Paul Krugman reviews the disconnect between the presidential candidates as they are and how the media chooses to cover them. Predictably, he's unhappy. And, also predictably, I agree that this problem really needs to be fixed somehow.
I'd go even further than that and say--assuming the problem wasn't so heavily entrenched--it would be downright easy for journalists to modify the standard approach to political reporting in a way that drastically improved the quality of information that voters read. As it is, though, I don't think reporters themselves really have enough agency to do anything about it.
In a way, though, I think Krugman misses something here:
For example, the case of F.D.R. shows that there’s nothing inauthentic, in the normal sense of the word, about calling for higher taxes on the rich while being rich yourself. If anything, it’s to your credit if you advocate policies that will hurt your own financial position. But the news media seem to find it deeply disturbing that John Edwards talks about fighting poverty while living in a big house.
On the other hand, consider the case of Fred Thompson. He spent 18 years working as a highly paid lobbyist, wore well-tailored suits and drove a black Lincoln Continental. When he ran for the Senate, however, his campaign reinvented him as a good old boy: it leased a used red pickup truck for him to drive, dressed up in jeans and a work shirt, with a can of Red Man chewing tobacco on the front seat.
The thing is, if Edwards adopted smarmy, Thompson-like lifestyle habits designed to make him look like a working class guy, people would still call him inauthentic. It's not about his money (or the perception that he has money) per se. Thompson has money, too, and everybody knows it. The difference between the two of them is that John Edwards says he wants to raise taxes on the wealthy because he cares about poor people. Fred Thompson doesn't have any such intentions, and so, in a twisted way, he gets a pass on just about all things class related.
Comments