The Note
W A S H I N G T O N September 3—<br> -- Today's Schedule (all times Eastern):
—7:10 am: President Bush meets with the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, White House—9:30 am: Senate convenes for legislative business—9:45 am: Off-camera White House press gaggle with Scott McClellan—10:00 am: House Energy and Commerce Committee holds hearing on the recent blackout, Capitol Hill—10:30 am: Senate Budget Committee hears testimony from Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Capitol Hill—11:00 am: Reverend Al Sharpton attends the South Carolina AFL-CIO meeting, Myrtle Beach—12:15 pm: On-camera White House press briefing with Scott McClellan—12:15 pm: Senate party policy luncheons, Capitol Hill—2:00 pm: House convenes for legislative business—2:25 pm: President Bush takes part in a signing ceremony for trade agreements with Chile and Singapore, White House—2:30 pm: Congressman Dick Gephardt addresses the Alliance for Retired Americans, D.C.—2:30 pm: Senator John Kerry officially announces his presidential candidacy, Manchester, N.H.—3:00 pm: Senator Bob Graham walks down Main Street, Purcell, Okla.—4:00 pm: Arnold Schwarzenegger delivers a speech at California State University at Long Beach.—5:00 pm: Senator Kerry officially announces his presidential candidacy in a rally at Faneuil Hall, Boston—6:00 pm: Reverend Sharpton attends a private fundraiser, Baltimore—7:00 pm: Contra Costa Times/KTVU-2/KQED-FM Debate Forum in Walnut Creek, CA.—7:05 pm: Senator Graham attends a private fundraiser reception, Norman, Okla.—9:00 pm: Governor Howard Dean attends MeetUp, Santa Fe, NM
NEWS SUMMARY
Stop us before we become obsessed with process again.
The two main goals of political journalism should be to hold powerful interests accountable to the public interest and to explain to voters how to connect how they vote with what their government should do.
But send a pack of political reporters to cover a debate, a campaign kick-off, or, well, pretty much anything else, and the goals of political journalism would SEEM to be more like the obligation to illuminate how John Sasso and Bob Shrum are getting along, or whether Arnold Schwarzenegger's debate strategy will cost him in the polls.
Too often, sending a political reporter to do Robert Pear's job (and cover a story) yields nothing that will clothe a single child, provide health care to one pregnant woman, create one job, or even speak indirectly to those aspirations.
Take the two dominant political stories out there today: the next-day coverage of John Kerry's announcement tour and the pieces about Arnold's decision to not appear in tonight's debate (and limit his forensic aspirations to one debate at the end of the month in which, courtesy of the California Broadcasters Association, he will know the questions in advance of the event).
Leading up to tonight's debate at 7 pm ET (including Governor Davis in his own section, followed by Bustamante, McClintock, Ueberroth, Huffington, and Camejo), there is no major candidate activity in either the gubernatorial or presidential race, beyond Arnold's speech at 4 pm ET, and Kerry's continuing on his tour.
Yesterday, from the minute the Kerry traveling press corps got onto the story (swirling, per several Googling monkeys, for several weeks) that there was maybe, possibly, perhaps, talk of changes at the top of the campaign structure, reporters were giddy with excitement, with rapture rising on both the tarmac (the para-memory of the Reagan and Dole allusions dancing like sugar plums in media heads) and at a Des Moines metroplex custard stop, at which Senator Kerry made two separate tries to convince process mavens Glen Johnson and Mike Glover (in their best "Lord of the Flies" mode) that he didn't plan to shake up his staff.
Even a statement issued later which seems to have locked the Senator in to making no staff changes EVER failed to puncture the media's psychic obsession with trying to peel back more layers of the oniony iceberg hiding all the normal intra-campaign backbiting found in every well-staffed campaign (but even more so when you add in a Boston element; talented consultants who want to simultaneously keep working their corporate clients but have lots of say in the campaign; siblings; spouses; reporter-friendly staffers; a candidate who seems to have graduated from the Al Gore School of Campaign Management by Candidates; and the Gang of 500's old stand-by of "if he can't run a campaign, how can we trust him to run the country?").
We LOVE/HATE this classic Boston Herald sentence: "Kerry's clumsy handling of the shakeup rumors reflected his slow campaign start" --which is just what the kids on the corner in Roxy are thinking, dontcha know.
Given how much mania the political press was feeling yesterday over this Fournier-fueled story, Kerry actually ended up with pretty good coverage of his announcement itself, although, even there, process was the guiding construct, with CBS's Jim Axelrod, representatively, giving short shrift to what Kerry might actually DO as president, with a tight focus on Kerry's image "as the kind of starched shirt who orders his Philadelphia cheese steak with Swiss — a Philly no-no."
A classic manifestation (and Note favorite) of the press' process primacy used to come each day on CNN in 1992, when beat correspondent Gene Randall would close every spot with a stand up along these lines: "Tomorrow, Governor Clinton is off to the battleground state of Michigan; Thursday, it's Tennessee, all in his effort to court swing voters and fire up his base. Gene Randall, CNN, Chicago."
Great information for viewers, that.
Don't get us wrong — The Note is, of course, all about process — but for the love of the Founders, democracy, and President Bush's admirable distaste for all this stuff, let's all try to calm down just a bit and develop some sense of balance and perspective.
At least until tomorrow, when the DNC presidential candidate debate in New Mexico gives us all a chance to rev up the process machine again.
Oh, why wait until then?
President Bush is in D.C. today.
Senator Kerry heads from Des Moines to Manchester, New Hampshire, and then to Boston today to wrap up his announcement tour.
Governor Dean campaigns in Santa Fe, New Mexico, today. Today is national Howard Dean MeetUp day.
Senator Lieberman attends a luncheon fundraiser in Denver.
Reverend Sharpton campaigns in South Carolina and Baltimore.
Senator Graham campaigns in Oklahoma today.
Congressman Gephardt addresses the Alliance for Retired Americans today in D.C.
Ambassador Braun, Senator Edwards, and Congressman Kucinich have no public events.
John Kerry announces:Ron Brownstein's coverage was respectful and straightforward and generally spot on: "Overall, Kerry's speech did more to recapitulate than redefine the case he has made over the past year. But by drawing a succession of contrasts with Dean on taxes, gun control and foreign policy, the address outlined the arguments Kerry is hoping will allow him to recapture the initiative from the former Vermont governor." LINK
"Beyond the policy differences, the speech dramatized the military service Kerry believes will be one of his central advantages in the race."
"Mr. Kerry," says the Times ' Adam Nagourney,"[ … .]had promised to use this speech to lay out a central argument for a campaign that many Democrats had said lacked focus [and] used the word "courage" 10 times in offering what his aides said would be an overarching theme for his candidacy." LINK
USA Today 's Jill Lawrence's description of the "steamy morning, with the majestic USS Yorktown as a backdrop" is sure to make some campaign staffers smile this morning as they head back east. LINK
Nice page one pic, too. The Michael Deaver rule of campaign/presidential pictures lives on.
The Washington Post 's Diamond Jimmy VH assesses John Kerry's kickoff and his chances of becoming the nominee, coming up with paragraphs unlikely to hearten his headquarters: LINK
"Though Kerry has the résumé to battle Bush on this front — he was awarded a Bronze Star, a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts in Vietnam — it is far from clear if he has the message to win the battle for supremacy inside his own warring party, according to other Democrats."
David Guarino has Michael Dukakis handicapping Kerry v. Dean in the Boston Herald. LINK
Related Stories
ABC News Live