Thoughts On the Horse Race

Guest blogger, Nick Kotz, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist and author, writes:
“Clicking around the TV channels unscientifically but hungrily last Thursday night, searching for facts and cogent analysis, it struck me that Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews on MSNBC were at least fresher in their comments and more interesting – entertaining is perhaps the right word.
You are right on the mark with questions about the lack of questioning about the mantras of “experience” and “change.” Kinsley provided some sobering reality about the catch phrases in his New York Times piece on January 6th.
Listening to Obama’s victory speech – along with about 15 other well-meaning, upper-middle to upper income limousine liberal enthusiasts – I too was moved by the man and his words. Not to be the party pooper, I never expressed my thought to my friends that the speech was filled with fine rhetoric, well-delivered – appealingly calling for change without defining it – but, it could end up being very hollow when the opponents get down and dirty, and all of us start demanding specifics.
Another thought on the psychology and reality of the “horse race” which we all right-thinking bloviators so deplore every four years. Failure to address the key substantive issues and to define catch phrases such as “change” and “experience” is a failure of the media and news analysts. Having said that, the horse race is, in fact, a reflection of and measurement of public opinion at various stages of the election process. A given at the start is that most – a vast majority – of Americans have paid very little attention to the presidential contests at this point. And many who have paid attention have very shallow attachments to whichever candidates they say they favor. Stronger attachments come only after Labor Day of election year, and even then many voters remain only loosely committed until late in the process. And so it is quite natural that the results of an early primary – or polls just before that primary – will influence millions of voters who have barely, if at all, started thinking about the candidates.
What I’m saying is that the problem, if indeed it is a problem, goes well beyond the media’s obsession with the horse race. Non stop, informed, intelligent 100 per cent devotion to coverage of issues at this stage will have little effect relative to the powerful effect of early polls followed by early primaries. The American voter, who I believe over the long run has good common sense in picking political leaders, is at this stage going to jump on bandwagons, and be influenced by the very dynamics and dramatics of the horse race.”