reflectivepundit

The Absurd Roles of Iowa and New Hampshire in Presidential Campaigns

By Brigitte L. Nacos
Although thought to promote participatory democracy and diminish the power of party insiders in the selection of presidential nominees, the post-1968 reforms in favor of binding primaries and caucuses resulted in unintended consequences. Nothing has been more absurd than the influential roles of Iowa and New Hampshire. Although this time around far more states decided on holding their primaries or caucuses very early next year, this frontloading trend has not diminished the starring roles of the first two states. Iowa and New Hampshire may not decide the ultimate presidential nominees of the two major parties, but voters in these states are likely to affect the outcome--if only by narrowing down the fields from which their compatriots in other states can select the candidates of their choice.
The media hype surrounding the 2008 presidential race intensified after the 2006 off-year elections and focused once again disproportionately on Iowa and New Hampshire. Thus, from January 1 through December 15, 2007, ABC News, CBS News and NBC News combined aired 324 segments about or mentioning “Iowa and caucuses” and 343 that reported on or mentioned “New Hampshire and primary or primaries” according to the Lexix/Nexis archive. In spite of this sustained media attention that actually is shared by the international press as well one wonders what people here and abroad know about the first caucus and primary states.   
Judging from the importance of these two states, who would guess that Iowa has a population of only 3 million—less than 1% of the total U.S. population of more than 303 million.  New Hampshire’s population is less than 1.5 million and thus less than ½% of the U.S. total. In terms of demography, about 91% of the population in Iowa and about 97% of New Hampshire residents are white and thus far from representative of the nation at large.
How democratic is a candidate selection system that gives two tiny, unrepresentative states a disproportionate influence at the expense of the vast majority of voters? And this does not even take into account the undemocratic way in which the Democratic Party in Iowa reports the results of its caucuses as explained in a recent New York Times op-ed piece

U.S. Public Diplomacy and Al Qaeda’s Advantage in the Publicity Battle

By Brigitte L. Nacos
At the end of a lengthy interview with Ayman al-Zawahiri that was posted on extremist web sites last weekend, al-Qaeda’s own media production company As-Sahab announced that the terrorist organization’s second in command was inviting questions via an Islamist media center to be admitted within the next month. According to the announcement, these questions will be sent to al-Zawahiri and answered in another video-taped appearance. It seems that al-Qaeda wants to imitate CNN’s YouTube campaign debate format. TechCrunch’s Duncan Riley calls al Qaeda’s latest propaganda approach “bizarre.” Bizarre indeed, but this latest scheme is actually just one more example for the fact that al-Qaeda, like-minded groups, and terrorist organizations in general exploit all media and communication means for propaganda purposes.
As I have argued before, governments have not been savvy and innovative in developing and testing new public diplomacy approaches in order to counter the public relations assault from terrorist extremists. This is an excerpt from what I wrote in an article just published by the online journal Perspectives on Terrorism:
“Recently, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates called on the U.S. government to spend more money and yield to “soft power” because “the military alone cannot defend America's interests around the world.” Spending more money and placing more effort into “soft power,” will not assure a more effective “public diplomacy” in the Middle East and among Muslims and Arabs. Even if the United States Information Agency were revived and its once excellent parts revitalized, these vehicles of public diplomacy would not be successful in current target regions as they were during the Cold War when they were working within a far more limited and controlled communication environment. In today’s global setting, most people of the world know almost instantly what happens elsewhere around the globe. They no longer need the Voice of America or Alhurra TV as their primary source of information. It is unlikely that they will react positively to Americans selling U.S. culture and values and the advantages of democracy and freedom.

Hillary Clinton and the Media’s Tendency to Make and Break Candidates

By Brigitte L. Nacos
After first proclaiming Hillary Clinton’s presidential nomination as foregone conclusion, the news media took her down by first blowing her less than stellar performance in one of the numerous televised campaign debates out of proportion and then following up with a constant barrage of very critical straight news coverage and commentary. In today’s Washington Post, Dan Balz writes of Senator Clinton, “She once was the all-but-inevitable front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, powered by the best brand name in her party, a rock-steady performance on the campaign trail, and a muscular, confident campaign team known for playing hard -- and winning. Many Democrats still see Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as their likeliest nominee, but all talk of inevitability is gone.” 

What reporters and columnists fail to acknowledge is their own role in making and breaking candidates. After helping to establish front-runners, the leading media tend to take the favorites down, or at least try to do so, by overemphasizing their alleged or real negatives and, at the same time promote other candidates as more attractive options. In the case of Clinton, one wonders whether her gender has turned from initially favorable coverage (the prospect of the first female president) into a media liability. Today, for example, a lengthy report about Hillary Clinton by Mark Leibovich was teased on the New York Times web site with the sentence, “After years of public battles, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton must prove she is not too hardened to inspire.” There is a double standard here in that it is difficult to imagine such a sentence in a story about a male presidential contender. Nor are male candidates criticized as being shrill when they engage in tough rhetorical exchanges with their competitors. If you doubt that gender bias is still entrenched in today’s media, take a look at an article by Robin Givhan in today’s Washington Post that is solely devoted to Clinton’s looks. These are the amazing opening paragraphs of this amazing story:

“The mind, so easily distracted by things mauve and lemon yellow, strays from more pressing concerns to ponder the sartorial: How many pantsuits does Hillary Clinton have in her closet? And does she ever wear them in the same combination more than once?
The pantsuit is Clinton's uniform. Hers is a mix-and-match world, a grown-up land of Garanimals: black pants with gray jacket, tan jacket with black pants, tan jacket with tan pants. There are a host of reasons to explain Clinton's attachment to pantsuits. They are comfortable. They can be flattering, although not when the jacket hem aligns with the widest part of the hips hypothetically speaking, of course). Does she even have hips?
And because Clinton seems to prefer crossing her legs at the ankle—in the way girls were taught when girls were still sent to finishing school—there is less likelihood of any embarrassing straight-to-YouTube video.”

Giuliani’s New Campaign Ad: Fiction Rather than Facts

By Brigitte L. Nacos
It seems that Rudy Giuliani is no longer content to rely solely on his mythical account of his heroic leadership role after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York. Perhaps Joe Biden’s perceptive remark that the former New York mayor’s presidential campaign message consists of "a noun, a verb and 9/11"got to Rudy. In his latest campaign ad to be aired in New Hampshire, Giuliani celebrates Ronald Reagan’s successful leadership against terrorists and terrorism with the clear implication that he, Rudy, will do the same. On the screen you see the words, “Rudy Resolve” as Giuliani speaks. Problem is that the new ad is another fairy-tale version of reality.

In this new spot, Giuliani recalls the 444-day Iran Hostage Crisis and says, “They released the American hostages in one hour, and that should tell us a lot about these Islamic terrorists that we're facing, The one hour in which they released them was the one hour in which Ronald Reagan was taking the Oath of Office as President of the United States. The best way you deal with dictators, the best way you deal with tyrants and terrorists, you stand up to them. You don't back down."

While it is true that the hostages were released minutes after Jimmy Carter’s presidency ended, this was obviously an act to humiliate and punish the outgoing president as the following eight years. While none of the Iranian hostages died during the long ordeal, President Reagan’s record on terrorism was up to 9/11 the worst of any president in that far more Americans died in terrorist incidents than during any other presidency. Moreover, given the multitude of terrorist attacks, many of them against Americans, the 1980s came to be known as the decade of terrorism.

John McCain and Waterboarding: Tough on Romney, Soft on Mukasey

By Brigitte L. Nacos
During the last Republican presidential debate, Ex-Governor Mitt Romney refused to characterize waterboarding as torture and said that as president he would consult experts like McCain on this question. According to the CNN transcript of the event, this was part of the ensuing exchange between Senator McCain and Romney :
McCain: Well, governor, I'm astonished that you haven't found out what waterboarding is.
Romney: I know what waterboarding is, Senator.
McCain: Then I am astonished that you would think such a -- such a torture would be inflicted on anyone in our -- who we are held captive and anyone could believe that that's not torture. It's in violation of the Geneva Convention. It's in violation of existing law...
And, governor, let me tell you, if we're going to get the high ground in this world and we're going to be the America that we have cherished and loved for more than 200 years. We're not going to torture people.
We're not going to do what Pol Pot did. We're not going to do what's being done to Burmese monks as we speak. I suggest that you talk to retired military officers and active duty military officers like Colin Powell and others, and how in the world anybody could think that that kind of thing could be inflicted by Americans on people who are held in our custody is absolutely beyond me…

This unequivocal, passionate stand would have been more convincing, if the Senator had taken an equally forceful position vis-à-vis Michael B. Mukasey who also claimed to be clueless about waterboarding during his appearances before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Instead, McCain expressed repeatedly support for Mukasey’s confirmation as Attorney-General.  McCain said at the time that he wanted Mukasey to say “that waterboarding was torture and illegal.” Of course, Mukasey refused to say that. But it seemed sufficient for McCain that Mukasey “said that he would get briefed on the procedures."

Barack Obama: Neither a Threat Nor the Only Hope

By Brigitte L. Nacos
Under the headline “Foes Use Obama’s Muslim Ties to Fuel Rumors About Him,” the Washington Post’s Perry Bacon Jr. reported this week that posts on the Internet and voices on talk radio “allege that Obama (D-Ill.) is a Muslim, a ‘Muslim plant’ in a conspiracy against America, and that, if elected president, he would take the oath of office using a Koran, rather than a Bible, as did Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the only Muslim in Congress, when he was sworn in earlier this year.” The article also mentions that prominent conservative talk-show stars and alarmist posters on Internet message boards refer implicitly or explicitly to the prospect of a Muslim president with radio talk show host Michael Savage noting Obama's ‘background" in a "Muslim madrassa in Indonesia’ in June, and Rush Limbaugh in September that he occasionally got ‘confused’ between Obama and Osama bin Laden.” It is well known that conservative circles also make a point of using the senator's middle name, Hussein, in obvious efforts to construct a Muslim association. Senator Obama hasn’t made a secret of the fact that his father’s family in Kenya was of Muslim faith; he himself is a Christian and member of a church on Chicago’s South Side.

This is not the first time that the religion of a presidential candidate is questioned.  When Senator John F. Kennedy ran for the highest office nearly half a century ago, the prospect of a Catholic in the White House fueled rumors about the influence of the pope on U.S. decision-making. And the current presidential bid by Mitt Romney, a Mormon, has raised questions about the influence of the Mormon Church on a future Mormon president. As for Senator Obama, it is not his own religious affiliation that is targeted by some conservatives with large audiences but rather his grandfather’s and father’s. One can’t even imagine to what scare tactics the conspiracy crowd would resort, if Obama were indeed a Muslim. Obviously, the same people who love to cite the U.S. Constitution when it supports their extremist positions forget conveniently that the document guarantees religious freedom.

On the other hand, it has been suggested that Senator Obama is the only presidential candidate who, if elected, could solve America’s Middle East problems because of his distinct background. This is what Seymour Hersh argues recently when he spoke to a history class at UC Irvine taught by Jon Wiener. Wiener wrote in the Huffington Post,
“Barack Obama represents ‘the only hope for the US in the Muslim world,’ according to Pulitzer-prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. Because Obama's father was a Muslim, he ‘could lead a reconciliation between the Muslim countries and the US.’ With any of the other candidates as president, Hersh said, ‘we're facing two or three decades of problems in the Mideast, with 1.2 billion Muslims.’ “