Missing the Boat

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 11, 2008 10:59 AM

In the seven days before Super Tuesday, Mike Huckabee was featured in a grand total of 2 percent of presidential campaign stories.

The media -- that is, the same media that all but ignored him before he won the Iowa caucuses in January -- were selling the Republican race as a two-man showdown. John McCain was a significant presence in 37 percent of stories and Mitt Romney in 21 percent, says a study of newspaper, television, radio and online coverage by the Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Talk about betting on the wrong horse. Huckabee won five states -- which anchors and pundits treated as a stunning development -- and took Kansas and Louisiana on Saturday, while Romney abruptly dropped out.

Time and again, the media's preferred narratives for this campaign have collided with reality. Remember when journalists repeatedly declared that both nominations would be settled by Feb. 5? Scratch that. How about the blowout television and print coverage of Ted Kennedy anointing Barack Obama as the crown prince of Camelot? Hillary Clinton showed how little it mattered in the heart of Kennedy country, taking Massachusetts by 15 percentage points.

And the whole "back from the dead" story line for McCain exists mainly because journalists all but buried him when his fundraising collapsed last summer. (It would "take a miracle" for McCain to win the early primaries, CBS's Bob Schieffer said then.) Now he's made them look foolish by virtually wrapping up the GOP nomination.

Reporters consistently overestimate the importance of money in presidential campaigns: McCain was out of cash, and Huckabee never had any, so their chances were drastically downgraded. Romney gave his own campaign $50 million and his chances were constantly talked up.

There have been factual errors as well. The Associated Press blew a major call Tuesday, projecting Clinton the winner in Missouri based on exit polls, even though much of the St. Louis vote hadn't come in. The wire service withdrew the call 90 minutes later, after Obama moved ahead in the state he would soon win.

Another embarrassment was the Reuters/C-SPAN preelection poll -- widely picked up online -- that gave Obama a 13-point lead in California. Instead, Clinton scored a 10-point win in the state. The poll also had Mitt Romney ahead by seven points in California; McCain easily carried the state. Pollster John Zogby, who conducted the survey, says he underestimated Hispanic turnout and overestimated black turnout.

The networks, however, were commendably cautious. In fact, CNN lagged as much as 90 minutes behind Fox and MSNBC in calling certain states. CNN executives say they were more concerned with making accurate calls than quick ones.

The media have long been trying to winnow the field, as John Edwards complained while struggling for a smidgen of attention against Obama and Clinton. One reason for the recent decline in Huckabee coverage is that his low-budget campaign, desperate to save money, dropped its press plane, making it difficult for correspondents to follow him. But Huckabee was also dismissed as a marginal figure after mediocre showings in several states following his Iowa win. Most of the meager newspaper and television coverage he did get focused on whether he was a spoiler, helping McCain by drawing conservative votes from Romney.

Huckabee's secret weapon was that he was available for every imaginable television show, where his one-liners made him a marketable guest. He made 19 live appearances between 10 p.m. Tuesday and 8 a.m. Wednesday, then proceeded to hit "Hardball," "Your World With Neil Cavuto," "Mad Money," "Tucker," "Glenn Beck" and "World News" -- and the next day played air hockey (with individual states as pieces) with Stephen Colbert. He told CNN that he won Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, West Virginia and his native Arkansas "going against the head winds of talk radio and the pundits saying that I had simply disappeared. I wasn't even relevant, didn't matter."

After Tuesday, one interviewer after another -- Matt Lauer, Harry Smith, Robin Roberts, Wolf Blitzer -- asked Huckabee if he would accept an offer to be McCain's running mate, something no active presidential candidate would ever acknowledge. Newspaper stories explored the question as well.

The most frequently replayed sound bite from the last Clinton-Obama debate was of Blitzer asking them the same premature question: whether they would run on the same ticket. Time did a poll last week showing that a majority of Democrats approve of the idea. Never mind whether such an awkward marriage would be realistic; campaign chroniclers were casting a movie in which the quarreling couple kiss and make up at the end.

And therein lies the key to the way news organizations have framed this campaign. Whether it's cleavage, cackling or crying, as in Clinton's case, the personal trumps the political. Tackling what is actually happening -- the candidates clashing on the issues, making speeches, piling up delegates -- is insufficiently exciting compared with speculation about what might happen down the road. Minutes after Romney dropped out Thursday, the pundits started handicapping his chances in 2012.

Even as McCain was winning nine states on Super Tuesday, much of the television chatter was about whether he could persuade Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and other conservative radio talkers to stop beating up on him. Although that is a significant story, it's not quite in the same league as the Arizona senator amassing nearly two-thirds of the delegates needed for nomination. But it's more fun to kick around.

By the same token, far more media scrutiny was applied to the "snub" story -- whether Obama had deliberately turned his back on Clinton at the State of the Union address -- than to the details of their dueling health-care plans.

What the media apparently wanted -- and kept forecasting -- was a short, bloody, two-person fight that would be resolved with a knockout blow. Instead, in the wake of Obama's four-state weekend sweep, the Democratic race may drag on for weeks or months and ultimately be resolved by lobbying superdelegates. Can that keep pace with Britney's latest release from the psych ward, Heath Ledger's overdose death and the latest twist in the three-year-old Natalee Holloway case?

Perhaps only if the ultimate journalistic fantasy -- a brokered convention -- comes to pass. And that, not surprisingly, is the latest torrid topic on the talk circuit.

'Pimped Out' Fallout

NBC is done apologizing to Hillary Clinton's campaign.

NBC News President Steve Capus is the highest-ranking official to have personally expressed his regret to the campaign for MSNBC correspondent David Shuster's crack that Chelsea Clinton was being "pimped out" for political work. But after the apologies from Capus, Shuster and others -- and the suspension of Shuster for an undetermined period -- the campaign released a stinging letter to Capus over the weekend.

"Nothing justifies the kind of debasing language that David Shuster used and no temporary suspension or half-hearted apology is sufficient," Hillary Clinton wrote. The escalation is reminiscent of Clinton putting out a fundraising letter last summer based on a column about her cleavage by Washington Post fashion writer Robin Givhan.

NBC executives say privately that they have acted appropriately to deal with a bad choice of words and are waiting to see whether the Clinton camp follows through on a threat to withdraw from an MSNBC debate in Cleveland on Feb. 26. A spokeswoman yesterday said only that the network stands by its previous comments.

Digging for Support

What may become the biggest investigative team in journalism is getting a major boost today.

ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that plans to launch online this spring, is announcing an advisory board that includes five top newspaper editors. And that boosts the chances that some major papers may run the group's investigative pieces, which otherwise would appear only on its Web site.

"It certainly doesn't hurt," says Paul Steiger, the Wall Street Journal's former top editor, who is running the operation. "Most everyone I talked to about it in the abstract said, 'Bring it on.' That's in the abstract. It will come down to a specific story."

The board includes New York Times Managing Editor Jill Abramson, Boston Globe Editor Martin Baron, Denver Post Editor Gregory Moore, Seattle Times Editor David Boardman, and Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Others include U.S. News & World Report editor at large David Gergen, former Los Angeles Times editor John Carroll, Fortune columnist Allan Sloan and historian Robert Caro.

ProPublica is in the process of hiring 25 journalists -- Steiger has already gotten 850 r¿sum¿s -- to do what he calls "the deep-dive stuff." Much of its $10 million annual budget has been donated by Herbert and Marion Sandler, former owners of a California savings and loanand Herbert Sandler chairs the board of directors. They have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic Party campaigns.

Steiger says ProPublica will fill a void left by cutbacks in the newspaper business that have reduced investigative staffs. He says that he may offer some of his stories exclusively to one newspaper or television show and that, thanks to his sizable budget, "we don't have to ask for any money in return."

Furthermore . . .

Bloggers seem divided over the David Shuster controversy, with Digby wondering why he criticized Chelsea in the first place:

"I take him at his word that he didn't mean it in any literal sense. But what did he mean? Why on earth would anyone think it was 'unseemly' for the 28 year old daughter of a presidential candidate to be 'calling celebrities and superdelegates' on behalf of the campaign? What's wrong with that? . . .

"I do think it behooves all of us to be skeptical of news organizations that behave like adolescents, no matter where your political allegiances lie."

Ann Althouse, meanwhile, wonders what the big fuss is about:

"Really, how bad is it to say 'pimped out'? Is it 'nappy-headed hos' bad? Did anyone think Shuster was literally calling Chelsea a whore or even making any reference to her womanly virtue? 'Pimped out' is a common colloquialism these days. According to the Urban Dictionary, which gives a good read on how young people use words, the connotations having to do with exaggerated fashion and style predominate. Even if the clear associations with prostitution remain, we often make figurative references to prostitution in speech, and the cause of feminism is not served by requiring special limitations when we're talking about women. We ought to be able to call a female publicity hound a 'media whore.' "

Obama winning yesterday's Maine caucuses is a very big deal -- not because of the 24 delegates, but because after his Saturday trifecta in Louisiana, Nebraska and Washington state, Maine was the one state that many pundits thought Hillary would take. Combine that with the media's favorite story -- a shakeup! -- and she's got some rough coverage ahead.

Andrew Sullivan sees the Obama train pulling out:

"In not-so-great weather, a huge turnout delivered a another huge margin of victory to Obama. The message is clear and its volume is increasing. The more Democrats look closely at their two candidates, the more the insurgent begins to look like the inevitable.

"I wonder if McCain's emergence as the alternative hasn't tilted things further in Obama's favor. The Democrats are now up against a candidate who can appeal to the independent center. To go back to polarizing base politics is to go back to the era of Rove."

Marc Ambinder: "The departure was anti-climactic. [Clinton campaign manager Patti] Solis Doyle, whose [service] to Clinton began in 1992, had survived three separate coup attempts, the latest one being shortly after Iowa, when Clinton considered asking Williams to assume the title of 'campaign coordinator.' Twice, advisers to Bill Clinton have tried to oust her -- one in January, before the campaign officially began, and once in April, after Barack Obama raised more money than the vaunted Clinton machine. . . .

"People familiar with the decision cited as a factor that Solis Doyle has very young children and did not expect the active phase of the primary campaign to last this long, and that she had always anticipated transitioning to a different role in the spring. She was dead tired and missed her family."

The Democratic race may seem neck and neck, but Peggy Noonan says a different reality is unfolding before our eyes:

"Something is happening. Mrs. Clinton is losing this thing. It's not one big primary, it's a rolling loss, a daily one, an inch-by-inch deflation. The trends and indices are not in her favor. She is having trouble raising big money, she's funding her campaign with her own wealth, her moral standing within her own party and among her own followers has been dragged down, and the legacy of Clintonism tarnished by what Bill Clinton did in South Carolina. Unfavorable primaries lie ahead. She doesn't have the excitement, the great whoosh of feeling that accompanies a winning campaign. The guy from Chicago who was unknown a year ago continues to gain purchase, to move forward. For a soft little innocent, he's played a tough and knowing inside/outside game. . . .

"Political professionals are leery of saying, publicly, that she is losing, because they said it before New Hampshire and turned out to be wrong. Some of them signaled their personal weariness with Clintonism at that time, and fear now, as they report, to look as if they are carrying an agenda. One part of the Clinton mystique maintains: Deep down journalists think she's a political Rasputin who will not be dispatched . . .

"The Democrats have it exactly wrong. Hillary is the easier candidate, Mr. Obama the tougher. Hillary brings negative; it's fair to hit her back with negative. Mr. Obama brings hope, and speaks of a better way. He's not Bambi, he's bulletproof."

Does the MSM let President Bush get away with saying this, about Obama, to Fox News?

"I certainly don't know what he believes in. The only foreign policy thing I remember he said was he's going to attack Pakistan and embrace Ahmadinejad."

Substituting "embrace" for "negotiating" with Iran's leader might fall within the bounds of political rhetoric. But the "attack Pakistan" part has to do with striking bin Laden if necessary without the regime's approval. Isn't that a pretty big presidential distortion?

I've always wondered where commentators get off telling candidates to get out, but Weekly Standard blogger Richelieu has a message for Mike:

"The Huck should take a lesson from Mitt Romney's classy performance yesterday and fold up his medicine show. Romney did a lot today to show the country and the party the classy and principled Mitt Romney that his friends have known for years. (One tribute to the guy is that everybody who works for him loves him.) It was the right thing to do and Mitt deserves the credit he'll get for it. Meanwhile it is hard to find a purpose in Huckabee trying to run much longer. The delegate math is even harder for him than it was for Romney. The Huck hasn't won a primary outside the south. He has no money. Sure, he can continue to plug along and almost certainly lose DC, VA, and MD next week, but to what purpose?"

Uh, more appearances on "The Colbert Report"?

Kevin Drum isn't a Romney fan, but the Washington Monthly blogger (perhaps noting my summary from last week) wonders about the political obits:

"So why did Mitt Romney crap out against a field of weak competition? The press narrative is pretty clear:

"Boston Globe: 'In the end, his campaign foundered for one basic reason: He lacked authenticity.' New York Times: 'Mr. Romney's advisers . . . conceded that they had failed to overcome doubts about Mr. Romney's authenticity as they sought to position him as the most electable conservative in the race.' LA Times: 'Romney failed the "authentic" test.' Slate: "[Romney] faced one fundamental problem that almost all the papers summarize with one word: 'authenticity.'

"Well, maybe. That's certainly how Romney seemed to me. But I can't help but notice that none of the news pieces hawking this narrative really presents much evidence for it. And based on a scientific poll of a friend I had lunch with, I'm beginning to wonder about this. To battle-hardened reporters and cynical liberals, Romney probably did seem phony. But when I mentioned this offhandedly at lunch, not really expecting an argument, my Romney-supporting friend was clearly taken aback. That had never occurred to him. To him, Romney seemed like the real deal: conservative, good business background, command of the issues, good looks, etc. etc."

Is Barack Obama the messiah? No, it's not a news story. But it quotes a bunch of news stories.

Howard Kurtz hosts CNN's weekly media program, "Reliable Sources."