http://www.rollingstone.com/nationalaffairs/index.php/2007/10/09/year-of-the-rat-a-campaign-2008-diary-by-matt-taibbi/Looking at the field now, it appears that in the end the horse race will come down to three viable candidates on each side – Giuliani, Thompson and Romney on the Republican docket and Hillary, Obama and the tireless John Edwards among the Democrats. Perhaps also squeezing their way into the viewfinder before this is over will be a smattering of minor figures not yet mathematically eliminated, in particular the Christian bassist Mike Huckabee lurking behind the Republican field and, who knows, maybe Bill Richardson on the other side.
Last but not least, there are parallel irritant figures on both sides in Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, whose jobs it will be to be roundly pilloried for wasting valuable air time (especially in debates) via their embarrassingly dead-on, pain-in-the-ass candidacies. Since neither candidate is a worn-out whore and neither candidate has cast a single vote for any of the numerous completely avoidable political catastrophes that befell the country in the last four-plus years, both will be described as “fringe” and “unserious” figures who should rightfully be assigned to the “second tier” of presidential hopefuls.
The press should have looked at the rise of blogs and the angry momentum of blog-powered insurgent candidacies like that of Paul and Ned Lamont and recognized that the mainstream political press has become, in some circles, as much of a villain as the establishment candidates themselves. It should have seen this and made changes, if only out of pure self-interest, in an effort to retain both its political power and its market share. But it didn’t. Instead, the big press seems to have mainly concluded that voter discontent toward the media is based upon its having been too friendly to George Bush in particular.
There is a vibe that can already be detected in campaign coverage that suggests that the media thinks that if it disavows Bush and in particular Bush’s war, all will be forgiven. We journalists seem to be in a state of half-apology for having overstepped our traditional role as ideologically promiscuous ass-kissers and briefly gone over, after 9/11, into a dark side of frank and open cheerleading for Extreme Measures and Total War. We’re apologizing for that, but only that; the attitude is not much different from a high schooler from the OC who thinks that if he just promises to never again get into Daddy’s Porsche at 3 in the morning, it’s still okay if he goes to keggers on school nights.
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