Low Info Voter = Low Info President

Frank Rich, Op-ed columnist for the New York Times, thinks he has figured out why Barack Obama isn't slaughtering John McCain in the polls right now:

So why isn't Obama romping? The obvious answer - and both the excessively genteel Obama campaign and a too-compliant press bear responsibility for it - is that the public doesn't know who on earth John McCain is. The most revealing poll this month by far is the Pew Research Center survey finding that 48 percent of Americans feel they're "hearing too much" about Obama. Pew found that only 26 percent feel that way about McCain, and that nearly 4 in 10 Americans feel they hear too little about him. It's past time for that pressing educational need to be met.

Yes, if only someone had postulated that theory back in, oh, I don't know, May? And again in early July?

Rich also points out that the narrative du jour that Obama's narrow lead in the polls means he's losing is historically unsupported:

No presidential candidate was breaking the 50 percent mark in mid-August polls in 2004 or 2000. Obama's average lead of three to four points is marginally larger than both John Kerry's and Al Gore's leads then (each was winning by one point in Gallup surveys). Obama is also ahead of Ronald Reagan in mid-August 1980 (40 percent to Jimmy Carter's 46). At Pollster.com, which aggregates polls and gauges the electoral count, Obama as of Friday stood at 284 electoral votes, McCain at 169. That means McCain could win all 85 electoral votes in current toss-up states and still lose the election.

Again, I'm glad to see that Rich has been a loyal reader. I don't point this out because I think I'm so special (well, maybe a little), but precisely because I'm not.

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In May, I wrote a story theorizing that anyone who started out supporting Hillary Clinton, but then switched to McCain, just didn't know McCain's positions. Again, in July, a Pew Study showed that 55% of registered voters didn't know McCain was Pro-Life, and 38% didn't know he was against a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.

I didn't have to smoke peyote and float, naked and blindfolded, in a tank full of orange-blossom honey in order to divine this information. It's on his frakking website! So, why is it that people don't know this?

There are a few reasons for this. First of all, Obama gets a lot more coverage than McCain. I guess that's part and parcel to being a "celebrity."

More importantly, McCain's disadvantage on the issues is an advantage in today's media landscape. When was the last time you heard people on cable news debate the policy, rather than the politics, of this race? This only happens occasionally, in the context of "fact-checking" an ad to fuel the back-and-forth.

If people don't even know what McCain stands for now, how can they be expected to assess his past judgment on things like civil rights? How is it that, with all of the attention paid to sexism in the Democratic primary, most voters are blissfully ignorant of McCain's terrible record on women's issues and wide misogynistic streak?

The biggest problem is that the media has abdicated its role as a referee in this fight, and now acts more like a sports radio call-in show. Political journalism has become pure observation, absent any real analysis. The McCain "Celeb" ad was a perfect case-in-point.

The media's focus on that ad was more, "Oh, no he didn't! Yes, he did!" than on whether the substantive issues raised in the ad had any merit. The fact that Paris Hilton countered more effectively than any Democrat ever has, while amusing, should have been overshadowed by the fact that her response was far more substantive than any of McCain's ads in this election.

Another big problem is that the press covering McCain are faced with loss of access to the candidate if they step out of line.

The upcoming conventions and debates will be a good opportunity for people to see the real, substantive contrasts between the two. It will be up to the news media to point them out, or failing that, up to you to notice them for yourselves.


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