Death Match Logic: Make No Assumptions

If you listened to most political analysts in 2004, that Presidential Death Match was supposed to be a referendum on how the incumbent had handled Iraq and the economy. And since both looked shaky for much of the year, some predicted Bush II might end up on the “one-term” bench with his dad. But things change, especially when the stakes are so high, and drawing conclusions about the dynamics of an election months in advance can be dangerous.

Karl Rove and the religious Right wanted the 2004 race to be about values – you know, patriotism, optimism, standing up for heterosexual marriage. Actually, they meant that people should simply accept authority (“Father knows best,” after all!), ignore uncomfortable facts, and conform to their evangelically-infused 1950s vision. But the election ended up being about many things – security, deception, gay marriage, decency, and the all-important “likeability.”

Howard Dean’s incandescent sprint toward the White House turned out to be a warning: Be prepared for the unexpected. By winning the so-called “invisible primary” – the fundraising and organization-building race before any votes were cast – he looked like a viable “frontrunner.” But his support turned out to be demographically thin and easy to undermine. He ended up going from “hot” to “not” in less than a month.

Like the outbursts of Barack Obama’s former minister Jeremiah Wright, Dean’s brief rant after the Iowa caucuses – which became infamous as the “I have a scream” speech – was the hottest clip on TV and the Internet for weeks, the focus of endless jokes and analysis. In five days, the “scream heard round the world” was played almost 700 times on US TV networks. As Dean’s poll numbers dropped, critics immediately concluded that he simply didn’t have the “temperament” to be President. The emphasis shifted from which candidate had the most compelling message to which would be more “electable.” Dean was about to be winnowed out.

Struggling mightily to turn a disaster into an opportunity, the embattled candidate spent the next days blanketing the networks with interviews, appearing with his wife, joking about his performance on late night TV, even distributing video tapes of a warm and fuzzy interview with Diane Sawyer to more than 100,000 New Hampshire residents. Oddly enough, it began to work. Some people concluded that the criticisms of Dean were exaggerated. But Kerry meanwhile seized his opening to step above the fray, stressing his “gravitas” and showcasing his manly skills by playing Hockey and piloting a helicopter. Like a contender on the original Survivor reality show, he was trying to establish his value to the tribe.

The following Tuesday, when New Hampshire primary votes were tallied, the strategy paid off. Kerry repeated his Iowa performance, pulling in 39 percent. But Dean made a partial comeback with a convincing second place finish. His speech that night was more sedate, yet still defiant. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so easy to throw him off the island, at least for a few weeks.

The real casualties, for the moment, turned out to be Wesley Clark, who skipped Iowa to spend weeks alone in New Hampshire – only to come in a weak third, and Joe Lieberman, stuck in fifth with less than 10 percent after virtually living in the state for a month and bragging about his “Joe-mentum.” Neither immediately gave up, but both were now on the critical list. That’s how it goes on Caucus Survivor.

Some said Dean was assassinated by a hostile media. It’s partly true. But they couldn’t have done it if he hadn’t supplied the bullets. Dean’s candidacy was a promising insurgency, but never more than a work in progress. And the notion that it changed the Democratic Party took too much for granted. Another assumption was that Ralph Nader’s presence in the race would broaden the discussion. But as it turned out, he didn’t get to participate in major debates or make it onto the ballot in many states.

Many people also assumed that Bush was a fool. His intellectual laziness seemed well-established, yet he certainly was smart enough to know whom he represented. He was part of a political dynasty, and his rule represented a restoration for his family and its long-term allies in the energy section, defense industry, Pentagon, CIA, and investor class. He also became the de facto leader of the Christian Right, projecting its “good” versus “evil” view of the world. An opportunist? Certainly. But no fool.

Finally, too many people uncritically accepted the platitude that everything had changed after 9/11. Not quite. Some things were proceeding as usual, notably the manipulation of public opinion and the election process.

Coming Soon: Momentum – the Movie

Caucus Survivor: Out-spin, Out-pander

Running for president is a soul-killing job. Just imagine racing around the country for two years, endlessly repeating the same catch phrases and self-congratulatory arguments until you feel like a well-coiffed robot. So it was no surprise that by the eve of the Iowa caucuses in 2004, Howard Dean looked a bit squeezed out on the trail.

Nevertheless, the candidate pulled out the stops by spending Sunday morning with President Carter in Georgia, then flew back to caucus-land for a rare appearance with his wife, the elusive Doctor Judy. Only Fox TV covered her live, perhaps another sign that the Republicans actually preferred to run against Dean. Most pundits thought it proved he was desperate. My Big Fat Media Caucus was turning into an unpredictable reality show, Caucus Survivor.

Dean had endured a withering assault for months, and not just from other candidates. In addition to a barrage of negative campaign ads directed against the frontrunner, a majority of nightly network newscast evaluations of Dean were negative, while three-quarters of the coverage given to the other candidates was favorable, according to research conducted by the Center for Media and Public Affairs. In 2003, only 49 percent of all on-air evaluations of former Vermont governor were positive, while the rest of the democratic field collectively received 78 percent favorable.

By January 19, the candidates were ready to say and do anything to survive. A few hours before the caucuses, John Kerry wondered aloud whether John Edwards was “out of diapers” when he (Kerry) came back from Vietnam. He had to apologize, since Edwards was 16 at the time. In frigid weather, steelworkers were showing their painted chests for Dick Gephardt. Wesley Clark, not in the caucus but gaining ground nationally at the time, was hugging George McGovern in New Hampshire. Edwards and Dennis Kucinich meanwhile struck a deal to pool delegates (as if caucus-goers were a tradable commodity). The candidate with the best early showing in a caucus supposedly would get the other’s support to meet the 15 percent viability threshold for actual delegates. There’s democracy in action.

In a weird counterpoint, the Bush administration was simultaneously pushing for caucuses in Iraq. As the US tried to get the UN back into the game, thousands of angry Shiites were taking to the streets. Their demand was free elections, but their leaders admitted that the goal was an Islamic state. Whoops. Time to caucus.

The fear was that a public vote, being demanded by the Shiite majority, would lead to a less-than-friendly government or even a jihad. The subtext was that caucuses make it easier to manipulate the outcome than letting just anyone vote. Oddly enough, Hillary Clinton made a related argument when she started losing in caucus states this year. They’re undemocratic, she claimed, drawing only activists and people with the time to sit through a long process.

In 2004, CNN’s punditocracy was comfortable enough to forecast the outcome in Iowa hours before anyone voted. On Crossfire, Democratic insiders Paul Begala and James Carville, as well as conservative warhorse Robert Novak, predicted that Kerry’s late surge would overwhelm Dean. Edwards was given bronze, but Gephardt was consigned to oblivion. Dean himself sounded over-confident on camera, but there was uncertainty among the so-called Deaniacs. Volunteers in at least three cities were handing out flyers that charged Kerry wasn’t electable, his wife was too rich, and Ralph Nader wouldn’t step aside if he was the nominee. It sounded more immature than desperate.

Days earlier, Dean Campaign Director Joe Trippi had claimed to have 40,000 definite supporters lined up to attend caucuses, virtually guaranteeing first place. (He turned out to be off by half.) Over the weekend, Dean volunteers flooded the state, buzzing around in orange hats. We were about to find out whether “Generation Dean” was for real – or just irritating. For the candidate, it was the first reality check for a dream that dated back more than four years. Dean had briefly considered running in 2000, but “stepped aside” for Al Gore. He also consulted Gore before announcing.

Waiting for the numbers, Tom Brokaw noted that politics today is about cultural values, and that Dean’s message had become confused – an outsider with more key endorsements than anyone else, an angry guy whose own wife didn’t want much to do with his campaign. In short, his uncertain image had undermined his message and, more important, his perceived electability. According to a focus group led by Frank Luntz, Dean’s support had tanked, largely because people found him too testy, even mean – partially based on a last minute shouting match with a critic that made Iowa TV news. Kerry and Edwards were staging an upset.

Dean had squandered his lead, and too many questions were being raised about his electability, key factors favoring Kerry and Edwards. Early opposition to the Iraq didn’t turn out to be a strong enough argument, and both anti-war and young Iowans found Kerry as attractive as the Vermont governor. Nevertheless, becoming the frontrunner had allowed Dean to launch and fund a national campaign. Thus, losing in Iowa didn’t necessarily doom his campaign. But it did allow the media to question his claims to be leading a broad-based movement, and set the stage for Kerry to beat him in New Hampshire. Even millions in TV ads wouldn’t be enough to overcome another month like the last one.

And then, when he could have just shut up, Howard Dean went on national TV to thank his supporters and unexpectedly turned into a cartoon character, Deaniac, a snarling Hulk who rasped out his determination to beat rivals, shouting out their home states with a frightening sneer. Columnist Howard Fineman was generous when he called it “a little nutty.” CNN’s senior analyst Bill Schneider concluded that “people looked at Howard Dean, and they didn’t see a President.”

Mike Barnacle was more blunt: “That guy’s not going to the White House.”

Next: Death Match Logic

Bennington Holds a Culture War

Lack of experience and limited knowledge of the local dynamics made my first news stories for the Bennington Banner in 1968 less informative than they might have been. But after attending several tense school board sessions and getting the back story from off-the-record sources, I at least had some sense of the situation. At the center of it were the Sleemans, the most influential family in the Village of Bennington.

Assistant School Superintendent George Sleeman’s brother Richard was an arch-conservative who chaired the Elementary School board, held an administrative job at a local college, and supervised local property assessments. The family, which owned more rental property than anyone else in the area, had strong support among the local working class. But the village was surrounded by another legal entity, the Town of Bennington, a growing suburbia populated by liberal professional types. I was witnessing a struggle for power between two hostile factions – working class traditionalists and middle class modernists.

Beyond their resentment of Bennington College, the traditionalists disliked the modernists because of the “progressive” agenda they had imposed in the construction and curriculum of the new high school. Still, their deepest antipathy was reserved for the state’s bureaucratic establishment, particularly the commissioner of education, Harvey Scribner.

A non-nonsense teacher from Maine, Scribner had come to Vermont after presiding over the integration of Black children into white schools as Teaneck, New Jersey’s school superintendent. In the 1970s, he went on to become chancellor of New York City's school system during its turbulent shift toward local control. But to local Vermont conservatives in the late 60s, Scribner represented the heavy hand of the state. During my second week on the job, he made a fateful decision that turned the traditionalists’ simmering hatred into an open feud with bitter long-term consequences.

To break the local stalemate, Scribner – usually a proponent of local control – exercised his authority to merge Bennington’s Supervisory Union with an adjacent board and appoint its superintendent as head of the new “super district.” George Sleeman could keep his job, but his promotion had been blocked by a state dictate. His allies were stunned and his brother was hopping mad. For Richard Sleeman, the decision wasn’t merely a slap in the face but a sign of things to come. With a superintendent selected by Scribner, the next step would be “open classrooms” and other "dangerous" reforms proposed in the commissioner’s Vermont Design for Education.

At an elementary school board meeting held after the announcement, Richard puffed on his pipe as he complained about the decision. “Didn’t Dr. Scribner write a letter to us a few weeks ago and say our situation hasn’t changed? And haven’t we now got this man telling us local puckerbrushers what to do? Ordering us? Chaos! I see chaos,” he said.

Turning to his real target, Scribner’s Vermont Design, he proclaimed it “an affliction being imposed upon the education system of our fair state. Read it and decide for yourselves. The format could be titled Harvey Scribner meets Matty Mouse. But since use of the Design is voluntary, we can save ourselves and our teachers a lot of spare time by burning the Design for Education on the front lawn of the elementary school. Then we can begin the great work of drawing up our own design forthwith.”

He never got around to burning Scribner’s plan. But Sleeman’s cadre of “concerned citizens” did proceed to organize a witch hunt that put progressive education on trial. As the reporter covering school affairs, it reminded me at times of Inherit the Wind, the classic dramatic reworking of the Scopes Monkey Trial. But Bennington had no Clarence Darrow to defend it against this assault on reason.

The first flashpoint was a musical production at the high school, an experimental adaptation of Brecht on Brecht, George Tabori’s innovative sampler of the German artist’s plays, essays, poems, aphorisms, and struggles. Students and teachers were attempting to challenge the limits of what high school drama could be, just as Brecht had challenged Broadway’s theatrical conventions. They were doomed before the curtain went up. As I explained in a front page article on February 1, 1969:

A poster advertising Mt. Anthony Union High School’s upcoming production of “Brecht on Brecht” has become the center of a controversy involving the U.S. flag, Nazism, advertising and censorship.

That considerable accomplishment was the result of the sign’s use of a swastika juxtaposed with sections of Old Glory, symbolizing America’s victory over fascism to some – and U.S. police-state inclinations to others.

Shortly after the show’s poster appeared, complaints were lodged with the state police. According to the cops, it was illegal under the “uniform flag code” to use the flag or any part of it for advertising. The posters had to come down. Aside from a few that became collector’s items, they were never seen again. When the show finally opened, the house was half-full and the audience reaction ranged from nervous laughter to stunned silence. An attempt to dramatize concerns about the state of society had instead exposed the gap between the school’s avant-garde leanings and the community’s growing discomfort.

Not long after that, two English teachers made the mistake of teaching a lesson about language with examples that includes a few sexual phrases. The outcry was immediate and overwhelming, further deepening the rift. This time “concerned citizens” packed the high school cafeteria, heckled the school board and demanded action. At one point, a parent sitting next to Richard Sleeman actually argued that Broadway plays shouldn’t be performed in small towns.

“If we censor what students do, we are in a sensitive area,” a board member replied. Once the booing died down, someone shouted, “Why? What about parents who have kids in this school? What about poor people? Rich people make all the decisions.” Feeding the resentment, another ally of Richard’s pointed to the row of board members facing them and charged, “This is merely a group of merchants and business people. It isn’t representative.”

The opening shots of a "moral majority" curriculum war had been fired. What I saw in the following months was depressing but instructive. Unwilling to counter the assault, the area’s spinally-challenged liberals capitulated, leaving Richard Sleeman's lieutenants free to wrest control of the high school from the "open education" crowd. After brother George became superintendent, the Sleemans and their crew were free to re-staff the local education system. By the early 1970s, the school’s football coach had taken command as principal. Outside, a fence went up to discourage "loitering." Inside, a hard-fisted crackdown began. It was back to the "basics" and goodbye to “the Bennington College influence.”

Even Ms. Magazine was banned.

Part two of “Fragile Paradise: A Vermont Memoir.”

Next: From Observation to Advocacy

Death Match 2004: Selling Campaign Stories

It was obvious that a Presidential Death Match had begun in 2004 when CNN interviewed Martin Sheen, TV’s Jed Bartlett, a former New England governor presiding as president in The West Wing. This was January, and the topic was his endorsement of Howard Dean, an actual former Vermont governor front-running to the Democratic nomination.

The tip-off wasn’t just the eerily similarities, down to medical doctor wives, but rather the effortless melding of real and fictional worlds, a hallmark of solid info-tainment.

As a Vermonter, I was admittedly biased, and, to a point, welcomed prime time exposure for my home state. There was my old friend Howard Dean, playing a feisty outsider, challenging unilateral war, riding the Internet and a wave of anti-incumbent anger in an episode of My Big Fat Media Caucus, the popular quadrennial mini-series in which quirky Iowans search for Mr. Right Now. This year they selected Barack Obama.

But groups like the Club for Growth had different story lines in mind. In early 2004, The Club came up with a pilot designed to turn Dr. Dean Goes to Washington into a horror-fantasy, tentatively titled Freak Show. In an ad released by the conservative anti-tax group shortly before the crucial Iowa caucuses, two actors, playing an elderly couple, were asked to describe the threat looming over the country. Responding directly to the camera, the “husband” said, “Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times reading…” Then the “wife” jumped in with, “body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont where it belongs.”

Strong stuff, a perverse yet brilliant blend of dark comedy and cultural hate speech. It was so effective that the Club didn’t even have to pay for much airtime. The news networks were more than willing to provide free play. As CNN’s Judy Woodruff explained on Jan. 9, “This is so catchy, we love to run it over and over again.”

Club for Growth President Steve Moore readily admitted that the goal was to re-brand Dean as a tax-hiking elitist. The theme would have been developed further if Dean had become the nominee, and has been cleverly recycled in 2008 to fit Obama. Columnist Austin Bay further outlined this script in a mid-January 2004 essay, arguing that Dean was the candidate of “that cadre of angry American leftists struggling with a nasty case of '60s nostalgia and their failed elitist ideology.” In this version of the race, narcissist baby boom radicals were using “pop socialism” to extend “government coercion.”

“These ‘progressives’ wish America were France,” Bay wrote. “Whether tenured in the Ivies, ensconced in editorial positions or pulling in trial lawyer and Hollywood bucks, these late middle-age Volvo drivers long for L'Age D'Or, when smoking dope and calling US soldiers babykillers made you ‘hip’." Calling the idea that the US war on Iraq might have been a mistake another sign of “tie-dyed dogma,” he concluded that the Dean campaign was dangerous “brain-zapped foolishness.” You could smell the hostility.

Despite all the spin, however, the glaring non-issues of Death Match 2000 were emerging as THE issues this time around. Four years earlier, neither George W. Bush nor Al Gore mentioned the growing poverty and insecurity that accompanied the global push for privatization, deregulation, and reducing the scope of government. The benefits of "structural adjustment" were considered a given, with the costs written off as aberrations or failure to embrace the magic of capitalist democracy. In 2004, almost every Democratic candidate talked about corporate abuse, re-regulation, and reforming trade deals to protect labor rights and the environment.

Equally significant in 2000 was the lack of debate over resurgent US militarism. The candidates had little to say about recent or upcoming military adventures – from Yugoslavia, Iraq, and the Sudan to Afghanistan and Colombia – and basically agreed about the legitimacy of using unilateral force, as well as plans to militarize outer space. War and peace were only mentioned in terms of US strategic advantage. In 2004, how and when the US should go to war was a central political question.

Yes, we’d come a long way. In 2000, the hit of the season was Fistful of Mullah. In that tongue-in-cheek horse opera, George W. played the Man with No Scruples, blowing away his bible-slinging rivals with expensive silver bullets – that is, until he played the Jesus card and discovered that El Dorado was place called Family Values. Call it an Ersatz Western, kind of Kung Fu meets Dynasty. That of course led to the Fall 2000 mega-hit, The Stealing of the Presidency.

Personally, I preferred Millennium Man, a slow-moving sci fi saga in which Al Gore played The Chosen One, a loyal cyborg struggling to overcome his programming, meanwhile battling Bill Bradley as Morpheus, an athlete-turned-pol with the power to lull people into a false sense of hope. Clever, but ultimately not convincing.

But that’s just history, and when you’re attending a Death Match the last thing you worry about is the past.

For the media, the first question about most of their prospective stars is how he or she comes across on the tube. The next – more important than knowing about their positions – is whether they’re capturing sufficiently high ratings to get picked up for the second season. The punditocracy talks endlessly about each candidate's fundraising ability, as if that’s the main qualification for office. In 2000, when Dan Quayle dropped out, he admitted the reason was essentially that Bush's $50 million plus war chest proved he was the best man for the job. Small change by today’s standards. In 2004, fundraising was the first bar Dean had to jump to be taken seriously. It’s treated like the most important public opinion poll.

To make an impression, the candidates also must turn themselves into stereotypes. If they don't do it, pundits and talk show hosts will. The name of the game is image management. Thus, in 2004 Kerry became the war hero, Clark was the thoughtful general, Edwards pushed his working class success story, Gephardt zealously defended the Clinton faith, Lieberman played the outraged moderate, and Dean passed for a straight-talking outsider. The descriptions had little to do with reality, or anyone’s actual qualifications for the job.

Next: Caucus Survivor – Out-spin, Out-pander

Fragile Paradise: A Vermont Memoir

Part One: Covering the Community

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.

--Robert Frost, “Fire and Ice,” 1920

The Bennington Banner newsroom was a large, open bullpen filled with the sound of manual typewriters and competing conversations. At one end, a picture window loomed over the main drag. At the other, just this side of the door to production, Editor-in-Chief Tyler Resch worked over our copy. In the corner, a teletype cranked AP reports onto a long yellow paper roll that collected on the floor.

Each weekday I would wake up around 6:30 a.m. to get downtown, read the Albany papers, and develop photos taken the day before by the editorial staff. By eight I was checking on overnight accidents, writing up items for “Over in New York,” and printing contact sheets for review. By nine I was pumping out bylined stories on a huge manual typewriter. The finished newspaper hit the streets shortly after noon.

During my first week on the job, in December 1968, Richard Nixon was back in Washington selecting his cabinet. Vietnam peace talks were stalling in Paris and the Defense Department called up another 33,000 young men to fight the war, bringing the total to half a million troops. My beats in Southern Vermont were considerably less glamorous – District Court, local schools, and the Village Trustees. Despite my bravado during the job interview it was a daunting challenge. I had edited a magazine in college and written for the campus daily, but this was real pressure and I knew next to nothing about the local scene.

On my first night, Tyler accompanied me to a school board meeting, drew a crude diagram identifying the people around the table, and left me there to sink or swim. It was truly frightening. In the grand scheme, one story mattered little. But for the Banner’s readers, it meant more. My report would be their only way to understand what was happening in the school system. If I couldn’t explain it, I had no business calling myself a reporter.

As luck would have it, a political storm was brewing. A new high school had been built in the blush of a progressive educational era. But it was also at the hub of Bennington's pain. Its alma mater, "The Impossible Dream," turned out to be prophetic. An idealistic plan for local education was about to be bludgeoned in a repressive backlash.

Just before I started reporting, the school superintendent had resigned and a dispute developed over who would replace him as acting chief. The Elementary School Board wanted Assistant Superintendent George Sleeman. The Supervisory Union, which incorporated representatives of both the elementary and high school boards, wasn’t so sure. On the surface it looked like a minor bureaucratic fracas, a question of who could sign checks and make decisions until a permanent chief was selected. But it was actually part of a long-running culture war over the fundamental direction of education and community life.

In the 1930s, Bennington had become the scene of a revolutionary change in the arts as Martha Graham and others turned Bennington College into the epicenter of the modern dance world. The Bennington School of Dance, precursor of the American Dance Festival, was an innovative laboratory where pioneers experimented, trained students, and created early works that defined modern dance.

A generation later, the area became a nexus for modernist art activity. As the story goes, art critic Clement Greenberg met painter Helen Frankenthaler, then a Bennington College student. They were soon joined by painters like Paul Feeley and helped connect the emerging avant-garde movement based at the college with the New York art scene. By the 60s, the community was hosting a veritable artist colony. An article in Vogue updated Vermont history by calling painters like Anthony Caro, Kenneth Noland, Vincent Longo and Jules Olitski the new Green Mountain Boys.

In time the college became, a bit reluctantly, home for a small yet energetic community of idealists, intellectuals, and artists. Greenberg’s core idea was that art should be disciplined without sacrificing esthetic vitality, a concept that combined distance with enjoyment and freedom. Not far from urban centers and yet sufficiently removed, Bennington felt like an ideal place to play out this artistic vision. But the “Golden Age” was over by the time I arrived, and during a period of growing cultural backlash in the country, Bennington College preferred to keep its distance from the community, especially from residents who considered it decadent and elitist.

NEXT: Bennington’s Culture War

Presidential Death Match: Media’s Big Event

Part One: Green Lighting Our Fatal Distractions

Presidential elections have been media spectacles for almost 50 years, roughly since television became the national drug. One landmark 1960 production, arguably the first televised “presidential death match,” pitted Jack Kennedy, an Arthurian figure to be sure, against Dick Nixon, doing a creepy Richard III imitation. Their TV debate is said to have turned the tide, but the election itself was questionable, and high Camelot hopes were cut short by assassination and war.

Every four years since then, corporate chiefs, media gatekeepers, and political fixers have manufactured new scripts and a new superstar. For a while it’s a B-grade actor, then a drugged-up Yalie, a world-class narcissist, or a born-again cowboy. Anything is possible. And it’s a guaranteed blockbuster every time, a fatal distraction for which you don't need a ticket. Only one problem: there’s no way out until the last pundit sings.

This year, we have a truly “high concept” scenario: the first viable woman candidate –wife of an ex-president – facing the first viable Black candidate, with the winning Democrat in a showdown with an aging warrior who would be king, a tragic hero willing to put his maverick persona in an undisclosed location and replay the Vietnam War in the Middle East. It’s a real cliffhanger, and no one knows yet whether they’ll be making history – or making war.

If DreamWorks had handled the casting, we might be looking at Meryl Streep, who delivered as a ruthless Senator with Lady MacBeth ambitions in the remake of The Manchurian Candidate, slinging mud at a cool but sharp Will Smith. There would be plenty of choices for the role of McCain, including Robert Duval, Martin Sheen, James Brolin or Jon Voight – all of whom have already played the president on screen.

But this blockbuster, like those before it, appeared only after a series of short-term shows designed to boost TV ratings, test concepts, and transfer escalating production costs to campaign contributors. Since the major media have to cover presidential campaigns anyway, they prefer to handle the casting and plot points as well. Until money is removed from the equation, think of primary races for president as TV pilots and limited-run shows competing for the best notices. In 2008, we certainly had some promising entries.

From 9/11 Productions came Terminator 4: The Last Action Mayor, in which Rudy Giuliani attempted to bull his way into the nomination by scaring the public as often as possible and bypassing the early primaries. Unfortunately, he didn’t send a duplicate Rudy back from the future to warn him that it wouldn’t work. In There Will Be God, Mitt Romney played a no-nonsense manager with some religious baggage, unnervingly confident and yet undone by his chameleon past. We kept waiting for the real Mitt to show up, but in the end even he couldn’t find himself.

Many people were captivated by John Edwards in his comeback series, Return of the Candidate. Considered a lightweight in the 2004 season, Edwards exceeded expectations this time, yet couldn’t overcome his image as a southern fried Robert Redford. Others tuned in for Mike Huckabee’s mini-series, Being Mike Huckabee. It was supposedly based on the Jerzy Kosinski book, Being There, and the Peter Sellers movie. A spaced-out oddball keeps getting elected and listened to because people think he’s pleasant and has down-home wisdom. But he actually knows very little and just likes being on TV. The joke got old and people stopped watching. Still, they’re thinking of bringing the character back in the fall, with a quirky Charlie Kaufman script; various people go through a portal into Mike’s head, then get dumped on a dirt road in rural Arkansas.

I can’t leave out The Rad Couple II, this time starring Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. It’s become a genre over the decades, usually based on the feisty outsider story line. In 2000, Kucinich teamed up with Al Sharpton for the first installment of a possible new franchise – buddy-pols on the road to nowhere. Forced to work together, two very different candidates found common ground as they took on their toughest case – saving the country’s soul. Kucinich and Sharpton were amusing and passionate, but the early reviews were respectfully skeptical. The ratings, predictably, were abysmal.

In a sense, Rad Couple was a spinoff of the 2000 cult hit, Mission Improbable, produced by Oddball Enterprises in association with a consortium of casino owners and the World Wrestling Federation. In order to save the world, if you recall, a team of highly-decorated misfits waged psychological warfare on the two major political parties. The problem was that they couldn't resist trashing each other. Ross Perot made a guest appearance as the cranky team leader who gave incomprehensible assignments and couldn't help upstaging his own men.

Every four years there are a mixture of sequels and remakes, old stories and tried-and-true formulas. (For a review of the 2000 season, click here.) In 2004, George Bush and Charlton Heston were slated to team up for Mullah II: The Arms Race, a sequel to Bush’s 2000 hit, A Fistful of Mullah. The new story was expected to revolve around bringing compassion back into the death business, but Heston died and a more powerful premise emerged. The result was For a Few Barrels More. The Man with No Scruples was back in this epic western sequel, set in an atmosphere of global war and domestic division. Bush prevailed by ignoring the problems, preferring to search for illusive (and possible non-existent) enemies, the Evildoers, foes so insane they rejected his offer to surrender their oil reserves and get off the planet.

In another sequel, Post-Millennium Man, Howard Dean led a cyber-crusade to save the Democratic Party, driven underground by the masters of the Matrix. In an early episode, Al Gore reprised his role as the Chosen One (now in exile) in Millennium Man, uniting with Bill Bradley and other survivors of the November 2000 apocalypse. There were strong early ratings, but reviews from Iowa set the stage for a meltdown.

In The Mild Bunch, battle-scarred combat veterans – John Kerry, Dick Gephardt, and Joe Lieberman – were joined by a gung-ho rookie, the super-glib John Edwards. Their mission: to save their party from Dean, here cast in the role of a renegade general who had created his own insurgent army, the Deaniacs. In an early episode, Gephardt sang Yesterday, revealing the depth of his disillusionment as he confessed to being “nostalgic for Ronald Reagan.” In their Iowa caper, he was the first casualty. Once Dean was gone, however, the bunch promptly turned on one another.

You Go, Girl! was a short-lived Carol Mosley Braun vehicle, based on Working Girl. In this comedy-drama, Braun made a bold and occasionally refreshing play to break the glass ceiling. She couldn’t close the deal, but did manage a partial redemption.

Finally, a late action entry: Wesley Clark’s Full Mental Jacket, a cautionary anti-war tale about the rise of rebellious general. After leading the attack on Yugoslavia and pimping for the Bush team, Clark had second thoughts, became a Democrat, and immediately ran for President. With cameos by Michael Moore and George McGovern as progressive camouflage. Industry talk said that it was actually a Clinton production.

Next: Lessons of 2004

Managing Pacifica: Strategy & Struggles

Vermont was frigid when I returned home from my first week as Pacifica Radio’s Executive Director. Yet it was still a welcome change from the tumult inside the Pacifica bubble. For the past six years I’d been living in Winooski, a mill town adjacent to Burlington, the largest city in the state. “Large” means something very different in the Green Mountains than it does in Berkeley or DC, of course. Burlington has a population of less than 50,000 people, and Winooski, known as the Onion City, is one mile from end to end. My house was 80 years old, all hardwood floors and funky rustic charm, and shared with four younger friends.

In a week I would set out on a cross-country road trip, with stops along the way at each Pacifica station to meet staff and see local dynamics first hand. But first I needed to catch my breath and take stock of the situation.

During the previous week I’d heard lots of talk about transparency, often mentioned as if it was democracy’s magic bullet. But like a number of overused words, it was subject to varying interpretations. For some, it simply implied a willingness on the part of managers to be more open about their plans; for others, it meant something more, a requirement to submit any proposed action to board members for review. I seriously doubted whether that was workable.

Any decision could be questioned and potentially reversed, it seemed, yet the national board and its committees were consistently backlogged. This led to delays, lost opportunities and missed deadlines. As a result, transparency ended up exacerbating a tendency toward crisis management. Without sensible delegation of authority the organization would continue reacting too slowly to challenges and opportunities.

Another word I kept hearing was inclusion. Mostly, it meant attention to under-represented communities, primarily communities of color. But no fair and effective process for doing that was in place, and something more seemed to be implied. How did inclusion relate to Pacifica's factional culture? Did the community agree on specific goals? And what precisely was meant when a related term – diversity – was used? Did it refer exclusively to race or include more categories? These sensitive human resources, governance, and political questions were not being forthrightly addressed.

Harsh criticisms were coming from all directions. While I understood the need for skepticism and a willingness to air differences, it was shocking to hear and went far beyond constructive criticism into the realm of insulting characterizations, paranoia, and a deep well of distrust that poisoned the atmosphere. In several cases, I was expected to be a mediator or disciplinarian. Sometimes that would be possible. But the behavior problems weren’t restricted to staff, and a change in the general culture would come only if decision makers and other leaders modeled the behaviors they wanted to see. In other words, intemperate speech and demonization would have to stop if disputes and litigation were going to be reduced. Exactly how was that going to happen?

My initiation had been both revelatory and discouraging. Most staff members sounded wounded and almost desperate for respect, reluctantly sharing grievances as if they were psychologically battered children. Their ire was often directed at members of the boards, who in turn often looked at them as insubordinate delinquents responsible for Pacifica’s stagnation or decline. In less than a week, I’d been urged to fire almost every general manager and program director in the network.

The job was beginning to look more political than administrative, as if I’d become the mayor of a polarized community or superintendent of a troubled school system. But I hadn’t been elected – in fact, even my “selection” looked a bit tainted – the exact powers of the office were in dispute, and, due to the organization’s frequent elections, half of those who had supported my candidacy were no longer on the board.

Safe at home, I conducted a preliminary assessment with the help of Otis Maclay, a veteran producer connected with KPFT in Houston for two decades. If I was to be an effective leader in this fractious community, an understanding of the current board dynamics and power structure was essential. The board’s new chair, for example, was Dave Adelson, one of the litigants who brought the former regime to its knees. He’d backed Eva Georgia for the CEO job, but his main priority was to reinvigorate Pacifica through digital production and distribution. Dave hoped to renew the organization’s old volunteer ethic through the creation of a cyber-based civic community that reached a vast new audience. To the extent that I moved the network in that direction, I might have his backing.

In all, it looked like I had the support of about eight out of 22 Board members, not enough to prevail in close, contentious voting. On the other side was a core group of about six people who weren’t happy with my arrival. The key would be the remaining swing voters, including most of the WPFW delegation and “wild cards” like KPFT’s Ken Freeland.

A grimly serious peace activist with a penchant for long e-mails, Ken had requested a private audience during the board meeting. His basic message: KPFT’s manager Duane Bradley was selling out the station, suppressing activist content, and cutting relevant public affairs programs in favor of safe music shows and BBC news. Like others across the network, he was fixated on Democracy Now!, which had been moved to a later morning time slot in Houston. For Ken and his allies, who felt the time change undermined DN’s drive-time audience, this alone was a sufficient reason to get rid of Duane.

Since I wasn’t prepared to grant that request, my best bet might be a strategy that sat well with the remaining non-aligned delegates. Counting votes made me uncomfortable, but it looked unavoidable. Without a functioning board majority, I had little chance of initiating significant changes in management and programming. Talking it through with Otis, I began to think that one key might be a stronger presence, along with additional staffing and improved infrastructure, in the nation’s capitol. Sam Husseini had already pointed to the need. Building up Pacifica’s DC base might spur changes at WPFW, lead to a revised role for DC Bureau Chief Verna Avery Brown, and persuade some additional Board members to give me a chance.

The need for intrigue was discouraging but nothing new. There had been struggles for the heart and soul of the organization almost from the start. By 1953, only four years after KPFA went on the air, a battle over the direction of the station already pitted Lew Hill and his tony, handpicked advisors against station manager Wallace Hamilton. Hamilton and his supporters thought the station should be an “experiment in anarcho-syndicalism,” functioning as a collective and showcasing unpopular points of view. Hill favored a more centralized leadership and dialogue without a political litmus test. The result was a civil war and ultimately a “palace revolution” in which Hill and his allies used wealthy contributors to financially starve the station and recapture it.

Within a few years, it happened again. Reformers who wanted a voice in station policy charged that the foundation was mismanaged and bloated with salaried staff. But this time Lew wasn’t up for the fight. Spinal arthritis had led him to inject large doses of cortisone. Depression, a stroke, and a suicide attempt followed. That winter, a group of listeners confronted the founder about the need for a more democratic process. “KPFA is not that kind of a group,” he replied.

By summer 1957, both the station and Hill were in deep crisis. The advocate of dialogue had become rigid and isolated, frequently misinterpreting what people said, no longer able to empathize, and contemptuous of those who sought a “mass discharge of emotion” in political activity. The station was equally disoriented, in broadcaster Elsa Knight Thompson’s words “a terrifying mess.”

On August 1, Lew Hill broke the stalemate by taking his own life. His final brief poem explained that he was acting “not for anger or despair, but for peace and a kind of home.” Nonetheless, his desperate exit provided the catharsis Pacifica needed. Challenged to prove that the institution could survive without its “creator,” his colleagues staged KPFA’s first large-scale, on-air fund drive. In little more than a month, the station went from deficit to surplus. His demise also released the pent-up energy of a new generation of programmers with a decidedly different vision. Hill’s mission statement wasn’t ditched, but in practice the station moved from dialogue to opposition. Wallace Hamilton’s vision had prevailed, a station that would celebrate dissent, a platform for ideas beyond the confines of “mainstream” media. Ironically, the death of the “father” had led to the station’s rebirth. It was the dawn of alternative radio.

Half a century later, however, Pacificans still talked about the original mission statement as if nothing fundamental had changed. Even those who had recently recaptured the foundation – and created a radically “democratic” structure that Hill would have adamantly resisted – acknowledged no contradiction. Each faction cloaked its arguments with references to the founding principles, yet at the same time insisted that their political agenda was the one true path.

How could anyone lead an institution burdened with such paradox? A friend had advised that the only way was to approach the role with a “messianic” mind-set. Vaguely uncomfortable with the idea I asked what he meant. “You have to be bold and selfless,” he explained, “but also assume that eventually you are going to be crucified.” It was tough to admit, but sounded about right. No matter what I did, there would be resistance and controversy. Suicide wasn’t an option, but in the end it might well be necessary to risk professional “assassination.” Anyway, it was too late to turn back.

To be continued…