Soccer Dad

Faulty Intelligence

Remember how we kept on hearing about something that was so, but everyone in a position to know either was being had or was lying to us? Remember when Howard Dean was the candidate to win the Democratic primary.
When Howard Dean's campaign collapsed so quickly I wondered: Was it that the Kerry campaign "came back" or had the Dean campaign not really been as good as advertised. The answer comes in Roger Simon's recounting of the Iowa caucuses in US News:

But two Tribune reporters, Flynn McRoberts and Jeff Zeleny, decided to test how good the Dean organization really was and were immediately rewarded. Though the Tribune buried the story on Page 15, it turned out to be one of the few alerts in the media that the Dean campaign might not be a juggernaut after all. On December 4, McRoberts drove to Atlantic, Iowa, about 82 miles west of Des Moines. Atlantic, population 7,200, is the county seat of Cass County, and the Dean website had promised a "meet up" in all of Iowa's 99 counties that evening. The Cass County meet up was supposed to be at a restaurant called the Farmer's Kitchen, and it was supposed to be hosted by Dean admirer Forrest Teig. Nobody showed up. The Tribune tracked down Teig, who was sitting at home. He said he knew nothing about the event. Then he said of the Dean organization:"It's a group of amateur people working on the campaign." McRoberts and Zeleny wrote: "The gap between the campaign's organizational boasts and the reality . . . illustrates the central challenge facing Dean less than seven weeks before the January 19 caucuses." Their report also pointed out that enthusiastic supporters were one thing and "organizational know-how" was quite another.

Was the media hyping Dean because they saw an exciting candidate they thought could beat Bush? Did the media realize how hollow the Dean campaign was and cynically promoted him anyway? Or did they not worry about his viability simply promoted him because they liked him? Neither possibility reflects well on the supposedly neutral or objective media.
(By the way during the past week I've seen a Kerry ad in the Washington Post online and full page ad for him in the NY Times. There were no ads for Bush' re-election. I'll pay close attention for Bush ads in the NY Times and Washington Post, but for now I'll assume that the President doesn't feel that a large proportion of readers of either paper are likely to be persuaded to vote for him. Conversely Kerry feels he has a very good chance of raising money from the people who read those papers. If the papers didn't skew one way that wouldn't be the case.)

Posted by SoccerDad at July 13, 2004 05:58 AM | TrackBack