All Blog Posts from Public Eye

"I don't know if I would have advised (the candidates) to avoid free television time, whether it's on Fox or Al Jazeera."

-- Keith Olbermann, on the decision of many Democratic presidential candidates to not participate in a Fox News Channel debate. (From a report by Aaron Barnhart.)

Maybe/sorta/kinda presidential candidate Fred Thompson appeared on the “Tonight Show” last night and told Jay Leno’s chin that he was still “testing the waters.”

So we’ve got Fred Thompson still flirting, dipping his toe in the pool, formally “exploring” and sort of going steady with the idea of running for president. We’ve got Newt Gingrich still wondering if the political climate calls for his candidacy – sort of a “I’m still seeing other people” with a presidential run. What’s going on? Bloomberg? Gore? Hello?

It’s been noted by better minds than I that the presidential candidacy game has gotten out downright bizarre – if you’re a politician, you say you’re thinking about it; you say you’re gonna announce soon; then you announce. It’s the political equivalent of rinse, lather, repeat. I doubt that I was the only American who saw Bill Richardson’s official announcement and responded: “He wasn’t running already?”

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What is the sound of one voice debating? We may find out this fall.

Yesterday, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson became the latest Democratic presidential candidates to decide that they will not participate in this fall’s Fox News Channel debate, which is co-sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus.

According to the AP article:

The debate exodus began two months ago when John Edwards became the first candidate to announce that he would not attend the Sept. 23 debate in Detroit. A week later, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama announced they also would not participate.

This leaves only Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel as the candidates who haven’t yet backed out of the event, making America rethink whether good things come in threes. Why are the candidates voluntarily withdrawing from a chance to get their message across to the largest prime-time audience in cable news? Pressure from two online organizations – ColorForChange and MoveOn – who accuse the "Fair and Balanced" news network of being “hostile to the interests of Black America.”

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President Grant for President!

Anybody who tuned into HBO on Sunday expecting to see “The Sopranos” -- but got “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee” instead -- might have gotten a glimpse of the future. Fred Thompson – the cause celebre celeb of current GOP politics – appeared in the drama as President Ulysses S. Grant. And now (bada bing! to those suffering Sopranos withdrawal) Thompson has announced he is unofficially making it official (maybe) and launching an investigative committee to “test the waters” about a presidential bid. He may make it officially official around Independence Day, but it all depends on how the investigating goes. Or something.

In any event, as is the case with all such pseudo-announcements, the immediate coverage follows the At Whose Expense breadcrumbs:

Thompson's candidacy could hurt [Mitt] Romney, who is trying to position himself to the right of the major candidates in the field despite his equivocations on various issues and outright position changes on others.

It's also possible that Thompson could pull support from McCain. They have similar records in the Senate, and Thompson could be seen as a fresher face. He was one of a handful of senators who backed McCain in 2000 over George W. Bush.

Giuliani could be hindered as well if Thompson grabs the attention of Republicans who are looking for a candidate to beat Democrats in the fall but are uneasy with the former New York City mayor's support for gay and abortion rights.

So there you have it, plain as day: If Thompson decides to run, it will either hurt Romney, McCain or Giuliani. (Won’t anybody think of Ron Paul?)

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Hillary Clinton’s political baggage being recycled in two upcoming books. Mitt Romney’s romantic past with his wife investigated. Not only have the debates and the rituals of presidential campaigning bloomed early this year -- does the political calendar have global warming, too? – but so has the information warfare that makes political enemies smirk and political allies shift uncomfortably in their seats.

In this week’s edition of National Journal, political writer Carl Cannon is the most recent observer to wonder publicly where the line is between Relevant and Prurient. He writes:

[The 2008 race] is a wide-open field with some 20 announced and unannounced candidates, a group replete with enough messy divorces, troubled marriages, second (and third) marriages, estranged children, cancer survivors, head cases, and binge dieters to satisfy any soap opera …The gaggle of 2008 candidates will be acting out their various pathologies in a technological environment more suited for entertainment than for serious policy discussion. YouTube, the blogs, and an unfettered cable culture did not exist in 1988 and 1992, the years that the privacy barriers came tumbling down. They do now.

The upshot is a combustible mix that is prompting political observers to wonder whether the process will dissuade good people from even bothering with politics -- or whether that has already happened.

True, there used to be a line between “reportable” and “keep this out of the papers,” but in recent years it’s gotten rubbed out. Making things even more nebulous is the fact that each one creates a political Rorschach test. If you’re a fan of Mitt Romney, than you think that Mike Wallace was unprofessional when he asked if there had been any premarital sex before Mitt and his wife tied the knot – but if you’re an Obama fan, you may not have found it inappropriate. Likewise, Bill Richardson’s supporters aren’t fans of the Albequerque reporter who asked him if he had “a bimbo problem.”

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In the race for the White House, it isn't just the candidates who are getting press attention. In the past few days, Rudy Giuliani's children – from whom the former New York City mayor is apparently estranged -- have grabbed headlines. At least one reporter has mixed feelings about covering candidates' kids. Writes Time correspondent Karen Tumulty on the magazine's Swampland blog:

I've gotta admit I feel torn about this one. On the one hand, I'm not all that comfortable with writing about a politician's children. (Whatever else you say about the MSM during the Clinton years, it pretty much--with some notable exceptions--left Chelsea alone.) And given the stakes of this election, personal dramas really should take a back seat to big issues.

But then again, you can't discount that there is an interesting political situation here for the guy who is leading in the polls. As the NYT points out--and has a slide show to prove it--Rudy's children have been a big asset in his political career in the past. Family values, and how you live them, have an important place in Republican primary politics. And for both of his leading opponents, their children are an important part of the message. McCain's support of the war has more poignance because of the fact that his son signed up to serve. And Romney's family--five handsome sons, married to beautiful wives--could be a poster for functionality.

The media has provided mountain of details about campaign issues such as whether Hollywood mogul David Geffen supports Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. But some frustrated news consumers are wondering why they can't find out more about the other people considering runs for the presidency. U.S. News & World Report's News Desk blog posts two such inquiries from readers wondering why candidates Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee don't get much coverage.

We've discussed this issue before as it applies to CBS News. Here's what U.S. News reporters Liz Halloran and Gordon Witkin had to say:

"We intend to cover these candidacies. But as a magazine -- and not a daily newspaper -- we don't feel obligated nor do we have the space to cover each and every development in the presidential race. We have tried to focus on the most likely and viable nominees while crafting unique magazine-style pieces that set us apart from the day-to-day developments.

Other news organizations have to make similar judgement calls on coverage. Usually that involves weighing the viability of a candidacy by examining how much money the candidate has raised, what kind of national profile he or she has developed, and whether the candidate's views could translate into sustainable support. It is far from a perfect science. Case in point: On the day we published a profile of Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, who at the time was one of the stronger-looking Democratic presidential candidates, he withdrew. Ouch!"

The Skinny Today: Sen. Barack Obama prepares for his really, truly official announcement of a run. And John Edwards has a blog problem. Plus, papers explore the sudden death of Anna Nicole Smith, a longtime media obsession.

Vaughn Ververs, former editor of Public Eye and current senior political editor at CBSNews.com, offers some advice to news consumers as 2008 coverage kicks off.

When Hillary Clinton made her entrance into the presidential race, you had to figure it would make a little bit of news. So it’s no surprise that last week’s Talk Show Index, produced by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, showed that the 2008 presidential race had become a major topic of conversation. We do seem to have hit warp speed in the race for the White House over the past couple of weeks with a slew of candidates jumping in on both sides of the aisle (and at least one, John Kerry, opting out.)

We’re already being bombarded with news from Iowa and New Hampshire, national horserace polling, Hollywood fundraisers and, yes, even political ads. Money, polls and ads – yep, the campaign is off and running. Even for those who aren’t political junkies, it’s a pretty exciting time. But you get the feeling we’re all going to be pretty tired of it all in short order.

That’s why I wanted to offer news consumers a few campaign ‘08 survival tips.

The Only Polls That Count: With all due respect to our national media organizations, these polls showing John McCain or Rudy Giuliani battling it out with Hillary Clinton are almost meaningless. Reflected in them is the fact that nationally recognized figures are, well, nationally recognized. It’s mildly informative that at this moment in time, Clinton appears to be capable of winning a national election and becoming the nation’s first woman president. But given her profile over the past decade, is that really news?

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Libby Juror Saga, Act Two: Rejoice, Washingtonians and news junkies -- the jury for the Scooter Libby trial has been chosen. And it after much huffing and puffing over potential jurors' potential conflicts of interest, the final pool reflects quite a wide range. In particular, it includes a former Washington Post reporter – who also happened to be a neighbor to Tim Russert and an employee under Bob Woodward. Both of those men are expected to be witnesses in the case. Other members of the jury are not so plugged in to the Washington political scene, reports the AP, such as "a travel agent who only looks at newspapers for the sudoku puzzles" and "a hotel sales agent who described herself a 'master of all things pop culture, but nothing related to current events.'"

The Candidates' Chicken And Egg Problem: Candidates not named Clinton or Obama are also getting stepped on, laments Howard Kurtz this morning. Especially people like New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (yes, he announced this weekend) – who comes equipped with several convenient storylines, like his Hispanic heritage. "That means he should be getting as much 'would be America's first' publicity as the possible first woman president and first black president." Unfortunately, the governor "barely registers in the polls," and therefore, he barely registers among journalists, who "care only about Hillary and Obama at the moment." A political catch-22, says Kurtz: "How do you get media attention when you're nowhere in the polls, even though if you got some media attention, you'd probably rise in the polls, thereby warranting more media attention?"

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