third place horse is still given a chance despite "reality".

[caral]

Interesting observations.

[weinbob]

This is a very thoughtful article - I agree completly.

With Intrade prediction markets at 18% and HRC caught lying in an attempt to claim "valor" under fire should seem to be an election changing moment - but the game just keeps going. I am amazed at how many journalists are writing about how unfair it is to call for Clinton to quit. It is not how far behind she is, it is how she is conducting herself.

This effect was clearly seen in the coverage of Rudy, the guy was competing in Iowa and NH, then after spending millions and losing to Ron Paul the media kept proping him up as if he was actually scheduled for a different episode.

WJC taught a generation it was ok to $%^&*(, Hillary if she wins the nomination would teach another generation it is OK to lie ad fabricate to your face (I mean, Andrea Mitchell was in the audience most times she lied, and she was on the trip).

[EngineerBill]

As I skimmed through tis post I was bored silly with it until I read the last 3 paragraphs. Whether intentional or not. It seems that the author is pointing out a benefit of this type of coverage for our society. After all, if the public really thinks about"What are the latent enthusiasms and anxieties that this race has illuminated."And comes up with thoughtful conclusions. We may end up not only with the right president but also a better society.

[CaptainObvious]

Wow. That's 5 minutes of my life I'll never get back.

I guess I'd agree that the new "Survivor" model is better than the "Horse Race". But I wouldn't have written an article praising it.

Candidate's personalities are somewhat important, but we still are provided with precious little substance. Granted, it is a slight improvement over the completely substance-free "Horse Race" model, where the only issue of importance is who are other voters voting for. But in the current model, just like the actual game show, has nothing to do with whether they would be a successful candidate (or could actually survive in the wilderness). Instead, it focuses on petty bickering between the candidates, and who is forming alliances with whom.

Maybe if I was a fan of Survivor, I'd appreciate the current model more. But I'm more of a C-SPAN guy.