The Bus to Nowhere

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 13, 2008 9:41 AM

INDIANAPOLIS--The reporters waded gingerly into two-inch-deep mud and settled behind scratched wooden tables as Barack Obama was being introduced to more than 10,000 screaming fans at the state fairgrounds here.

Before the Democratic nominee took the podium, the text of his speech arrived by BlackBerry. The address was carried by CNN, Fox and MSNBC. While he was still delivering his applause lines, an Atlantic blogger posted excerpts. And despite the huge foot-stomping crowd that could barely be glimpsed from the media tent, most reporters remained hunched over their laptops.

Does the campaign trail still matter much in an age of digital warfare? Or is it now a mere sideshow, meant to provide the media with pretty pictures of colorful crowds while the guts of the contest unfold elsewhere? And if so, are the boys (and girls) on the bus spinning their wheels?

"Anything interesting that happens on the road is going to be eaten up before you can get to it," says Slate correspondent John Dickerson. "By the time you see the papers, you feel like you know it all."

On the road, some of the nation's top print journalists morph into bloggers who post paragraphs on each mini-development, giving them a more stenographic role that leaves less time for actual reporting, or even thinking. Obama advisers have concluded that newspaper and magazine stories no longer have the same resonance but that a brief item by, say, Politico bloggers can spread like wildfire.

With a single correspondent's campaign travel costing as much as $10,000 a week, the number of cash-strapped news organizations willing to pony up has been dwindling in recent years. Only five newspapers -- the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune -- are traveling regularly with Obama and John McCain. The big regional papers, USA Today and Time magazine are there only intermittently, and Newsweek, which had been a constant presence on the trail, pulled back last week for financial reasons. (The networks, which used young off-air "embeds" during much of the primary season, now have front-line correspondents on board to do daily live shots.)

In the slower-paced, pre-cable age, what newspaper reporters wrote each day had major impact. These days, the candidates' rallies are often carried live on cable. Top strategists hold dueling conference calls for the press and send out the audio for those who miss it. Each new ad is instantly on YouTube, each new e-mail assault splashed across the Web. What, then, is the value of being on the plane?

"Having a blog is a terrific bonus for me because I get to put out everything I know in a constant way," says Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times. But, she says, "being on the plane is very, very expensive and does not necessarily provide stuff you could not get elsewhere. When you have limited resources, it's a corner to cut."

The greatest advantage of campaign travel, journalists say, is access to senior officials who rarely return calls or e-mails. Beyond that, says Chicago Tribune reporter Jill Zuckman, "you look at a campaign with a more critical eye when you're there. You get a better sense of crowds and enthusiasm levels and mood that you cannot get off TV."

Lack of access is accepted as a given. Obama held his last press availability two weeks ago, while McCain -- once renowned for his nonstop schmoozing with journalists -- has held one brief news conference in a month and a half.

Boston Globe reporter Sasha Issenberg, who covers McCain, says he gets more richly textured stories on the road. But, he says, "I haven't had any personal interaction with McCain for months. In any reasonable cost-benefit analysis . . . it's probably getting harder to justify. When we're on the plane and there's no TV and you can't read blogs, we're more walled off from the story we're covering than I would be if I were in my bureau."

David Broder, the Post veteran who covered his first White House campaign in 1960, says the daily speeches chronicled by journalists were once newsworthy. But campaign officials eventually "learned that that let the reporters decide what the sound bite of the day was. They could control that by shrinking the options that reporters had. You went to the abandoned mill or polluted stream and delivered your two sentences, and that was it for the day."

As recently as 2000, Broder recalls having dinner with McCain three nights in a row while working on a profile. Now, he says, "I notice that in our stories we routinely start out writing about Obama and McCain, but very quickly we're quoting some spokesman who's sent us an e-mail commenting on what Obama and McCain have said."

A reporter's observation can occasionally start a brush fire. In Dana Milbank's Post column last week, a couple of sentences about a crowd at a Sarah Palin event hurling obscenities -- and in one case a racial epithet -- at journalists led to days of stories, sometimes overblown, about anger and ugliness at GOP rallies.

Last Wednesday -- the day after the second presidential debate -- was typical for journalists traveling with the campaigns. As reporters flew with Obama from Nashville to Indianapolis, chief spokesman Robert Gibbs did not come back on the plane to spin reporters. The reason: He was napping, after an early-morning MSNBC debate with McCain adviser Nicolle Wallace.

Grabbed on the tarmac, Gibbs said the financial crisis would force the campaign to talk about the economy every day until the election. "This is one of the few times when a presidential campaign has been overtaken by events," he said. "It's even subsuming the debates at this point. You've just got to ride the wave."

The day's only event -- the only thing resembling "news" -- was the noontime rally in normally red-state Indiana. An Obama press aide said the senator from Illinois would sharpen his debate attack on McCain's plan to tax employer-provided health insurance, but the reporters didn't seem to care much.

A nine-paragraph post appeared on the New York Times blog two hours later, saying that Obama, who did not "break any new policy ground," had said "that he could endure four more weeks of Republican attacks 'but America can't take four more years of John McCain's Bush policies.' " A Post blog, updated later in the afternoon, said Obama had delivered "a confident and inspirational speech that asked Americans to 'believe in each other' as the country faces a historic challenge to fix the economy."

The press corps remained in the muddy tent for two hours, in part because Obama was sitting down for an interview with ABC's Charlie Gibson.

Dickerson, a former Time correspondent and one of the few who ventured outside the tent, says occasional travel is valuable. But, he says, "you have to spend a lot of time not on the road, or else you can never think four feet off the ground. It's ridiculous to be on the bus, as we all are, have events unfold in front of you and totally ignore them. You sit and watch a rally, and you're not paying any attention to it because you're writing a story about a swing state 600 miles away."

On the subsequent flight to Chicago, Obama spokeswoman Linda Douglass came into the press section and invited questions. She criticized McCain's new mortgage-bailout proposal, which had already been the subject of an e-blast from the Obama campaign. NBC's Lee Cowan asked about a slam hours earlier by McCain's wife, Cindy, who said "the day that Senator Obama decided to cast a vote to not fund my son when he was serving sent a cold chill through my body."

"John McCain has also voted for cutting funds for the troops," Douglass said, adding: "I understand she's got a son and she's worried." No one followed up.

While virtually every detail of the day could have been gleaned back home, several journalists -- such as John Heilemann of New York magazine -- noticed that Obama seemed to hit his stride in talking about the economy's impact on the middle class.

"One of the things I got out of the speech is how much more fluid he is talking about this stuff and how much the financial crisis has helped him," Heilemann says. "I've been critical of Obama for not ever developing an economic narrative, a story about what's going on in America. He obviously gets criticized for being too professorial. He's still not 100 percent there, but he's found a touch, a kind of soft populism."

It was the sort of observation that doesn't show up in the box score but can shape perceptions of the game.

Sympathetic Journalism

A Michelle Obama profile in the women's magazine More describes her as "casually elegant," "warm" and "focused." The headline: "Camelot 2.0."

The author, Geraldine Brooks, mentions that she first met the potential first lady at a Martha's Vineyard fundraiser, as a donor to her husband's campaign.

"I certainly pointed it out to the assigning editor and editor in chief and said it would have to be disclosed," Brooks says. "I was intrigued by her." Her sympathies, Brooks says, were "made pretty obvious by the fact that I was at a high-dollar fundraiser for him the year before."

Moving right along . . . Think the press believes McCain is going down?

NYT: "After a turbulent week that included disclosures about Gov. Sarah Palin and signs that Senator John McCain was struggling to strike the right tone for his campaign, Republican leaders said Saturday that they were worried Mr. McCain was heading for defeat unless he brought stability to his presidential candidacy and settled on a clear message to counter Senator Barack Obama."

LAT: "The financial crisis has turned the last three weeks into a crucial and possibly decisive period in the presidential contest -- a time when many Americans have taken a new look at each candidate and then moved toward Democrat Barack Obama."

A WP poll has Obama ahead 53-43, while Newsweek gives Obama a 52-41 lead: "Underlying Obama's surge in support: An historic boiling over of dissatisfaction with the status quo. An astounding 86 percent of voters now say they are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States, while a mere 10 percent say they are satisfied. That's the highest wrong track/right track ratio ever recorded in the NEWSWEEK poll."

Ombudsman Clark Hoyt says only 10 percent of the Times's general election stories have been about policy. Depressing. And I doubt anyone else fared much better.

Add National Review's Rich Lowry to the list of conservatives who are unhappily anticipating an Obama administration:

"Obama repeatedly promised 'fundamental change' in the second debate, but otherwise portrayed himself as the embodiment of moderation, nay, even a kind of conservatism. In his own telling, he wants to cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans, reduce spending, preserve but improve the current health-care system and win the war in Afghanistan while prudently drawing down troops in Iraq . . .

"The Democrats are on the verge of a strange victory. If Obama is elected, they will arguably have won the most left-wing government in American history. FDR and LBJ had raging Democratic majorities in Congress early in their presidencies, with which they forged massive increases in the size of government. But that was before the post-Vietnam culture revolution in the Democratic Party that produced a leftward lurch on social issues and a reflexive hostility to American power. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton also had Democratic majorities, but they both consistently ran as, and had records as, Southern moderates. But no one can know whether Obama is the leftist his associations suggest, or the irenic uniter of his iconic 2004 convention speech; whether he's the down-the-line liberal who kowtowed to the base of his own party in the Democratic primaries, or the pragmatist who readjusted to the center as soon as enthralled liberals handed him the nomination."

Bill Kristol also concedes McCain is losing--but it's not the candidate's fault:

"It's time for John McCain to fire his campaign.

"He has nothing to lose. His campaign is totally overmatched by Obama's. The Obama team is well organized, flush with resources, and the candidate and the campaign are in sync. The McCain campaign, once merely problematic, is now close to being out-and-out dysfunctional. Its combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic. If the race continues over the next three weeks to be a conventional one, McCain is doomed." Instead, the Arizonan should go back to "running as a cheerful, open and accessible candidate."

Okay, but who exactly is responsible for assembling this staff and taking its advice?

I happen to think the whole McCain's-angry-crowds theme is being overplayed. There are often protesters and wack jobs at political rallies--including at the Obama rally I watched in Indiana--and how exactly is this McCain's fault? But CQ's David Corn disagrees:

"Many of the folks in charge of the McCain campaign don't really care that much for him. Worse, they are treating McCain as a generic Republican candidate--smothering whatever once was special about him. And McCain has allowed this to happen. He has emasculated himself.

"Look at those recent McCain rallies. His supporters are shouting "terrorist" when McCain mentions his opponent. And does McCain chastise them for doing so? No. In fact, he has been pushing the Obama-hangs-with-terrorists theme. Sarah Palin did so explicitly a few days ago by accusing Obama of 'paling' around with terrorists--note the plural--a reference to Obama's past association with William Ayers, a former Weather Underground member who became a much-respected education expert."

The whole argument really sets off Rick Moran at Right Wing Nuthouse:

"According to this breathless, fearful account published in The Washington Post, that's not all they did:

"There were shouts of 'Nobama' and 'Socialist' at the mention of the Democratic presidential nominee. There were boos, middle fingers turned up and thumbs turned down as a media caravan moved through the crowd Thursday for a midday town hall gathering featuring John McCain and Sarah Palin.

"I weep for America. In God's name, what are we coming to? To actually show disdain and unhappiness at the mention of The One? And what's this about giving the finger to our friends in the press? Don't they know that a free press is vital to our democracy? How dare they make such a vulgar display in the direction of those who toil so unselfishly in service to the republic.

"Gee ¿ you'd think the crowd believed the press was the enemy or something . . .

"I can't tell you how much contempt I have for the Post and other media outlets who have been pushing this meme ¿ that it is somehow dangerous, or racist, or indicative of something horribly ugly in the mindset of GOP supporters to show strong emotion at the mention of Obama. Not when similiar outbursts happen at Democratic rallies."

It had to happen: a proposal (and acceptance) on Twitter. Keepin' it brief!

Last week I wrote that the media had failed to alert us to the brewing financial crisis, even though pieces of it were reported over the years. Naturally, some journalists told me they beg to differ. The Wall Street Journal did run a zillion editorials over the years about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac being out of control. Jesse Eisinger had some prescient warnings about Wall Street banks in Portfolio. And my Washington Post colleague Kirstin Downey had this front-page story in March 2007:

"Immigrants are emerging as among the first victims of a growing wave of home foreclosures in the Washington area as mortgage lending problems multiply locally and across the country."

But look at some of her other pieces and how they got played:

September 2006: "Federal banking regulators yesterday issued a strongly worded warning to lenders about the growing use of nontraditional, or 'exotic,' home loans, telling them they must make sure consumers have the money to repay the loans." (Page F-1)

December 2006: "About 2.2 million homeowners with high-interest mortgages have lost their homes to foreclosure or could do so within the next several years, according to a report from a nonprofit group that opposes predatory lending." (Page D-2)

January 2007: "Consumer advocates say the loosened standards are putting more people at risk as loans originally designed for sophisticated individuals are being marketed to far-less-savvy borrowers." (Page F-1)

If only we'd all paid more attention.