The Democrats in Boston didn't like to phrase things that way; John Kerry talked of responding to attacks, as if we had not already been attacked. But these Republicans argued that we must take the attack to the enemy, to protect the American people. Offense, not defense, as McCain and Giuliani put it. The old-line broadcast networks at previous Republican conventions explored in great detail the difference between so-called moderate Republicans and the party's nominees on cultural issues, especially abortion. But Giuliani's and Schwarzenegger's support, and Laura Bush's presumed support, of abortion rights seemed trivial next to the issues they were talking about. The broadcast networks did not cover the Republicans Monday night, and their profits-driven refusal to cover McCain and Giuliani is just one item in a long list in support of the proposition that they seek relentlessly to cover Democratic conventions in the most favorable light and Republican conventions in the most unfavorable. No rational person could disagree that that proposition does not have plenteous support.
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But it no longer matters. The war on Islamist terrorism trumps the networks' pro-abortion-rights agenda. The broadcast networks no longer have the time for their reporters to frenziedly track down Republican delegates who support abortion rights and are furious at the party's rejection of their position. Other things are more important.
What I think has been happening in the 2004 presidential race so far goes something like this. For months, old media have been spinning every story in a way to defeat Bush for re-election. The absurd overconcentration on the discredited stories about Bush's service in the National Guard, the huge overcoverage of Richard Clarke's absurd charges that Bush did less against terrorism than Bill Clinton (not the story Clarke told Rich Miniter in his interviews for Miniter's book Losing bin Laden), the absurd overcoverage of Joseph Wilson's now utterly discredited charges about intelligence in Africa, the intense coverage of the Abu Ghraib prison abuses—all these are coming to an end. Old media were waging war against Bush and had the field largely to themselves, in part because of lame responses from Bush's White House press staff.
But now the focus is elsewhere. Old media hated the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth story and were determined to give it zero coverage—but were defeated by the ruckus raised by the blogosphere (the various pro-war weblogs), by talk radio, by Fox News. As Alison Mitchell of the New York Times conceded, the Times would have ignored the story in the precable era; but that era is now no more.
And now, with the Republican National Convention and the abbreviated fall campaign that is about to unfold—abbreviated, because the calendar gives us a late Labor Day and an early election day—the Bush campaign has an opportunity to present its case, mostly unmediated by old media, directly to the American people. Monday night may not have been covered by broadcast television—a travesty—and Tuesday night may be discounted by them. George W. Bush's Thursday night speech will be more important in any case and can no more be kept from the public's knowledge than his father's acceptance speech was in 1988. And the debates, unmediated, will matter.
This campaign has been less one between George W. Bush and John Kerry than one between George W. Bush and old media, and if old media have had the advantage between March and July, Bush now has the advantage of a more open field. The speeches by McCain, Giuliani, Schwarzenegger, and Laura Bush show the strength of the argument for Bush. The confused and incoherent response to the issues raised by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth shows the weakness of the argument for Kerry. We are now in the middle of something more like a level playing field—and the result is increasingly looking likely to be something other than what old media have been devoutly wishing.
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