Reply #19: We need to make it personal and important, rather than endlessly superficial [View All]

I mean, today campaign politics at least is almost wholly about image. The coverage is certainly focused around it. "Does he sigh too much?" "Is he a regular guy?" "How much do his haircuts cost?" "Would he be fun to have a beer (whether or not the candidate can drink beer) with?"

Whether this obsession is purposeful or not, it's all the media focus on these days. You can go to the Daily Howler and read meticulous and somewhat tedious documentation of this phenomenon. If Fred Thompson is praised, it's because he has a deep voice, is a daddy figure, seems like a regular guy, etc. And the great irony is that the media choose to cover campaigns this way despite their being less qualified than regular Americans are to discern image. We vote in American Idol. We're perfectly qualified to figure out superficial qualities all on our own. The media are qualified to judge facts--who is telling the truth? Is this policy practical? Does Bush's plan really mostly go to the poor? Did we really go into Iraq as Romney says to fight Al Qaeda? But they won't.

And because they won't, nobody cares. Everyone seems much the same and any bias can be explained away by the subjectivity of the superficial. So what if everybody asked whether Gore really did farm chores as a kid and no one asked why Bush bought his ranch in 1999? It's subjective--Gore is a lying elite and Bush is an authentic cowboy.

But I think that coverage is a huge part of why people don't care. Campaigns are covered in such a way that without digging deeper yourself it would be foolish to care deeply about them.