Media vs. Media: Can Obama Be Dean?

Why do Teevee stations persist in pushing failures like Glenn Beck on us, and the same tired "be very afraid" line 24/7, rather than dealing with the reality on the American ground?

No matter which cable news outlet you looked at yesterday, and no matter what time of day, it seemed you saw the exact same picture, in a loop, of a car burning at Glasgow Airport. This was accompanied by breathless anchors talking to sorry "experts" about how much danger we were all in, followed by Homeland Security irrelevantly raising the threat level at airports to keep up the scare.

Why was this?

It came about because we are no longer fighting just an Administration, but a medium, and that medium’s way of framing events. That medium is broadcasting, aka Teevee.

The medium considered itself decisive by showing Nixon sweat in 1960, but was
itself mastered by Nixon and his successors after 1968. Ever since Watergate TV has served the Nixon Thesis, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. The Cold War frame has been the basis of all foreign policy coverage, the Nixon Thesis of Conflict remains the basis of all domestic coverage.

Watch MSNBC’s ads for its 2008 political coverage and you see what I mean. It’s all about the Nixon frame, about conflict, about the continual need for conflict, defining politics solely as a test of wills, with all power as the prize. The idea of a separate public interest, which politicians seek to define, of a unity all decent citizens accept, which was at the heart of the FDR Thesis of Unity (and which is an integral part of the Internet Thesis of Consensus) is never even mentioned.

The reason for this is simple. Chris Matthews (above, note the airbrushing) is 61 years old. When the Nixon Thesis was born he was in college, barely politically active. His memories of the FDR Thesis come from history, and he treats them as such. Most other pundits are even younger than he is. Even the most elderly, like David Broder, who first saw the rise of the Nixon Thesis in middle age, have internalized it to the point where they do not question it, and thus see what is happening online as a de-facto revolution.

It’s not. In terms of politics the Internet and the Netroots represent a process change. The myths and values of this medium hold that open argument, based on shared values, will result in a consensus on which to proceed. These are not the myths and values of Teevee, which always involve conflict, winners and losers.

This brings me back to the Obama campaign. Not to the candidate, to the campaign. (Joe Rospars, left, worked for Howard Dean in 2004 and is now New Media Director for the Obama campaign. That campaign has been careful to keep pictures of campaign manager David Plouffe off the Web.)

The Obama campaign has picked up the lessons of Howard Dean and
expanded upon them in clever ways. His record cash haul this quarter
came from two primary sources, the Internet and his own rallies.
What political analysts never understood, until now, is that his
rallies are actually tent revivals. He gets small, identified donations
at those rallies, puts those people on his list, and does the same
thing online. The aim in both cases is not to "max out" donors, but to
identify and activate them.

In doing this, Obama has taken Bush’s train to the 19th century and
arrived at the Anti-Thesis to that era’s Gilded Age, which was
populism. Dean was a 21st century populist too, but Obama’s people have
gone to school on the Dean campaign and done it one better. They have
been very, very clever.

But as I’ve said here before, what Obama still must do, and no one
can do this for him, is provide a vision. Dean actually accomplished
this, in 2003. Howard Dean was a great speechwriter, and employed great
speechwriters. The line "I’m here to represent the Democratic wing of
the Democratic Party" was not his only zinger of that year. His Great American Restoration speech also carried considerable rhetorical weight:

Here are the words of John Winthrop: "We shall be as one.  We shall
delight in each other, make other’s conditions our own; rejoice together,
mourn together, labor and suffer together, always living before our eyes
our Commission and Community in our work."  That is the ideal, the
ideal of American community, which we seek to restore.

The
use of a 1630 Puritan to push the ideals of 21st century liberalism was
priceless. But there was more. Notice this flourish:

Martin Luther King, Jr. said that, "Our lives begin to end on the day
we become silent about the things that matter."

The history of our nation is clear: At every turn when there has been
an imbalance of power, the truth questioned, or our beliefs and values
distorted, the change required to restore our nationhood has always come
from the bottom up, from our people.

See how he segued from the theme of service to the theme of bottom up
politics. And now note how Howard Dean, the Vermont Congregationalist, used
the rhythms of Dr. King in his wind-up:

Abraham Lincoln said that government of the people, by the people and
for the people shall not perish from this earth
You have the power to reclaim our nation’s destiny.
You have the power to rid Washington of the politics of money.
You have the power to make right just as important as might
You have the power to give America a reason to vote again.
You have the power to restore our nation to fiscal sanity and bring
jobs back to our people.
You have the power to fulfill Harry Truman’s pledge of health care for
all Americans.
You have the power to give us foreign policy consistent with American
values again.
You have the power to take back the Democratic Party.
You have the power to take our country back.

This
is the kind of power the TV has not seen yet in the Senator from
Illinois. It’s the kind of bottom-up vision which Howard Dean, the
Barry Goldwater of his age, promised, and which Ronald Reagan gave
Goldwater’s movement, but not until 1980.

Just as Reagan gave his best to TV, so Obama today is giving his
best to the Internet, and to his church-like personal appearances. When
that changes, when Teevee sees the new vision, then the polls may
change. But Teevee will only be getting the end of its show, not its
beginning or its middle. And the end of the show, I pray, will also be the
end of Teevee as the dominant force in our political lives.

Which is why Teevee hates the Internet. They know its power. They fear it. Rightly so.