New Media, New Politics

Jonathan Alter gets it

Bob Schieffer of CBS News made a good point on “The Charlie Rose Show” last week. He said that successful presidents have all skillfully exploited the dominant medium of their times. The Founders were eloquent writers in the age of pamphleteering. Franklin D. Roosevelt restored hope in 1933 by mastering radio. And John F. Kennedy was the first president elected because of his understanding of television.

Will 2008 bring the first Internet president? Last time, Howard Dean and later John Kerry showed that the whole idea of “early money” is now obsolete in presidential politics. The Internet lets candidates who catch fire raise millions in small donations practically overnight. That’s why all the talk of Hillary Clinton’s “war chest” making her the front runner for 2008 is the most hackneyed punditry around. Money from wealthy donors remains the essential ingredient in most state and local campaigns, but “free media” shapes the outcome of presidential races, and the Internet is the freest media of all.

No one knows exactly where technology is taking politics, but we’re beginning to see some clues. For starters, the longtime stranglehold of media consultants may be over. … just as Linux lets tech-savvy users avoid Microsoft and design their own operating systems, so “netroots” political organizers may succeed in redesigning our current nominating system. But there probably won’t be much that’s organized about it. By definition, the Internet strips big shots of their control of the process, which is a good thing. Politics is at its most invigorating when it’s cacophonous and chaotic.

I’m not sure about Alter’s example, Unity08, which is an organization dedicated to elected a “unity” ticket of one Dem and one Republican in the 2008 presidential elections. The “crashing the gate” netroots initiative to reform an established party — the Dems — seems more practical. We’ll see how that goes.

Last week Jamison Foser called media “the dominant political force of our time.” Foser and Eric Boehlert, in his new book Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush (which I’m currently reading) make essentially the same point: In the past several years the media has made right-wing extremism seem “centrist” while progressivism, which has a long and respectable history in mainstream American politics, has been marginalized as something alien and weird and looney. Media enabled the Republicans to become the dominant party in national politics even though the Dems are more representative of American public opinion on issue after issue.

Certainly much of media does little more than act as a conduit for right-wing propaganda. The reasons for this are complex. Many media personalities (passing as journalists) are ideologues pushing their dogma with an evangelical zeal. But others of them are, I suspect, unconscious of the role they play in the noise machine. Matt Bai comes to mind. He seems sincerely oblivious to the power of mass media politics even though he is immersed in mass media politics. (Which may be the problem; does a fish perceive water?)

We can’t reform American politics without either reforming media or breaking its stranglehold on the political process. Using the Internet to strip big shots of their control of the process seems the way to go.

7 thoughts on “New Media, New Politics

  1. Well Maha…

    I’d say Mr. Alter gets close….

    But no cigar…

    In these times, it’s not “The Media” that shapes and controls every facet of our political (and econimic) discourse…But rather those that that control the Media’s purse strings…

    Where does all the “Capaign” money wind up?

  2. One obstacle that the internet faces as a medium of communication is that it takes more work on the part of the recipient of news and information to read and analyze that information.TV and Radio make it easy for the lazy to just click on a talking head and have them do their thinking for them. Look at Rush Limbaugh’s stable of slothful listeners who mindlessly swallow the pap he feeds them on a daily basis..their brains have become atrophied to analytical thinking thru a lack of exercise. Reading is to the mind what crunches are to the abdomen.

  3. D.R., I am beginning to wonder if ‘campaign money’ is often another hidden method of paying bribes. For instance, why would incumbents without race competitors be needing to create big campaign war chests? While on this roll, why should campaign funds be allowed to be used to pay legal fees, as in Tom Delay’s case?

    What I so like about the netroots action is that citizens have a way to speak and have their voices counted……so unlike the upside down one-way communication of the past….an example of the latter is Joe Lieberman, who thought it was just a-ok to ignore the concerns of those he represents.

  4. “Using the Internet to strip big shots of their control of the process seems the way to go.”

    As a broad statement, OK. But what does that really mean? Keep doing what we’re doing and hope it ends up undermining the integrity of TV news to such a degree that, finally, no one takes it seriously? Or something more organized than that? Danny Schechter has outlined the need for a Media and Democracy Act. Is something like that helpful? Do we need to get behind that idea?

    I think about media a lot (probably not healthy how much I think about media, in fact. I need to get out more or get into gardening at the very minimum), but no matter how much I THINK, I’ve never had a thought that could contribute to a tangible SOLUTION to this mess. I always default to, well, it would help if people wouldn’t pay so much attention to celebrity this and that. But that’s not constructive; that’s just whining.

  5. But what does that really mean? Keep doing what we’re doing and hope it ends up undermining the integrity of TV news to such a degree that, finally, no one takes it seriously? Or something more organized than that?

    Not at all. I’m saying that political discourse and political decision making should be given back to the people, instead of being marketed to us. What I elaborated on here.

  6. What I elaborated on here.

    That was a regular stick a dynamite, that post, by the way. I just had to go re-read it at your behest.

    Where you say political discourse and decision making should be given back to the people, I might say that political discourse and decision making is being given back to the people using the Internet as a tool.

    But maybe my problem is just that I’m impatient. Here it is, four years after I started reading blogs and tapping into commentary only available online and I still rarely find others operating that way. In the meantime, CNN is running the DC Sniper and “Holloway case frustrations one year on” as their top stories right this minute (Oh how I wish I were merely making that up). Realistically, most news consumers still get news with that particular editorial priority, or whatever you want to call it.

  7. Pingback: The Mahablog » A Tale of Two Democrats

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