Little do I write about the U.S. presidential (presidency?) race. Everytime I try, I find that there is nearly nothing to work from. Writing from abroad my assumption was that I simply don’t ‘get’ the real stuff.
But now I read this:
In all, 63% of the campaign stories focused on political and tactical aspects of the campaign. That is nearly four times the number of stories about the personal backgrounds of the candidates (17%) or the candidates’ ideas and policy proposals (15%). And just 1% of stories examined the candidates’ records or past public performance, the study found.
Instead of policy proposal discussions, the available news and analysis is about hair-cuts and lapel pins. The blogs fret about campaign slogans, consultants and hotel rates.
Sorry, I can not digest such stuff. It’s just package with no content.
I need a website with a ‘spreadsheet’ of 100 questions on hard policy issues in the vertical:
"24. In what regard should companies have/have not personhood status?"
Each candidate’s opinions on each question, with links and fact-checked backups, should be in the horizontal:
Huckabee: "In all regards"; Gravel: "In all but free speech and the right to carry arms."
The site should allow me to rank these questions in their importance to me. It should let me give my personal answers to each of them. A simple algorithm would match my opinion to the candidates’ and find the one that provides the best fit to my personal stand.
I have yet to find such a site on the web. Why? Do you know one?
Where I am coming from on this is of course a different environment:
In my country (Germany) we don’t have much of personality races, at least compared to the U.S. We vote for parties who hold their internal member elections to select their party leaders. Those persons will get some media scrutinity in their political life. But reporting on personal issues or affairs of politicians is frowned on and rarely happens.
During the party conventions the party members actually formulate and vote on party program points. Last weekend the social-democrats had a convention here in Hamburg and the party members had some fiercy discussions and quite a few suprise votes. They chose to work for a general 80mph speed limit and against privatization of the railway monopoly. Both of these votes ran against the wishes of their established leaders but will, for now, be binding party policy.
Before elections journalists here scrutinize party programs and compare these on the issues. The better papers and TV programs do discuss in detail the content and consequences of the various proposals. It is not perfect of course and more could be done to look at the record of what these parties have promised and actually done. But one can reasonably find out who stands where on what and there are four or more serious parties to choose from.
Interestingly the German language has only one word to covering policy and politics: ‘Politik‘. The meaning of ‘Politik’ leans much more towards ‘policy’ than to ‘politics’. It is on the issue first and on the interaction about the issue only in a secondary role.
Maybe the problem of getting the U.S. election stuff is really writing from abroad and thereby lacking U.S. ‘feeling’. But the study quoted above suggests otherwise. There is simply nothing serious available to think and write about.
One probably needs to be a sports reporter (Olberman) or theater critic (Rich) to write about this horse race production. I for one lack the talent for even trying to comment in those fields.