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Jewish World Review
Jan 11, 2012/ 16 Teves, 5772
Journalists' campaign trail secrets revealed
By
Dana Milbank
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
NASHUA, N.H. --- I’ve long suspected that if editors knew how little journalism occurs on the campaign trail, they would never pay our expenses.
Forget door-knocking. In reality, it’s more trainspotting. Reporters hang out at candidate appearances — and restaurants — talking primarily among themselves and comparing notes on which canned events they attended. (Did you see Santorum in Salem? No, I went to Romney in Hudson so I could catch Newt in Nashua.) But this week something terrible happened. The Post’s op-ed editor, Autumn Brewington, joined me in New Hampshire — and discovered the reporters’ dirty little secret. This year turned out to be a particularly wasteful one in the Granite State. Once Romney won in Iowa, the question was not whether he would win here but by how much. Yet the reporters descended anyway: Our hotel rooms were nonrefundable. The good residents of New Hampshire, uninspired by the candidates, seemed less interested in attending candidate rallies than in years past. The result was that traveling mobs of journalists routinely outnumbered the “real people.” As Jon Huntsman wound down his New Hampshire campaign with a stop Monday at Crosby Bakery in Nashua, he was trailed by about 150 journalists. Total number of New Hampshire voters: Perhaps a dozen. And some of them seemed more focused on taking pictures of “Meet the Press” moderator David Gregory than in seeing the candidate. As I played sherpa for my editor, it was hard to conceal the fact that I was leading her on a journalistic road to nowhere. Among our first stops was the debate in Manchester, where one of the most embarrassing truths of campaign coverage was revealed: Reporters who attend debates aren’t even in the same room with the candidates. We take our seats in a gymnasium, plug in our laptops — and then watch on TV, like everybody else does at home. While my editor watched on the screen in front of us, I attempted to look busy by sending out tweets: “Gingrich has now officially surpassed Churchill in jowls . . . Uh-oh. Sounds as if Perry is back on NyQuil.” Next day, we headed to a Gingrich appearance that had great metaphorical promise: He reached out to Manchester’s Hispanic community by holding an event at Don Quijote’s Mexican and Caribbean restaurant. But it turned out to be more stagecraft for the media mob. The campaign handed out “Newt Con Nosotros” buttons and had a local man with a Spanish accent introduce the candidate. A Gingrich daughter attempted what sounded like first-year Spanish on the crowd. But her proficiency didn’t matter, because two rooms in the restaurant, and a good part of a third, were crammed with journalists. “All I see are white faces,” complained one news photographer. Instead of Hispanics, Gingrich found protesters outside (a few posed as a mariachi band and shouted, “Workers of the world unite”) and hostile questioners inside. “I’m not getting into a debate,” he told one of them. “You asked your question; you’re done.” At a Rick Santorum event Monday, about 100 journalists and 20 TV cameras filled the chamber of commerce hall, where Santorum struggled with sound system feedback that sounded like a “Star Wars” lightsaber. “Is this bothering you? It’s bothering me?” he told the crowd, then turned off the microphone. “Can everybody hear me now?” “Not for television!” one cameraman answered. A moment later Santorum was back on the microphone. After Mitt Romney spoke at a metal fabrication plant outside Nashua on Monday, the candidate took questions from reporters — who dwarfed the number of locals on hand. But even that was a made-for-TV special. Aides made sure that supporters waving Romney signs were the only people visible in the background. “We want the press out of here,” an aide said. They wanted the press out of a press conference? Later, my editor and I retreated to Jackie’s Diner in Nashua, around the corner from the Huntsman event. Waitress Barbara Justason, 77, told us she had tired of the campaign events. “It’s all reporters and no real people,” she said. The “real people” just weren’t into the campaign this year. “Usually I research everything and have big arguments at the counter. This time, I found myself not even wanting to read the articles in the paper,” she said. “Maybe I’ll close my eyes and it’ll be eenie, meenie, mynie, moe.” That’s just what we were afraid to tell our editors: The New Hampshire primary just wasn’t much of a story.
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Previously:
• 01/10/12 Mitt Romney's money problem
• 01/09/12 Newtonian exceptionalism
• 01/05/12 Mitt Romney out of control
• 01/04/12 Indecision 2012: In Iowa and the GOP
• 01/03/12 Rick Santorum's curious closing argument
• 12/28/11 A few cracks in my crystal ball
• 12/23/11 A few cracks in my crystal ball
• 12/20/11 Strange brews and views?
• 12/19/11 Cellphone ban would be a distraction
• 12/15/11 Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell and the Malfunction Minuet
• 12/14/11 The presidential auction of 2012
• 12/12/11 Newt's tactics comes back to haunt him
• 12/06/11 Can an anthem save Occupy non-movement?
• 12/05/11 The winner of the GOP campaign: Washington
• 11/30/11 Barney the bully: Congressman Frank's other legacy
• 11/23/11 Jon Kyl's search-and-destroy mission
• 11/21/11 Pay to play, brought to you by Washington
• 11/17/11 Big enough to save the supercommittee?
• 11/16/11 Why Newt Gingrich won't last
• 11/08/11 The 2012 campaign gets seedier
• 11/06/11 A Machiavellian model for Obama
• 11/03/11 The Herman Cain crack-up
• 11/01/11 Cain can --- he will survive
• 10/27/11 Stuntmen of the supercommittee
• 10/26/11 Democrats on the sidelines
• 10/24/11 Rick Perry's birther Parade
• 10/24/11 The birthers eat their own
• 10/19/11 The GOP's middle man
• 10/17/11 The waiting for nothing Congress
• 10/12/11 Sparsely occupied D.C.: Why the movement hasn't caught on
• 10/10/11 Can Obama strike an alliance with Occupy Wall Street?
• 10/06/11 Chris Christie, such a presidential tease
• 10/05/11 Obama and his foot soldiers go toe to toe
• 09/28/11 Cain could deliver
• 09/26/11 Republicans? Mr. Nice Guys?
• 09/22/11 Why Ron Paul is winning the GOP primary
• 09/21/11 I am a job creator who creates no jobs
• 09/20/11 Obama launches a revolution
• 09/19/11 Dems for Romney?
• 09/14/11 ‘Supercommittee’? More than stupor committee
• 09/07/11 Mitt Romney finds his (corporate) voice
• 09/01/11 The infallible Dick Cheney
• 08/31/11 This liberal says Perry is the ultimate conservative candidate
• 08/29/11 Wanted: More bite from Obama the Great Nibbler
• 08/10/11 How Rep. Austin Scott betrayed his Tea Party roots
• 08/09/11 The most powerful man on Earth?
• 08/08/11 The FAA shutdown and the new rules of Washington
• 08/04/11 Lt. Col. Allen West fires a round at the Tea Party
• 08/03/11 Government on autopilot
• 08/02/11 Dems mourn debt deal like death
• 07/27/11 Life imitates sport
• 07/26/11 Obama and Boehner take on Washington
• 07/21/11 Why Americans are angry at Congress
• 07/20/11 The new party of Reagan
• 07/18/11 Rob Portman, the boring Midwesterner who could bring sanity to the debt debate
• 07/13/11 John Boehner's bind
• 07/04/11 Stephen Colbert, Karl Rove and the mockery of campaign finance
• 07/01/11 President Puts Up His Dukes, As He Ought To
• 06/28/11 Rod Blagojevich verdict: All shook up
• 06/27/11 Progressives voice their anger at Obama
• 06/24/11 Mission accomplished, Obama style
• 06/22/11 Jon Huntsman's first step toward oblivion
• 06/21/11 Scott Walker finds making bumper stickers is easier than creating jobs
• 06/20/11 A day of awkwardness with Mitt Romney
• 06/06/11 Hubris and humility: Sarah Palin and Robert Gates on tour
• 06/02/11 The Weiner roast
• 06/01/11 Congress clocks in to clock out
• 05/30/11 Hermanator II: No More Mr. Gadfly
• 05/24/11 How Obama has empowered Netanyahu
• 05/24/11 Pawlenty bends his truth-telling
• 05/20/11 Default deniers say it's all a hoax
• 05/18/11: Gingrich gives voice to moderation
• 05/17/11: Donald Trump and the House of Horrors
• 05/16/11: The medical mystery of Mitt Romney
• 05/12/11: The body impolitic: Schock photos should tempt lawmakers to cover up
• 05/10/11: Muskets in hand, tea party blasts House Republicans
• 05/09/11: The GOP debate: America -- and the party -- needs the grown-ups
• 05/05/11: Mitch Daniels, an alternative to scary
• 05/03/11: Obama's victory lap
• 05/02/11: How the journalist prom got out of control
• 04/28/11: Obama's birther day: Why did he lower himself by appearing in the briefing room?
• 04/27/11: Obama, lost in thought
• 04/24/11: Andrew Breitbart and the rifts on the right
• 04/22/11: Ten Commandments for 2012
• 04/21/11: Obama likes Facebook. Facebook likes Obama.
• 04/18/11: Without Nancy Pelosi, Obama is adrift
• 04/15/11: If progressives ran the world
• 04/14/11: Faith in political apostasy
• 04/13/11: One man's revolution is another's political expediency
• 04/11/11: Shutdown theatrics
• 04/06/11: Paul Ryan's irresponsible budget
• 04/05/11: Robots in Congress? Yes, we replicant!
• 04/04/11: Robert Gibbs, Facebook and the White House corporate placement service
• 04/01/11: Haley Barbour, the fat cats' candidate
• 03/31/11: Republican freshmen in House shut down compromise, and possibly the government
• 03/30/11: Coburn and Durbin, the dynamic duo of the debt crisis
• 03/28/11: The Obama doctrine: A gray area the size of Libya
• 03/24/11: Dems as Weiners
• 03/23/11: Obama's quick trip from tyrant to weakling
• 03/17/11: Who's afraid of Elizabeth Warren?
• 03/15/11: The underwear flap over Bradley Manning
• 03/10/11: In Senate's debt debate, talk isn't cheap
• 03/09/11: With Obama's new Gitmo policy, Administration officials had some 'splainin to do
• 03/02/11: Issa press aide scandal is like bad reality TV
• 02/25/11: Jay Carney: Mouthpiece for an inscrutable White House
• 02/14/11: The Donald trumps the pols at CPAC
• 02/09/11: Arianna Huffington's ideological transformation
© 2011, Washington Post Writers Group
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