About the time O.J. Simpson was arrested, I made what was probably a brilliant decision. I make so few that I remember them all. I decided not to follow the case for a while. I could see that the scenario had the potential to be all-consuming, offering up an excess of entertainment and frustrating emotion, to the point of being a major impediment to my work. Later on, it became exactly that…but by joining it "in progress," I minimized the number of months of my life that it was a distraction. I am starting to feel I should do much the same thing regarding the upcoming presidential election.
One of my greatest criticisms of what we loosely call "The Media" is its need to fill hours and column inches even when they really don't have anything to say. The News has always been like this but now, with Internet and cable news channels competing as they do, it's really become a matter of how to take a one-minute news item, stretch it for a couple days, make it sound exciting, and bridge the days when there's nothing at all new to report. The last couple of weeks, most of what I've read about the Iowa Caucuses and Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich's pie charts has been in that category. It looks like news, it sounds like news…but it isn't news. News is about things that matter.
Here is a hunch based, like all good hunches, on just about nothing. One of my most vivid memories of those few years when I followed the Dodgers was when the trailing team would suddenly tie the score and Sportscaster Supreme Vin Scully would yell, "And it's a brand-new ball game!" The fact that one team was ahead or behind for the early innings had suddenly become irrelevant. It sometimes became irrelevant in the bottom of the ninth. All that had gone before has perhaps been entertaining but none of it had anything to do with which team would ultimately win the game. I have a feeling that the '04 presidential race is going to be like that; not that it will tie but that the real contest, the one that will determine who wins, will hinge on events and actions and economic indicators that have not yet occurred and cannot possibly be predicted. It will have nothing to do with what John Kerry said about Dick Gephardt at the Iowa Caucuses.
I expect to support the Democratic nominee unless it's Joe Lieberman, in which case I'll be too busy packing to move to Canada. I also expect that between now and Election Day, the news will be a roller coaster for all who insist on following it. Bush will be beatable. Then he will be unbeatable again. Then he will look highly beatable. Then we'll hear that he already has the ballot boxes stuffed and/or Osama squirreled away for a late October Surprise…and so on. That's what would be best for the newsfolks, so that's how the news will be. It's not that I don't care about the election. It's just that I have the feeling I could ignore it all, pick up the story a few weeks after the conventions and not miss much except that roller coaster.
I won't be able to do that, of course. I don't have the will power. But at least months from now, I'll be able to post a message linking back to this one and say, "I wish I'd listened to myself."