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| Home Front: Politix |
| David Warren: Letter to USA, IV |
| 2004-10-29 |
| One week from today, we may or may not know the result of the U.S. presidential election. Tens of thousands of lawyers, employed by both parties, stand waiting to contest results, Florida-style, in each swing state. The polls indicate it is exceedingly close, both in popular vote and in the electoral college, and different polls show different trendlines. The number of swing states appears to be increasing. Voter turnout is itself less predictable for this election than for any recent one in the U.S. -- the people are far from indifferent about the result. Advance polls show an extraordinary climb in voter participation. And the stakes keep rising. Several appalling terror strikes in Iraq -- given detailed, saturation coverage by media which overwhelmingly oppose George W. Bush, and believe a torrent of bad news could still defeat him -- have probably helped to tighten the race, together with bad news from other fronts (oil price up, stock market down), given similarly loving attention. Good news -- e.g. the successful conclusion of Afghanistan's first election, and the reclaiming of towns that had fallen to the Jihadis in Iraq, is being consciously spiked. Indeed, the whole business of news-gathering is being transformed before our eyes. In one sense, we are returning to the habits of another era, when local dailies flourished their rival partisanships as much on front as on editorial pages. But as competition between railway companies gave way to competition instead between trains, buses, and then planes for the same passengers, so is media competition developing. The medium has become the message, though not quite in the way our Canadian sage Marshall McLuhan observed. |
| Posted by:tipper |