Election 2008

Just last Wednesday, Robert Novak wrote: “Inside the Democratic Party, it is already taken for granted that the queen is dead and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is the king.” A few days earlier, Mark Halperin counted 16 “underappreciated Obama advantages.” What — only 16?

Such is the world of media and politics that tonight, on the eve of the March 4th primaries, Hillary Clinton is cast in nearly all mass media as tomorrow’s likely victor — even if she should gain fewer delegates. Dick Morris, once gleeful at the prospect of Hillary’s demise, predicts enough bounce for Clinton to extend the Democratic campaign through spring. The Michigan and Florida primaries, annulled by the Party, will be restaged, he predicts.

Ohio ice will be Pensylvania mud before this is all over. And the mud will be slung with abandon.

Two weeks of Saturday Night Live, yesterday’s Sixty Minutes and today’s Daily Show have showcased a laughing, self-deprecating Hillary, while regular newscasts have featured a series of questions about Obama’s character. First, the Tennessee Republicans unearthed a photo of Obama in an African costume, then Obama’s erstwhile supporter Rezko went on trial for corruption. Finally, today a slime-covered story surfaced picking up on the NAFTA-Canada angle. It seems that one of Obama’s economic advisers met with Canadian consulate officials (at their request) and, according to a leaked report of the meeting, the adviser told the Canadians that Obama’s critique of NAFTA was only for public consumption. Although the Canadian government denied this — as did the adviser and Obama himself — the damage for this election eve news cycle was done. Hillary quickly said Obama had given a “wink and a nod” to the Canadians not to take his NAFTA criticism seriously.

A gotcha moment, eh?

The usually distinct line between politics and parody was blurred once again over the weekend by Saturday Night Live, the long-running American television show.  Hillary Clinton flew on Saturday from Ohio, where she was campaigning for tomorrow’s primary, to New York to appear in a skit alongside a comic who makes fun of her.  Then she sat for a taping of another TV program that gets high ratings from spoofing politicians and their foibles, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  That program is set to air tonight.

Foreign readers (and others somehow insulated from the current theater of American politics) can find clips of these shows on YouTube.  Don’t be surprised if this all seems more like “Alice Through the Looking Glass” than political reality.  With so much at stake in tomorrow’s votes in Ohio and Texas (and Vermont and Rhode Island), Hillary Clinton is trying every tactic to sway voters.  The current, accepted wisdom is that candidates do well in such circumstances to join in with popular entertainers who mock them, thereby showing a “human” side and gaining free publicity.

Thus, Hillary appeared on national TV on Saturday night as the faux “Hillary” took part in an extended lampoon of the last Clinton-Obama debate satirizing the media questioners for allegedly going easy on Obama and hard on Clinton.

Huckabee, Obama and even John McCain have all appeared on this and similar shows in the past, but for Clinton to take time off from retail politicking right before a crucial vote says something about her campaign and perhaps the American electorate.

If she narrowly wins tomorrow, Clinton’s forays into self-deprecation may be credited by the media and her feuding advisers as having “shaped” the last-minute media “environment,” and influenced Ohioans and Texans to vote for her.  Many credit her teary-eyed moment in front of the cameras on the eve of the New Hampshire primary last January as playing just such a role.

Can it really be that such “earned” media — the term of art for news-making events that get candidates free airtime — will be decisive?  Or will it be the “red phone” TV commercial paid for by her campaign that was unleashed this weekend in Ohio and Texas?  Here the motif was a play on frightening symbols and images, this time designed to cast Hillary as the experienced foreign policy hand ready to tackle a middle-of-the-night foreign policy crisis.  Although quickly criticized, this attack ad — like the comedy skits — is probably effective last-minute politics.   In our topsy-turvy world, it’s all about getting spin, even if you’re trying to amuse and frighten people at the same time.