Technology changes but stupidity remains the same

By Doug Thompson on January 22, 2004 7:14 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

In 1972, I stood in the freezing weather and snow outside the offices of the Manchester Union-Leader in New Hampshire and watched Senator Edmund Muskie break down in tears and destroy his Presidential campaign.

Muskie, the clockers and watchers said, didn't have what it took to be President. Potential Presidents of the United States don't lose it and start crying just because a conservative, hard-ass publisher like Bill Loeb of the Union-Leader writes a nasty editorial.

That was my first Presidential campaign, traveling as one of the "boys on the bus," the entourage of reporters who followed the primary season. The 1972 campaign started with Muskie as the pre-emptive frontrunner to win the Democratic nomination and challenge Richard M. Nixon, the incumbent Republican.


Flash forward 32 years. I'm back on the bus (although the bus now is an airplane and there are women on it) and watching another pre-emptive frontrunner, Howard Dean, melt down under the stress of a campaign.

Earlier this week, Dean -- the former Vermont governor who was supposed to cakewalk his way to the nomination -- fell apart in the final days before the Iowa caucuses and finished a disappointing third. He first took his anger out on his senior staff in a temper tantrum that left many shaking, then stormed onto the stage at his campaign headquarters and self-destructed in a red-faced, arm-waving shoutfest that looked to all there like a man out of control.


"It hurt him," Democratic consultant and pundit Jim Carville said. "You may have just watched the beginning of the end of the Dean campaign for President."

A lot of things have changed in politics over the past three decades. In 1972, as a print reporter covering the campaign, I took notes, then sought out a phone so I could call my office and dictate, off the top-of-my head a story for the next day's edition. I had a manual portable typewriter with me but most of us chose to dictate stories to a rewrite man back at the office.

That was the way stories were filed.


On the trail today, I'm shooting video, not writing for a newspaper, and besides a digital video camera, I have two laptop computers, three wireless phones, a wireless modem, a satellite modem and a BlackBerry. I shoot video, upload the tape into the laptop, edit it on the spot, and shoot the final product to Washington where it can be shown immediately or edited further for use later in the day.

Stories are written and sent immediately, either through a wireless or sat modem or through a Wi-Fi (wireless) network. No waiting, no searching for a free phone, no delay. Instant news. Fast-food journalism.


What hasn't changed, though, is the ability of a candidate to self-destruct because of a lost temper, a lapse in judgment or plain, simple stupidity.

Dean claims he was simply trying to rally is young army of campaign workers but those of us who have watched campaigns for the past three decades have seen this before: Ed Muskie crying on the back of a truck in the New Hampshire snow or Gary Hart challenging reporters to "follow me around" to see if he was cheating on his wife and then having Donna Rice spend the night at his Washington townhouse where reporters who camped out all night caught her leaving the next morning. Or Bob Dole's lost temper in 1996 when he shouted "stop lying" to Bill Clinton. These little moments tell us that the man who wants to be king may not be up to the job.


Dean's meltdown played out live before a national TV audience Monday night and became instant fodder for late night TV hosts, who played it again and again. David Letterman's technical wizards modified the tape so Dean's head exploded at the end of his tirade.

Now Dean trails Kerry in the New Hampshire polls (a day earlier he was leading).

In 1972, Ed Muskie's tears appeared in a brief news clip on two national newscasts (NBC and CBS. ABC did not run it). According to the ratings of the time, less than 150,000 people saw it (although many more read about it in newspapers).

This week, Howard Dean's red-faced shoutfest appeared on five broadcast news networks (NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS and Fox), four late-night talk shows (Jay Leno, David Letterman and Conon O'Brien), four network news morning shows (Today, CBS This Morning, ABC Good Morning and Fox Morning News) and six cable TV news channels (CNN, CNN Headline News, MSNBC, CNBC, Fox and BBC). The combined audiences for all these shows is 95 million Americans. A quick check of the Internet shows video of the speech is also available on more than 100 web sites.


Politicians still make fools of themselves. That hasn't changed. What hasn't changed is the ability for more people to watch them

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This page contains a single entry by Doug Thompson published on January 22, 2004 7:14 PM.

Back in the fold was the previous entry in this blog.

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