In my loose postmortem of campaign ‘08, I wrote that the MSM was a handmaiden to Obama’s “victory.”

Courtesy of the WaPo, here’s how it went down [e.a.]:

He did not win Indiana, but he got the next-best thing. A resounding victory in North Carolina dominated the news all night while the media waited for delayed returns to roll in from Gary, Ind. Obama’s victory speech was televised. Clinton waited, and waited. By the time her narrow Hoosier State win was declared, any momentum she gained had disappeared.

Time after time after time, Obama won on television, every single one of his humiliating defeats whitewashed by the media’s Obama Love (and Clinton hatred).

Michael Dukakis recently had some advice for the Dems about that. He wants a massive on-the-ground operation for the Democrats in the fall [e.a.]:

So I want to see [someone] in every single one of the 200,000 precincts in the United States. If we do that, we’re going to win those people over. If we think we’re going to win it on television, then we’re kidding ourselves.

Can you win an election just on television [with the complicity of the media]? That is just one of the many questions this campaign has raised. One day perhaps we’ll find out.

As Politico notes, Obama asked for it, and he got it—evidence for all to see that, like every other politician known to man (and woman), he is a liar:

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I mention this, and not Hillary Clinton’s repeated lies, because we all expect Clinton to lie. She’s a Clinton, after all, and is advised by the former Liar-in-Chief. Her lying isn’t newsworthy.

When Obama lies, however—and when he challenges his interlocutor to prove him wrong and the cyber elves do prove him wrong and the rest of us then spread it around for everyone to see—well, then Obama loses.

If his genius campaign manager David Axelrod hadn’t created a totally false image of Obama the Messiah, none of this would matter now. But because he launched a celebrity with a halo instead of a warts-and-all politician, his client will continue to have problems.

Or so I think. We shall see.

Just in time for the Episode Two of The Petraeus Show, which pre-game “reviewers” analyzed and critiqued well in advance of opening night (see the headlines on Memeorandum (at 9:30 a.m., just before showtime),
Gallup releases poll results on Americans’ attitudes toward the war in Iraq.

Upshot [e.a.]:

The 2008 presidential election will present voters with a clear choice on Iraq, with Republicans putting forth one of the Senate’s fiercest supporters of the war and Democrats choosing one of two leading Senate opponents, including Obama, who has made his opposition to the war from the beginning a major focus of his campaign. If McCain is elected, U.S. policy on Iraq will likely continue as it has under the Bush administration, with slower troop drawdowns tied to progress in establishing security in Iraq. If Obama or Clinton is elected, finding a quick end to the war will likely be the new president’s top priority.

In general, the public tends to side with the Democrats from the standpoint of favoring a timetable, but relatively few advocate a quick withdrawal. And most seem sympathetic to the Republican argument about the United States needing to establish a certain level of security before leaving Iraq.

Call me crazy, but it looks to me as if, all things considered, Americans would rather stick around and do the right thing by Iraqis than just get out.

It’s my opinion, based on an anthropological reading of the culture, that Americans would like to win in Iraq—as we like to win everywhere, because we Americans are a profoundly competitive people—but the conventional wisdom these days says otherwise.

See Glenn Greenwald, for example, in a post titled “Cokie Roberts speaks out on the war on behalf of the American people”:

Yesterday, Cokie Roberts — while expressing scorn for the “Responsible Plan for Withdrawal” advocated by 42 Democratic Congressional candidates and numerous military experts, and described by fellow panelist Katerina Vanden Heuvel of The Nation — said this:

VANDEN HEUVEL: It is not, but you know what, the responsible thing to do is withdraw. [you hear Cokie odiously chuckling at this point]

VANDEN HEUVEL: If we withdraw responsibly, the region would be more stable in the long term, America will be restored as a responsible global leader, and there are 42 challengers, you are absolutely right Cokie, who have a responsible plan to withdraw.

ROBERTS: Convincing the electorate of that I think would be very difficult, and I also agree that the notion that Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham you heard this morning putting forward, that Americans would prefer to win, is–

VANDEN HEUVEL: But what is winning? This war is unwinnable, there are no military solutions.

The video is also here. Roberts’ claim — that Americans agree with McCain, Graham and her that withdrawal is a bad idea and that they want to stay until we win — is just a lie. There’s no other way to put that.

Really? I don’t see any evidence to back up your claim, Mr. Greenwald. We may quibble about whether Americans want to “win” (since they’re repeatedly told by the MSM that we cannot win) or whether they just want to do the right thing, but the polling (for what it’s worth) suggests that relatively fewer people want to just get the hell out of there and call it “responsible.”

All things considered, people seem much more interested in the political theater surrounding The Petraeus Show. Here’s a gem from the NYT:

Testimony by General Will Test Candidates for President

All three senators running for president — John McCain of Arizona, Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois — will have a chance to question General Petraeus and Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador to Baghdad. Each of the three is determined to use the spectacle to advantage, but all face political risks as well as opportunities in the back-to-back hearings before the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees. …

Mr. McCain, a Republican, has the logistical advantage in appearing before his two Democratic competitors. General Petraeus is set to testify first to the Armed Services Committee, beginning at 9:30 a.m., and Mr. McCain, the ranking Republican member, will be the second to speak, after the committee chairman, Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan.

Mrs. Clinton, a more junior member of the panel, will speak later. Mr. Obama, a junior member of the Foreign Relations Committee, which is holding its hearing in the afternoon, will be the 13th on that panel to speak, perhaps after the evening news.

The headline of this piece (referring to a “test”) is yet more evidence of Andrew Tyndall’s thesis about the nexus between the campaigns and the media and the gameshow-type coverage that has evolved during this election cycle.

As for the substance of the NYT’s Elizabeth Bumiller’s piece: she suggests that Obama’s testimony occuring “after the evening news” would be a bad thing.

What century is she living in? Her own paper today cites the woes of the networks’ news divisions. The “evening news” is a woolly mammoth.

Cable “news” is the thing, dontcha know? Who cares if Obama’s “test” occurs last on the floor of the Senate? It will happen just in time for Campbell Brown of CNN and Keith Olbermann to lead with it!

I’ll try to follow up tonight. Stay tuned.

Television is virtually a news-free zone—quick! how many TV programs can you name that tell you, with facts and figures and no spin or attitude, who, what, why, where, and when? huh? how many?—and yet supposedly sophisticated TV critics, like the NYT’s Alessandra Stanley, still refer to something called “cable news.”

The funniest thing about it, though, is that Stanley calls it “news” while describing it, essentially, as an unprecedented media and campaign clusterfuck [e.a.]:

The distinction of all three new hourlong programs is that the hosts are not the stars, the campaign is. Speeches, interviews, surrogate gaffes, opinion polls, delegate math and even party deliberations are showcased with the same swooshing sound effects and flashy graphics that tip viewers to an appearance by George Clooney on “Live With Regis and Kelly.”

It’s a marked change for cable news, which over the last few years has followed the lead of Fox News and promoted vividly opinionated hosts who shape the news flow to suit their own personas and pet peeves. It’s also refreshing …

I wouldn’t call it refreshing. I would call it over-the-top infotainment. But Stanley has got one thing right—it’s the campaigns that are the stars of these shows, and the folks running the campaigns understand the circus atmosphere that is today’s media world (much more so than does Alessandra Stanley. That’s why they’ve got their candidates doing the Ellen show, etc.

This kind of coverage is also, as Stanley points out, a ratings boon for the cable shows:

The public has not been this passionately absorbed in an election in decades, and the candidates are passionately intent on making their case on television. When they do, viewership goes up: it’s a boon for the 24-hour news channels, but even they are hard-pressed to keep up with the constant flow of debates, photo ops, tarmac tirades, so many words spoken and misspoken and so many talk-show appearances.

The candidates show up not just on “Meet the Press” or “60 Minutes,” but also on “Saturday Night Live” (Senator John McCain’s star turn dates back to 2002). More recently, Senator Barack Obama kissed and cuddled the ladies of “The View,” Mr. McCain traded insults with David Letterman on his “Late Show,” and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton joked about dodging sniper fire to arrive at “The Tonight Show” on time for Jay Leno. Mrs. Clinton is also scheduled to appear on “Ellen” on Monday, her first appearance on Ellen DeGeneres’s talk show since Mr. Obama’s last one. (In that appearance, Mr. Obama upped the ante by dancing for her — his second effort to, as he put it, “bust a move.”)

And the cycle is endless and self-sustaining: satirical shows like “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and “Saturday Night Live” take clips from the news and make fun of them; news programs take skits from “Saturday Night Live” and replay them.

Andrew Tyndall writes about this campaign—and the TV coverage—much more perceptively over at HuffPo. He says the Horse Race has given over to a Gameshow Reality contest:

Stop thinking of this election as a race to the wire to be won by the candidate with the finest pedigree, truest form and best connections. Start thinking of it as a cast of larger-than-life characters, scheming against each other while simultaneously trying to appear attractive to the electorate audience. Week by week the group undergoes media trials such as candidate debates and Sunday morning interviews. Each primary election constitutes another potential elimination round.

The winner gets to be a constant television presence in our homes for four years.

With open contests in both parties, this Presidential cycle offered the perfect opportunity to unveil this new method of coverage. The casting of the contestants could not have been better. In one tribe, as they say on Survivor, there was a handsome Mormon businessman, a colorful big city mayor, a slimmed-down Baptist minister and a crusty war hero. The other tribe had a self-made trial lawyer, a globetrotting Hispanic diplomat, a diligent feminist with that interesting celebrity marriage and an inspirational young African-American.

That’s infotainment! It rules!

There’s a call for a nationwide “sacred conversation about race.” Naturally, it comes from the disgraced church under whose aegis the not-sacred Rev. Jeremiah Wright preached for 35 years:

 Rev. H. John Thomas, General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ, speaks at a press conference at Trinity United Church of Christ Thursday, April 4, 2008 in Chicago announcing that the UCC , joined by the National Council or the Churches of Christ in the USA are calling for a nationwide “sacred conversation” abut race in the United States.

Naturally, this call would come from the disgraced outfit under whose aegis the not-sacred Rev. Jeremiah Wright nurtured grievances and spread poisonous lies to his parishioners for more than two decades.

Al Gore will launch a $300 million campaign whose sole purpose is to influence public opinion.

“The whole idea of the campaign is to be inclusive and to be bipartisan and to bring people together to a place where meaningful change can happen,” an organizer said. “It aims to be a game-changer in terms of the politics of climate.”

I wasn’t in fact aware that there is a “politics of climate.” I thought climate is a given. Of nature.  Foolish me!

I haven’t been following along closely this weekend—who can keep doing that and have a life?—but the bits and piece of media that I’ve taken in (from all over: TV and blogosphere) reveal something fascinating: the MSM (from Chris Matthews to George Stephanopoulos to Howard Kurtz and their panels this morning) now says that there’s no way that Hillary can win.

Indeed, Kurtz quoted a Politico story that says the press has been misleading the public (and “partnering with the Clinton campaign”) by even pushing the notion that Hillary and Obama are in a close race.

Meanwhile, there are ever more detailed dissections, analyses, and speculations being presented by Obama dissenters who do not appear on TV but who offer much more nuanced ways of assessing him than what he offers freely to his adoring audience in the media elite and beyond.

Then there’s Nora Ephron, who wants Hillary to get out of the race in the worst way:

[Nnow that we're down to two contenders, it's turned into an unending last episode of Survivor. They’re eating rats and they’re frying bugs, and they’re frying rats and they’re eating bugs; no one is ever going to get off the island and I can’t take it any more.

Got that? Nora wants Hillary to get out because Nora ends up spending too much time thinking about Hillary, who Nora no longer likes.

And that’s funny, because I was thinking just the opposite.

Barack is unquestionably the hero of this story—placed there by a media that bought in to this ready-made narrative (and who wouldn’t? it’s perfect!).

Photo by Getty Images

We’re rooting for him (who wouldn’t, when the media frames him as the Kid Who Came Out of Nowhere?).

Until she begins to fade.

And then the electorate in New Hampshire and Ohio comes through for her, and the opposition tries to wear her down.

They call her Tonya Harding!

And yet, the more appetizing they try to make him,

the more we find ourselves clapping for her as if she were Tinker Bell.

Because we’re having so much fun!

Because the outcome is totally unpredictable. It’s the very essence of (melo)drama! No one knows what will happen.

Her continued presence holds out the promise of a surprise ending!

The script hasn’t been written!

He may be the hero of the story, but she provides the best drama.

(And for those of you who are politically inclined rather than romantically taken with this delightful entertainment: the hero of this story has nowhere to go but down, but the nemesis can only improve with time …)