Wild America
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Tuesday, 2nd November 2004


I had to watch the election coverage for a class and write a paper based on that. It was my homework. But this election was interesting and quite exciting to everyone. My cousin had made up some excuse not to go to work. When I got home he was laying on the couch, the remote controller in hand and he explained, ?I have vacation time.? He is Nepali. His wife is American. She was interested but she not excited about the prospects. She said, ?I will cry if Bush wins again.? Her uncle is gay and she thinks Bush is a ?hatemonger? both at home and abroad. As the night went by and I flipped the channels between FOX News Channel, and CNN and MSNBC and then stuck longer with PBS or BBC America, with every passing comment by yet another political pundit and the charts of the Popular Votes vs. Electoral and their tallies and the US map smeared in Red and Blue states, I came to realize that whatever this political maelstrom meant in surface was deceiving and that the implications of American democratic process was much deeper than the rhetoric that we have been seeing for the last year or so from both sides of campaign soapbox.
This year the networks had decided to be more cautious. CBS News went behind the scenes and explained how they were going to ?project? a winner in different races. MSNBC showed how they had developed new codes to explain some outcomes which they could not be accurate on: ?Too Close to Call,? ?Too Early to Call.? The memory of Florida and the debacle that was Election 2000 coverage has at least made the media more careful. I was happy until the polls closed and all the networks joined the bandwagon to tally the ?exit polls.? My question was, if you are having a real election this very day and the results are going to come in about 4 hours and every thing will be clear, why are you reporting the results of some ?poll? again? How about some patience? John Stewart on his fake news show, ?The Daily Show? made perfect sense when he said something to the effect of ?We are the ones who pride in giving erroneous news. Why do you have to tune to those channels when we are already here making mistakes for you??
The only agreement at around 7 PM among all the pundits and all the different networks was that the turnout this year was high. Then after a while word came that it was actually ?very high.? So the differences began. By some strange coincidence every guest speaker at FOX started to think that this high turnout was good for Mr. President and serendipity, the guests in CNN seemed to think that this high turnout meant that Senator Kerry?s chances were quite good. They pointed to those damned exit polls and said that meant good things to the Kerry Campaign. Cut to Kerry Campaign Headquarters in Boston- CNN: ?The mood is one of cautious excitement? & FOX: ?They are showing no emotion.? By this time the ticker on the bottom of the screen had started its continuous slide showing us who are getting the votes. In about an hour of polls closing the results were coming out in a flurry.
While all this was happening in the 24 hour news networks on cable, old John Lehrer at PBS was droning about what the Electoral College actually is. I would think with Florida fiasco four years ago every American and even every European, Asian and African should be familiar with the quaint relic of ancient political ritual that is Electoral College. And that ever popular ?hanging chad.? But Lehrer explanation of the Electoral Process had an added significance this year as Colorado had a ballot where they were going to divide the electoral votes in proportion to popular votes cast. If that had been the case in Florida, four years ago, Al Gore would have won.
Other important topics of discussion before the election results started to come out in earnest concerned the issue of voter suppressions in various parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania where there had been court rulings giving the parties the right to challenge any person the very right to vote. Every network harked back to Florida. There was little local coverage on any of the networks except the important Senate races like Tom Daschle?s situation in SD or Barrack Obama in IL. Now that was a story that Democratic Strategist loved to talk about- Barrack Obama! The future of Democratic hope!
When I was a kid, Nepal Television broadcasted a show called ?Wild America.? It was a nature program narrated by a burly, bearded mountain man named Marty Stouffer. Election night was wild in a completely different way. None of the exotic animals in their natural environment and none of the true information of the situation. If you watched through the coverage of Election 2004, you would feel as if the everything about the process was just a mess and a confusion and every political commentator, no matter their party affiliation, seemed to believe that the magnitude of the election was such that whoever won the Election there could be only two alternatives: either total degradation or complete well being of the American situation.

(contd...)

But gleaning through the sometimes confusing, sometimes deliberately misleading and partisan and sometimes well formulated, insightful comments by various talking heads I understood the issues better and I saw firsthand how the concept of ?marketplace of ideas? was used and misused.
Most of the Democratic Party commentators seemed to think that this election was primarily an election based on Bush?s value war- the culmination of the culture war of the Progressive America versus the values still held dear by the people of the hinterland. The Governor of Nebraska, a Republican said, ?Bush is a likeable guy. He is actually in person a down to earth common America. People like him because he is someone who you can spend an afternoon with, watching a football game and drinking beer.? The other guy said: ?We are voting for a President not for Survivor. It?s not a matter of who you like to drink beer with; it is a matter of who is most suited to lead the country for the next four years.?
As the cable channels got more and more excited and started to lose all the semblance of their earlier cautiousness, I found refuge with Charlie Rose and his roundtable discussion of issues with Bill Moyers, the host of NOW on PBS, Joe Klein of TIME magazine, David Halberstam , author/journalist and Meena Bose, Professor at West Point. Bill Moyers was exasperated at the Presidents record and Joe Klein and David Halberstam seemed to agree with Moyers? assessment but Ms. Bose seemed to be more optimistic.
Joe Klein said that the real divide in the country was not between the rich and the poor as Senator Edwards suggested but it was between the Secular Pluralists vs. Religious Conservatives. And Bush was firing up his base of social conservatives or evangelical Christians by evoking hot button issues like gay marriage, abortion and tax cuts to mask his poor record at Iraq and economy.
David Halberstam thought that the extremism in the media is evident on the talk radio?s prevalence. That there was no civility of discourse anymore and the ?meanness of spirit in talk radio? had made politics too fuzzy to talk about real issues. He spoke of the time that he visited somewhere in Deep South and heard on the talk radio that the ultimate devil of American society was Hilary Clinton. Of course all the hosts and the callers were guys who seemed like they would like to watch football and have a beer with Bush.
Bill Moyers expounded the fact that this election was the most ideologically polarized election in a long time in history. He said, ?The candidates do not matter at all.? It is not what their abilities are it is who you identity with and those voting against Bush were voting against the Right wing conservatism.
Meena Bose questioned her colleagues? assessment of the fact that there was no political centre now and she seemed to think that all this polarization was just campaign rhetoric. Moyers responded, ?But Sean Hennity is spouting hate 24/7/365 and so is Michael Moore.?
In the end it seemed like it was Charlie Rose himself had a better advice. He said, ?No matter who wins the election, we have to talk more.? He is a talk show host. He should know.

***

Then Ohio started to act up. It seemed to be careening dangerously the way Florida did, circa 2000. The results were ?Too close to call.? At about 11 PM Bush had a slight margin of about 100,000 votes over Kerry. The networks were tallying the totals in their own way. At 11 PM FOX had Bush 210/ Kerry 144, CNN had Bush 234/ Kerry 188 and MSNBC had Bush 210/ Kerry 206. Indecision 2004, indeed!

***

Over at NBC, Tim Russert and Tom Brokaw were talking about the issues. Russert, voicing over a map of America where the two coastal states were Blue and the vast land mass between New York and California and the entire South was Red, said, ?The Blue states care about economy and health care and they support Kerry whereas the Red states care about moral values and they came out in droves to vote for Bush.? He talked about how Bush?s mind Karl Rove masterminded the strategy to rile up the ?conservative base? to bring people out to vote.

Ohio, the battleground state, was the perfect example. It could be clearly divided into a Blue State on the North and a Red State on the South. You can tell how an Ohioan will vote based on if he lives to the North or the South of the Mason-Dixon Line. And Russert said that Ohio had lost 250,000 jobs in the last 4 years which should favor Kerry. But the more important issue in this year?s ballot is the referendum banning gay marriage that is being voted on in Ohio this year. The referendum will rile up Bush?s entire core base of social conservatives to vote. And guess what, they voted against gay marriage and for Bush?s victory on the same day.

***

Over at MSNBC Chris Matthews held the RED and BLUE map of America and told his viewers, Kerry could fly from New York to California never having to fly over a Blue state. The ideological divide then was a geographical divide too. My cousin said, ?Damn, I did not know Americans were this conservative. In Nebraska Bush won by 60-40 margin. We need to move to California.? He was especially amused by Idaho where the margin for victory for Bush was more like 75-25.

***

Around midnight, Tom Brokaw declared, ?NBC projects Bush as the winner!? It was going to be a long night and longer four years. I was especially concerned about Bush?s environmental policy and his plan to overhaul the judiciary with conservative judges. The face of the Supreme Court could change in the next four years. The divide between the Bush ?faithful? and the others would be wider. I needed some sleep. By the way, Nebraskans would have to gamble across the river. The gambling initiatives did not pass. The embryonic stem-cell research bill in California, Proposition 71 passed against Bush?s wishes. The gay marriage propositions did not pass in none of the 11 states, not even in Oregon.

***

THE NEXT DAY

I have election hangover. The world has not changed. I am not even American.

Aaron Brown says: ?Now Iraq is Bush?s problem to solve. All the talk about values will come to how he deals with Iraq.? Somebody in TV mentioned the recent Economist article which said, ?This is the election of the incompetent against the incoherent.? Bush was coherent. The pundits think Democrats need to find a ?message.? The best saying that I heard during this ride through Wild America was Stuart Taylor Jr. of the National Journal who during the run up to the Election wrote, ?American Politics is not a thing of beauty- never has been, never will be- until the scientists find a genetic way of purging selfishness, greed and irrationality from human nature.? At least we have hope ? California?s Proposition 71 will provide 3 billion dollars to fund embryonic stem cell research. Who knows may be they can purge us of irrationality after all?

***

MG, your coverage of the (mis)election coverage is simply superb! Thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and completely identified with it. You are one helluva writer! Hope you got an A+ in your paper.

JD