The newspapers, those anachronistic bundles of paper and advertisements, don’t land on my doorstep until around 8. Although I’ve read most of the political stories online, there’s something comforting about pouring a cup of coffee, snapping open the broadsheet and listening to Morning Joe Scarborough on MSNBC while I read the print version. It’s kind of like the old days, like when you went out on the campaign trail to see what was going on yourself. But that’s not in the cards this year, so I’m counting on my tweeple out there to do the job for me.

My Tweeple

I try not to check my Twitter account too early, but it’s only a click away.  The first postings always come from the insomniacs who, on Monday mornings, seem inordinately obsessed by how their football team did the night before. By 9 AM, the 75 reporters, handlers and handicappers I’ve chosen to follow through the campaign have begun logging in, opening the spigot on a steady stream of commentary from themselves and others that will continue through the day.

The first tweet of substance comes from @PostPolitics and has the results of the latest ABC/Washington Post poll. It shows Mitt Romney leading Newt Gingrich nationwide 39% to 23%, but losing a head to head match-up with President Obama, 51% to 45%. Within the hour, the Romney camp will issue its own tweet disputing the methodology of the polling, but the cat is out of the bag and bouncing all over Twitterland.

From @Karl Rove comes a tweet charging Chrysler’s “Second Half in America” Superbowl commercial was little more than an in-kind contribution to the Obama campaign. There’s a tweet from @Newt2012HQ reminding Gingrich supporters today is Ronald Reagan’s 101^st birthday. And there’s another from the Romney camp (retweeted by @David Axelrod) noting that Tim Pawlenty will be holding a telephone conference call for reporters this morning to discuss Rick Santorum’s pork barrel politics.

Politics From The Twitter Firehose

Breezing down the TweetDeck, I come across a link to an article by Ben Smith on Buzzfeed.com titled “Politics From the Twitter Firehose.” In it, Smith boldly proclaims “Twitter has become political reporters’ and junkies front page: It’s faster and more comprehensive than any wire service or website, because it includes them all, along with the voices of newsmakers and reporters who make and break news there before it hits the old web.”

Smith knows whereof he speaks. He is the young reporter who pioneered live blogging for Politico and recently launched Buzzfeed.com to tap into the Twitterland fascination with breaking political news. To illustrate his point, he provides a tick-tock account of what happened last Friday when one of his reporters, Rosie Gray, posted a “scoop” on Buzzfeed about Rick Santorum failing to get enough signatures for the Indiana ballot.

The article was posted at 2:21 PM, and tweeted out by Smith and Gray moments later. Inside of 30 minutes, three reporters picked up on the story, and countless others retweeted it to their fans. By late afternoon, Santorum himself addressed the problem at a press conference. By the time ABC reported it on their blog at 7:20 PM, all mention of Buzzfeed’s scoop was gone. “I am not typically a whiner about credit,” Smith grumbled in an email ABC’s Shushannah Walshe, “but since we are relatively new to the game . . . I wonder if you could add a link noting that this was Rosie’s scoop.”

But his larger point, he wrote in the piece, was to recognize “as Twitter displaces the old, authoritative tally of presidential politics — one that used to run on the wire, and which in 2008 was seized by blogs and fast-moving websites — we’re losing our ability to keep track. Blink — or get up to go to lunch, or look away from TweetDeck for a conversation — and you can miss a whole news cycle of scoop and reaction, joke and outrage. One feature of this: A midsize scoop can now “break” several times in a day, as different outlets simply miss the others’ work.”

I’m Missing Rush, Drudge Fills In

Jeez, it’s 11 AM already. I’ve been so engrossed in keeping up with my Twitter feeds I only now realize I’m totally missing Rush Limbaugh! Rush hasn’t been on my media radar for some time now, but this year I’m trying to rectify that because of his influence on the Republican race. In the new Pew Research Center study on politics and the press, Tea Party members overwhelmingly cite Fox News and radio commentators (Rush being the heavy favorite) as their main source of campaign news. Today, however, when I dial in WLS-radio, Rush appears to be taking the day off. National Review columnist Mark Steyn is filling in. So I flip over to my other favorite Republican site, The Drudge Report.

It has been almost 15 years since Matt Drudge inserted himself in the national political conversation with his report of a certain “blue stained dress” worn by Monica Lewinsky during her encounters with President Clinton. His eye for scandal and wide-ranging links to obscure news stories made him the first of many successful Internet news aggregators. Although he has cut back his staff to two full-time assistants, his influence is no less significant today. His website draws 1.5 million visitors a day and drives twice as much traffic to featured stories as Facebook and Twitter combined.

Drudge’s favorite target this year is President Obama, but he’s not above picking sides in the Republican primary campaign. A few weeks ago, his front page featured no less than six links to stories trashing Newt Gingrich’s tenure as Speaker of the House. (Drudge is said to be a close friend of Romney campaign manager Matt Rhodes.) Today, one of Drudge’s links is a story about Gingrich’s campaign manager doctoring his Wikipedia account to remove references to his three marriages. Another has conservative Dick Armey telling CNN that Newt has lost his magic touch. Yet another reports Gingrich has given up on making the Virginia ballot. The drumbeat of antagonistic stories from Drudge is relentless (especially, when it comes to President Obama), but it’s fun to see how he’s going to stick in the knife every new day.

New York Times on the Move

I had to run some errands––a guy’s head could explode with all this breaking political news––and found myself waiting in line to pick up a prescription at Walgreen’s. What a perfect time to check out the new New York Times Election App on my iPhone. The app offers four categories of news, opinion, election facts and multimedia (i.e. video).  It’s not much different from other news aggregating apps. The opinions are weighted toward the Times own columnists, but the news comes from a variety of sources, and the election guide includes a handy summary of the latest polls and past primary results.

When I clicked on “Gingrich’s Detailed Plan To Carry On,” it pulled up a Washington Post report on Gingrich’s weekend retreat at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. All day Saturday, the Post reported, Gingrich came and went as his staff outlined plans to target Georgia and Tennessee on Super Tuesday (March 6) and Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri and Louisiana later in the month. There wasn’t much news in the fact Gingrich wants to raise more money and schedule more debates in March, but the reporter did notice a white board in the corner of the room where participants would write all the different ways Gingrich could call Romney a liar, which I thought was a nifty little detail.

White House Response

When I got home, my email had the transcript of Jay Carney’s White House press briefing.  Sure enough, amid the questions about the crackdown on demonstrators in Syria and Israel’s plans to attack Iran, there was a question about Clint Eastwood’s ad on the Superbowl.

Question: Do you consider it an in-kind contribution from Clint Eastwood?

Carney: I mean, the answer to your question, Roger, is no. The ad points out, I think, what is significant — a company that has rebounded obviously wants to sell more cars, and that’s what advertising is about.  But it does point out a simple fact, which is that the automobile industry in this country was on its back, and potentially poised to liquidate three years ago, and this President made decisions that were not very popular at the time that were guided by two important principles:  One, that he should do what he could to ensure that 1 million jobs would not be lost; and two, that the American automobile industry should be able to thrive globally if the right conditions were created, and that included the kinds of reforms and restructuring that Chrysler and GM undertook in exchange for the assistance from the American taxpayer.

The Situation Room

It’s 4 PM. Time for The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer on CNN. Not much to report. (There usually isn’t.) CNN correspondents are out in the field with the candidates in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri, but no amount of prodding will get them to predict Tuesday’s caucus results. Back in the studio, Gloria Borger is rehashing the Washington Post/ABC poll. Donna Brazille and Mary Matalin, meanwhile, are getting ready to chew over Karl Rove’s criticism of the Superbowl ad as part of their paid gig as political analysts.

It’s all pretty thin gruel. But I watch because America watches. The same Pew study that showed Tea Party followers watch Fox News reported 36 percent of all Americans consider cable news their primary source of campaign news. That’s 40 percent more than cite either the Internet or broadcast TV News as their primary source.

Another quick flip of the channel hopper to the nightly newscasts explains why. Since I was a boy, I’ve always considered the network news operations of ABC, CBS and NBC the creme do la creme of journalism. Even reduced to 22 minutes (with commercials), the Evening News broadcasts are no less serious or authoritative than they’ve ever been. They lead with footage showing mayhem in the streets of Syria––footage acquired by journalists who risked their lives getting it. Some feature investigative reports, others have health care segments. All have comprehensive reports about breaking news – from reporters who are on the scene to report it.

But when the topic turns to politics, the end of day report feels like deja vu. It’s all just warmed over pictures that have flounced around the Internet all day or factoids that survived a day in the Twitter meat grinder. Jake Tapper’s report on ABC about their own political poll results breaks no new ground on what he reported earlier on @jaketapper. And that “controversial” Clint Eastwood commercial now seems, oh, so five minutes ago. Is it The News? Or is it me? Am I too consumed with gorging on this banquet of political news served up across the Internet?

I turn the TV off for dinner and take one last glance at the Twitter feed. The night snarks are coming out in the East, but my day as a political couch potato is over. I have to rest up for Election Night tomorrow.

No White Knights

The narrative coming out of Florida is that Romney reversed his disastrous loss in South Carolina and found his voice in Florida. It’s not exactly the full-throated clarion call to arms the Republican faithful were waiting for. After ten days of mudslinging in the political lowlands, neither Romney or Gingrich will ever be mistaken for a Republican white knight. But Romney showed he knows how to conduct a good knife fight––his campaign outspent Gingrich’s  $15 million to $3 million on TV ads, 92 percent of which were negative––while at the same time crooning to the little old ladies in The Villages.

The Romney that emerges from Florida is smarter, tougher and more confident that the one who went in. He’s regained that fragile, but essential aura of a man with momentum behind him. The burden now falls on his handlers to spin that momentum into a general presumption that he will be the Republican candidate––at a time when the race itself is moving into a month long political Dead Zone.

Spinning without Yarn

Yes, there are caucuses coming up shortly in Nevada, Maine, Colorado and Minnesota, but the next primaries (in Arizona and Michigan) are not until February 28; and the March 6 Super Tuesday where Romney can really flex his political muscle in 10 state contests at once is more than a month away.

Romney’s minions, as a result, will be spinning without much yarn to work with. And they won’t be the only ones out there. Gingrich gave no hint in his election night speech that he’s letting up, especially in the media spin arena where, as he has shown, he’s very quotable. Romney’s other two opponents, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul, meanwhile, are hoping to get back into the race via the small state caucuses. Paul has been plotting for months to surprise Romney in Nevada and Maine.  Santorum has set his sights on Minnesota and Colorado. The prospects of either winning a caucus state outright are slim, but in a race where every delegate counts, both hope proportional voting will allow them to amass enough delegates to have a voice at the convention in writing the platform and choosing the nominee.

Stacking Up Wins

For the Romney forces, February isn’t about collecting delegates, it’s about stacking up “wins.” That should be easy enough in Nevada, Maine, Colorado and Minnesota, even if Paul or Santorum finish a strong second.  But it won’t significantly alter the current delegate standings. After Florida, the horse race numbers are: Romney, 69, Gingrich, 23, Santorum, 13, and Paul, 3 — with 46 states (95 percent of the country) left to vote and 1,144 delegates needed to win.

The trick for Romney is to turn these minor victories into what the media will perceive as a winning streak. Two in a row, three in a row, five in a row. Every small victory will be sold to the press as another sign of Romney’s invincibility. And if Romney can go into Super Tuesday with a 7-0 record, maybe the voters will buy it.

The trick for everyone else is to put a chink or two in that streak, all the while reminding voters that the longer the race goes on with four candidates splitting the Republican vote, the less likely it is that Romney will go into the Republican convention in Tampa next August with a majority of delegates in his corner.

Momentum vs. Math

The political press corps will be the arbiter of who is winning this spin war. Within its ranks, there’s a clear divide between the momentum-ists and the delegate counters, and strong advocates on both sides.

Roger Simon, the columnist from Politico, points out that momentum is a powerful force in presidential races. Momentum brings money into the campaign coffers, and attracts endorsements from people who want to be on the winner’s bandwagon. And it all starts by showing you know how to win. It doesn’t matter whether you sweep to victory or luck into it, whether you win on principle or win ugly. Getting a “win”––even in a small state like New Hampshire with only 12 delegates–– demonstrates you have the organization, strategy and money to compete on the presidential level. If a candidate tallies up enough wins, he proves that he has what it takes to be a winner, and that is who party conventions like to nominate: winners.

In the 1996, 2000 and 2004 presidential primaries, momentum explained the process all the successful candidates went through to became nominees. But the epic battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in 2008 threw the momentum-ists a curve. Early voting states gave wins to both candidates so reporters went into Super Tuesday looking for one candidate to dominate. When Hillary Clinton won most of the states, her strategists claimed the momentum was on her side. Then Obama’s advisors noted that their candidate nonetheless had tallied up more delegates. From that point forward, delegate counting ruled the roost and the race went down to the final primaries in Montana and Puerto Rico on June 1. (And even then, it wasn’t over. It took a party rules committee vote affirming the primary results in Florida and Michigan to convince Clinton to concede.)

The Dream of a Brokered Convention

There is an element of the press corps that relishes a long drawn out primary schedule with its enticing prospect of a brokered convention at the end. But it almost never happens. The last convention that fit that description came in 1952, when Democrats nominated Adlai Stevenson on the third ballot only to see him lose to Dwight Eisenhower. The last time Republicans were in the same boat was 1948 when Thomas Dewey won the nomination on the third ballot (and lost to Harry Truman).

The reality of raising money to wage a long primary battle forces underfunded candidates to drop out; and rambunctious rebels who don’t withdraw graciously are often talked into stepping aside by party leaders who, under modern convention rules, have their own power base as convention super delegates.

That doesn’t mean losing candidates haven’t taken their fight to the convention floor. The Republican convention of 1964 and Democratic conventions in 1972, 1980 and 1992 were bitter battles between rival party factions. In many cases, the ill will they generated took the eventual nominee down. Realizing this, party officials have worked to tone down convention proceedings so they have become little more than a primetime showcase for the nominee.

Dueling Scenarios

There are a lot of good why Romney’s momentum should hold up through February, and straight through into the convention. On the money front, he has $20 million in cash on hand (versus Gingrich’s $600,000). His organization has thought through the selection process and put in place field organizations in the states that will make a difference. And in Florida, he found a way to deliver a stump speech that doesn’t sound like a panel discussion at Davos.

If he can just keep those wins coming in February, his expected victory in Michigan could be the springboard to half a dozen more victories on Super Tuesday.

But let’s say Gingrich holds on, and uses February to restock his campaign coffers. And let’s say Ron Paul surprises Romney with a victory in Nevada or Maine, or Rick Santorum bounces back in Colorado and Minnesota. And let’s say the press this year decides to become delegate counters.

The primary to watch on February 28 will then be Arizona, a freaky bastion of conservatism that sacrificed half its delegates to the convention in order to hold its primary ahead of Super Tuesday. Sure Romney will take Michigan, but that’s a proportional voting state. Arizona is winner-take-all.

If Gingrich can make a comeback in Arizona, his victory would overshadow Michigan and he would walk away with all 29 delegates and a good shot at winning his native Georgia a week later.

That’s the kind of double bump Gingrich needs to carry on his crusade. Delegates and momentum. It doesn’t get better than that.

John King: Mr. Gingrich, as you know your ex-wife has given an interview to ABC and an interview to The Washington Post, and this story has now gone viral on the Internet.  In it, she says that you came to her in 1999 at a time when you were having an affair she says you asked her, sir, to enter into an open marriage. Would you like to take some time to respond to that?

Newt Gingrich: No, but I will. (laughter and sustained applause) I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office and I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate with a topic like that.

As presidential debates go, that skirmish last Thursday between Newt Gingrich and CNN anchor reporter John King in the South Carolina primary debate was a moment to remember. A real attention grabber. And a great way to start the show. Maybe the most dramatic encounter this season between the candidates and the press. Or maybe not. There’s plenty of race left to go, and we’ll have more on that in a moment. But first, let’s send it back to Wolf in the newsroom and ask our panel of judges how they think Newt did.

Where did it go wrong?

Where did it all go wrong? When did this seemingly innocent contest to choose a Republican candidate­­ (out of a seemingly uninspiring field) turn into the Gong Show? Who made the first move? What happened to probity? How did we get to this point? And does it matter?

On that last question, yes, it matters. About as much as who gets a rose in The Bachelorette matters. Because what we are witnessing this year is a new form of politics as entertainment on a scale, and in a media environment, the likes of which we’ve never been seen before. The Republican debates––there have been 18 so far––have not been particularly thrilling, or enlightening (unless you enjoy hearing Newt Gingrich give a history lesson on mercantile trading), but they do have a kind of zany, faux reality feel that has made them a surprise ratings hit for the broadcast and cable networks. Last week’s debate moderated by Brian Williams in Florida, for instance, drew 7.5 million viewers to NBC.

On the surface, there is nothing in the format of 60-second answers and 30-second responses that makes these debates much different from all the others that have gone before. But they come on the air with such a dazzling array of graphics, such rapturous crowds, and anchors raving about only xx more days until the pivotal xx primary, you feel compelled to watch. Never mind that you don’t know or care who half the candidates are, you watch to see who can get in their two cents worth before the bell rings, who’s going to go after whom,  and who will draw the first blood.

The Politics Show is a moveable feast of politics (okay, maybe more like a light buffet) that drifts around week to week from ABC to CBS to NBC, Fox, Bloomberg, MSNBC, CNN––whoever wants to highlight their political reporting team. Most of the time they have an Internet partner: a Facebook, Google or Twitter eager to insert their social network brand into the show, sometimes in live tweets displayed on screens, sometimes by making remote visits to citizens who sent their questions in advance.

On Fox TV, they have a lower screen graphic that charts the instant responses from a focus group offstage. On CNN, the star of the show is the anchorman––alternately Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, or John King–– prowling the stage with a microphone, bouncing questions off different candidates, in effect baiting them to take on each other. The Politics Show is, in short, definitely not your mother’s League of Women Voters debate.

Bickering, Baiting and Belittling

In Las Vegas last October, for instance,  Anderson Cooper found Texas Gov. Rick Perry placed next to Mitt Romney, then all but goaded the two men into a series of verbal body punches on everything from immigration to health care.

“You lose all standing,” Perry told Romney after citing his use of illegal aliens to mow his lawn. “It is the height of hypocrisy.”

“You were chairman of Al Gore’s campaign!” Romney countered when it was his turn. “Forty percent of all the jobs you created were for illegal aliens!”

“You failed as governor of Massachusetts!” Perry parried.

Every taunt and retort elicited an audience reaction, which is a not uncontroversial element of this year’s debates. One reason is that debate co-sponsors now include the likes of The Tea Party and local Republican group, who fill the arenas with people not shy about expressing their opinions.

At an NBC/Politico debate in California in September, the audience broke into wild applause when moderator Brian Williams began a question to Gov. Perry by noting 234 people on death row in Texas have been executed during his governorship. After the interruption,  Perry gave his response. Then Williams asked a follow-up question: “What do you make of that dynamic that just happened here, the mention of the execution of 234 people drew applause?”

“I think Americans understand justice,” Perry said, and the audience again broke into cheers.

Five days later at a CNN/Tea Party debate in Tampa, moderator Wolf Blitzer found himself trying to pin down Ron Paul on how a physician and libertarian like himself would handle the case of someone who refused to buy health insurance then fell deathly ill. “Are you saying that society should just let him die?“ Blitzer asked. “Yeah!” came a loud voice from the crowd, followed by raucous applause.

Roger Simon is a Politico columnist who has covered literally hundreds of presidential debates. He’d never seen anything quite like it. “If you have ever asked yourself how crowds could have gathered to cheer public burnings, beheadings and guillotining in times past, tune into one of these debates and you will stop asking,” he wrote. “It is said there is wisdom in crowds. But sometimes a crowd is just a mob that happens to be sitting down.”

At last week’s debate in Florida, moderator Brian Williams warned the crowd in advance not to interrupt with applause. Newt Gingrich, who felt his performance was hurt by the lack of support, threatened afterward not to participate in future debates unless the audience was unleashed. “I think the prohibition for no clapping was kind of un-American,” his spokesman R.C. Hammond said. “What if you went to a baseball game and they were like, ‘No cheering after a big play?’”

“Audiences are there to watch,” countered Stuart Stevens, Romney’s top adviser. “They are not there to be, sort of, an 11th man on the team. . . It’s not the LSU-Alabama game.”

And that’s what’s so great about the Politics Show: the controversy.

An Alternate Universe

The surreal nature of these debates also owes something to the fact the candidates themselves seem to be living in an alternative universe. It’s a Republican world, to be sure, where free enterprise and American exceptionalism flow like honey over pancakes, founding fathers serve up dollops of wisdom on how to contain health care costs or regulate credit default swaps, and Barack Obama is Lenin in sheep’s clothing. “Anybody on this stage would be a better president than Barack Obama,” Newt Gingrich is fond of saying in one of his grandiose moments. Oh really?

This is the stage where Michelle Bachmann promised to repeal Obamacare “on day one” even though it’s a 954-page bill, already half implemented, with ten titles covering hundreds of small provisions governing hospital funding, health care clinics, drug benefits, insurance eligibility, Medicare cost formulas, and other reimbursement programs that affect about 16 percent of our GDP.

This is where Herman Cain launched his loony “9-9-9“ plan, where Rick Perry uttered his famous “oops”, where Mitt Romney pledged to fight in Afghanistan until the Taliban are defeated, and where eight out of eight candidate vowed not to raise taxes even if that were offset by ten times as much in federal spending cuts.

It’s a world where facts are fungible, especially when they get in the way of a good cliche.

On the question of how to handle the 12 million illegal immigrants in the country, all the Republican contenders say the problem can’t be addressed until we seal the border. Some want a wall; others a fleet of drones. Herman Cain once suggested a moat with alligators.

But not one of the candidates acknowledges that the border is becoming more secure. The estimated 375,000 Mexicans who crossed illegally into the United States last year was the lowest number since the early 1970’s; and, for the first time in a decade, more illegal Mexican immigrants are going home than coming here. In part, that’s because the economy in the United States is so dismal. But it’s also because, thanks to President Obama, the INS has instituted a new policy giving priority to deporting undocumented detainees who are arrested on criminal charges.

On energy independence, all the debate participants criticize the president for government regulations that hamper the exploration for new domestic oil and natural gas. But domestic oil production in the United States is up this year for the first time in a decade, and our reliance on foreign oil is lower than it has been since the early 1990’s. Again, the recession has taken its toll on energy consumption, but energy conservation efforts and higher fuel economy standards pushed by the Obama administration are slowly having their effect.

There is really no place to even start discussing the foreign policy ideas offered by the Republican candidates. They are all over the map except on target. Mitt Romney wants to stay in Afghanistan until the Taliban are defeated? Make a wish. Rick Perry thinks we ought to go back into Baghdad to stabilize Iraq? Are you kidding?

With the notable exception of Ron Paul, the Republican contenders all profess their readiness to go to war to prevent Iran from getting an atomic bomb––as if attacking a nation of 73 million people, twice as large as Iraq and far more militarized, were easy––without any regard for the long term consequences. Didn’t we learn anything from Iraq? War ain’t no walk in the park, Kazansky, no matter how many times you watched Top Gun during your student deferment.

And don’t get me started on Mitt Romney’s claim to have created 100,000 jobs while Obama presided over the loss of 4 million. It’s a bogus number on both sides of the equation. Romney’s 100,000 figure for jobs he created is based on the growth of two companies, Staples and Sports Authority, that Bain Capital provided seed money to a quarter century ago; and his 4 million figure for U.S. job losses includes 2.5 million in the first three months of Obama’s term (before his stimulus package took effect) and does not include the 3 million new private sector jobs created over the last 22 months of his term. Even with public employee cutbacks, Obama can take credit for a modest, but net gain of at least 1 million jobs created in his first term.

A Slip-and-Side Media Landscape

The Politics Show enjoys the support of more than the television news executives who produce it. Before the first voting in Iowa, the Republican debates were the only game in town, the one common forum where political reporters could flesh out the personalities of the candidates. Hard core political junkies jumped on board. One night’s debate performance paired with the next’s day telephone poll (or polls, as the case may be, since everybody and their brother is doing them) produced a new frontrunner every three weeks, and a rash of stories speculating on what that meant.

By the time the Iowa caucuses came around in January, the already hefty press corps covering the race was joined by bloggers, tweeters, hobbyists and comics filling all manner of new media outlets with their instant reaction to the debates. With new media outlets like Politico, the Huffington Post and National Journal pumping out non-stop coverage on all angles of the race, the Politics Show now drives the narrative in a new Slip-and-Slide media landscape.

The Internet once again has changed the nature of political coverage. Video clips supplied by “embedded” reporters following candidates 24/7 are part of the vocabulary. So too are graphic tables analyzing campaign finances, fact checking websites and a greater awareness of the Internet on the part of traditional mainstream media, who now routinely require reporters to not only file stories, but create and promote personal twitter accounts.

When a story breaks, it spreads instantly through a thousand channels. It is tweeted and retweeted, aggregated into websites with audiences far wider than the original publication, and electronically shared on Facebook, and in a dozen other places. Soon enough, one story caroms off another, creating a kind of media buzz (see buzzfeed.com/politics) on the net that shapes the narrative of the day. This narrative, in turn, feeds into the questions at the next debate, spawning new reaction stories, and starting the cycle all over again.

The collective influence of social networks on politics is nowhere more apparent than on debate nights, when Twitter buzzes with online chatter from reporters breaking down candidate responses line by line, and moment by moment. Just in the last month, Twitter (the company) and Google have begun providing analysts to the cable news networks to tabulate and categorize their tweets and searches, providing yet another avenue for looking at the Politics Show.

So even as the final contestants dwindle down to four in the actual Republican primary voting, the Politics Show gathers steam from this bundling of media interconnections. But it’s hard to get around the notion as you watch the actual debates––the next one is tonight, again in Florida–that this is all very disposable news. Fun to read about, fun to watch (my favorite contestant is Ron Paul, although I’d never vote for him) and not all that helpful in deciding who should be our next president.

In New Hampshire, it was Romney’s turn to shine. As the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts with a summer home on Lake Winnipesaukee outside Concord, Romney had a distinct home field advantage. He’d run a primary campaign there before in 2008, and the interlude between the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire voting was hardly enough time for his rivals to wake up, debate twice in the span of 18 hours, make new commercials, or shake enough voter hands to make a difference. And it probably wouldn’t have mattered. Romney had the Republican party regulars wired tighter than braces on a teenager.

An Attack From The Right

But the news was not all good for Romney. Three days before the voting, Newt Gingrich’s Super PAC unveiled a blistering attack on Romney’s old private equity firm Bain Capital. The centerpiece of it was a slick 28-minute film that contended Bain Capital made spectacular profits by “stripping American businesses of assets, selling everything to the highest bidder and often killing jobs for financial rewards.”

Romney’s aides at first dismissed this as petulant payback for the negative ads Romney’s Super PAC’s had aired against Newt in Iowa. But there was more to it than that. The film featured poignant interviews with laid off workers who movingly identify Romney as the source of their ills; newspaper accounts surfaced only days before about Bain deals that yielded millions in profits even as the companies went bankrupt; and a Las Vegas billionaire suddenly stepped up to contribute $3.4 million to blanket the airwaves in South Carolina with excerpts from the film over the next two weeks.

The Fiction of Independence

Maintaining the fiction of independence from his Super PAC (run by his long time aide Rick Tyler), Gingrich commented that “if the charges are true,” Romney’s claim to have spent his business career creating jobs at Bain Capital was a sham.

“I don’t think a Milton Friedman or a Hayek would say to you, rich guys have to go and rip off companies and leave a wreckage behind,” he told Bryon York of the Washington Examiner. “I think that’s plundering. I don’t think that’s capitalism.”

“I don’t want to pre-judge Romney,” he added. “But you can’t have capitalism on the way up and socialism on the way down. You can’t have somebody who says, ‘I’m so smart. I want a huge upside, and by the way I’m so smart you’re going to get ripped off while I get a huge upside.’ If these things all turn out to be relatively valid, at some point in the near future, he’s going to have to do a press conference just to explain Bain . . . .Which is inevitably going to lead to questions about records (his personal taxes) that he doesn’t want to release.”

Too Late for New Hampshire

The film is titled “King of Bain: When Mitt Romney Came to Town.” As much as it titillated reporters on the campaign trail, its existence didn’t seem to significantly impact New Hampshire voters. One reason is that Gingrich’s Super PAC released only a 2-minute trailer. (The full length version was not posted to the web until Wednesday afternoon.) And there wasn’t time to buy make it into ads for New Hampshire TV.

But the attack clearly upset Romney and made for a few wicked sound bites: “A story of greed, playing the system for a quick buck . . . . a group of corporate raiders, led by Mitt Romney, more ruthless than Wall Street (from the film) and “I like being able to fire people” (a quote from Romney talking about choosing health care insurance providers, but pulled out of context for instant distribution on Twitter).

When he stepped to the podium to claim his New Hampshire victory Tuesday night, Romney inferred the film was part of President Obama’s plan to “put free enterprise on trial” and he decried the fact “some desperate Republicans” have joined forces with him to do it.

“This is such a mistake for our party and for our nation,” he said. “This country already has a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy. … I stand ready to lead us down a different path, where we are lifted up by our desire to succeed, not dragged down by a resentment of success.”

But questions about the kind of free enterprise Romney practiced in his years at Bain won’t go away. Over the last month, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times have all looked into Bain’s investments and Romney’s record of job creation at Bain is far more nuanced than he lets on.

The Early Bain

Mitt Romney ran Bain Capital from 1984––when it was first spun off from Bain & Company–– until 1999, when he left to take over the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. In those early years, Bain was made up of young MBA’s like himself eager to find the next great American entrepreneur. This is the Bain that Romney so fondly remembers. With only $37 million in their venture capital fund, they found 20 start-up businesses to seed and promote, among them an office supply store called Staples and a small chain of sports gear stores called The Sports Authority.

In his stump speech, Romney proudly claims the businesses Bain backed have created over 100,000 jobs. He gets to that number by adding the 89,000 jobs Staples has created since it was founded in 1986 to the 15,000 employees now working for Sports Authority, with 7,900 new jobs created by Bain’s buyout of Domino’s Pizza in 1998 (two months before Romney left the company) thrown in for good measure.

As successful as both retail chains have been, however, Romney’s claim is kind of a magical, mythical re-imagining of Bain’s impact on the companies. In the case of Staples, Bain was not the lead investor but one of a number of venture firms who helped the company get off the ground, and it put up only $5 million. When Staples went public in 1989, Bain got back $13 million and Romney sat on its board for more than a decade. But how much credit for the 89,000 employees belongs to Bain, and how much belongs to the 25-year tenure of its dynamic founder Thomas Stemberg?

In a similar fashion, Bain again was a small player in a consortium of six venture funds (led by William Blair in Chicago) that helped get Sports Authority off the ground in 1987. The company did well immediately, so well it was sold to K-Mart in 1990 and the funds made a handsome profit. When K-Mart couldn’t integrate it into their operations, however, the company went public in 1994, then merged with two other sports store chains in 1998, and now dominates the market. But, again, how much of that growth can be attributed to Bain’s involvement?

“I never thought of what I do for a living as job creation,” Marc B. Walpow, a former managing partner at Bain who worked closely with Romney for nine years, told the Los Angeles Times. “The primary goal of private equity is to create wealth for your investors.”

Upping the Ante

In 1990, Romney was briefly called back to run Bain & Company while partners resolved some management issues. By the time he returned to Bain Capital in 1992, its investment strategy had shifted to leveraged buyouts––and profits were soaring. In the typical leveraged buyout deal, an investor finds a troubled or inefficient company, borrows the capital to acquire it and restructures––either cutting costs by eliminating inefficiencies or increasing sales by finding prosperous new markets (or both)––hoping to sell or take it public when the company is back on its feet.

According to a 2000 investor prospectus distributed by Deutsche Bank, Bain was particularly good at this. Under Romney’s leadership, the prospectus boasted, Bain invested in 115 companies that produced an internal rate of return of 88 percent a year. In other words, if you had invested $1 million in Bain Capital when it started and left it all in the portfolios for the next 15 years, it would be worth $12 billion, according to the prospectus.

Bain’s investments ranged from AMC Entertainment to Brookstone, Burger King, Burlington Coat Factory, Domino’s, Sealy Mattresses, The Weather Channel and scores of other companies. Its most profitable investment was Bain’s acquisition in 1996 of Experian, a California consumer credit agency formerly known as TRW, that Bain acquired by putting up only $88 million. Two months later, it resold the company and made back a profit of $252 million.

Despite the range of companies in its portfolio, The Wall Street Journal reported that 90 percent of Bain’s profit in those years came from 77 leveraged buyout deals–– but 22 percent of those companies filed for bankruptcy reorganization or closed their doors within eight years of Bain’s initial investment.

Just ten of those deals accounted for 70 percent of Bain’s profit, The Journal reported, and in four of them, the companies landed in bankruptcy court, shedding thousands of jobs. Even so, Bain made a profit in three of the four bankruptcies and, today, it manages over $65 billion in investment funds.

Putting Flesh on Numbers

“When Mitt Came to Town” is a film that puts flesh on all those numbers with real people talking about their experience with the Bain consultants. Between the movie and various news accounts, there are now at least five deals in the public record where Romney’s and Bain’s brand of “free enterprise” has come under fire. They include:

• American Pad & Paper (Ampad) – In 1992, Bain combined a writing products plant in Marion, Indiana with two others in Massachusetts and New York to create the American Pad & Paper company, or AmPad. The Marion plant was purchased in an asset sale, so the new owners got the factory but not the union contract. One of Bain’s first acts was to fire all the Marion employees and ask them to reapply. Not all of them did. Those that returned were given reduced wages and benefits, paid half their health insurance and lost their previous union pension plan. In the time Bain ran the factory, it borrowed heavily against the company assets, recouping all of its initial investment.

By 1994, workers in Marion were organizing again for a new union contract when the steward, Randy Johnson, heard that Mitt Romney was running for Senate in Massachusetts against Sen. Ted Kennedy. Johnson became a prominent voice against Romney in the race. After Romney lost, Johnson continued to negotiate but workers rejected the company’s final offer just before Christmas and the plant was closed in February 1995, putting 380 people out of work.

* Dade International – In 1994, Bain purchased the medical diagnostics unit of Baxter International for $448 million, putting up $26.7 million of its own money, and renamed it Dade International. Two years later, Dade expanded by acquiring a chemicals division of DuPont and another diagnostics company called Behring.

In 1999, Dade borrowed again against their combined assets and used $365 million to repurchase stock from the original investors, paying Bain more than four times its initial investment. With a declining cash flow and high interest rates, Dade’s borrowing grew to $1.5 billion before it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2002. Between 1996 and 2002, according to an SEC filing, the company shed more than 1,700 jobs.

“When I listen to Mitt Romney these days, he talks about creating jobs, “Michael Rumbin, a vice president of technology at Dade told the Los Angeles Times, which first reported the story. “My experience at Dade during those Bain Capital years was that it was strictly an investment, not to create jobs. No one came from Bain and said, ‘How can we hire more people?’ It was, ‘How do we turn our investment around and make a lot of money.’ Which they did.”

• UniMac – Unimac was a family-owned business in Marianna, Florida, that was the largest manufacturer of commercial grade laundry facilities in North America. Bain bought the company in 1990 and, according to employees, immediately began cutting costs and speeding up the workflow. “We hurried faster through our work,” one said. “We’d go so fast, we’d run out of parts. So we’d ship machines with missing parts.” After shaping up the balance sheet, Bain sold the company to a Canadian teacher’s union at a 230 percent profit. (“What do teachers know about running a laundry?” the same employee asked.) But the union eventually closed the factory doors, laying off 830 workers in three states. [CORRECTION: The Washington Post Fact Checker says the company was initially sold to Raytheon, and Bain did not acquire it until 1998. When it was sold to the Canadian Teacher's Private Capital fund in 2005, the factory operations were moved to Ripon, Wisconsin. One of the interviewees, Mike Baxley, also told the Post they were not told the film was about Romney and Bain. They were led to believe it was about the effects on a community of a plant closing. The Week Behind regrets the error.]

• DDI – DDI was an electronic parts manufacturer with factories in Texas, Colorado and California. Bain acquired the company in the late 90’s and immediately started cleaning up the balance sheet for a public sale. In June 2000, with Lehman Brothers as the chief underwriter, DDI raised $170 million through an initial public offering. Inside of six months, Bain sold half its shares for a $39 million profit. Six months later, it sold the rest for $54 million more. Then the company’s finances began to quickly unravel. Two years later, after losing $400 million, the company filed for bankruptcy and 2,100 jobs were lost. All this occurred after Romney had left Bain for the Olympics, but he remained a member of its management committee, according to SEC filings, and shared in the profits.[CORRECTION: The Washington Post Fact Checker reports Bain retained 15% of its shares in the company even as it slid into bankruptcy protection. It re-emerge from bankruptcy and continues today as a high technology equipment provider.]

• GS Industries – In the 1990’s, Bain saw opportunity in the downtrodden American steel industry. It took over an old steel mill called Worldwide Grinding Systems in Kansas City and a wire rod maker in Georgetown, South Carolina, and combined them to create a new company it called GS Industries. About the same time, it also took a minority interest in a new steel manufacturing company in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, called Steel Dynamics.

Almost immediately, Bain began laying off workers and reducing job benefits, even as it collected management fees of $900,000 a year (a total of $4.5 million) as a consultant to GS operations. The Kansas City mill was old and in need of repairs, so GS floated a $125 million corporate bond issue. Out of that money, Bain took $36 million in dividends, recouping all of its initial investment, and then some.

In 1995, to cover the costs of its merger with the South Carolina plant, GS Industries floated another $125 million in bonds. The prospectus said the combined company would have projected annual revenues of $1 billion and 3,800 employees. But Roger Regelbrugge, the CEO at the time, told Reuters that he worried the debt (then around $378 million) would force the company to seek an initial public offering of stock, or worse, file for bankruptcy restructuring. Lingering shortages in the employee pension fund made an IPO impossible, and sharply lower prices from cheap foreign steel imports made the revenue projections impossible to meet.

For all Romney’s talk of defending “free enterprise,” GS Industries wasn’t above seeking government help for GS when it needed it. Bain announced but did not have the capital to complete a $98 million plant overhaul in Kansas City that would have been offset by a $3 million tax break. It pursued a federal loan guarantee in 1999 to help grapple with the foreign competitors; and it joined other steelmakers in seeking tariff rate quotas on imported Asian wire rods.

When GS Industries finally declared bankruptcy in 2001, 750 workers at the Kansas City plant lost their jobs. Severance pay, health insurance, life insurance and pension supplements, all negotiated into union contracts, were tossed out. And the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation had to step in to pick up $44 million in unfunded pension obligations.

But not all of Bain’s steel investments went bad. Steel Dynamics, where Bain was a minority investor with little input into operations, rode a new wave of steelmaking technology to become a company with $6.3 billion in revenues today employing 6,000 workers.

More Lingering Questions

The track record of Bain’s investments is complicated by the complexities of high finance and the exigencies of an ever-changing business climate. It doesn’t reduce down easily into campaign sound bites. Newspaper accounts invariably gloss over some pertinent facts to highlight others. The film exposing Romney’s Bain career is drenched in the dramatic music, somber narration, torn headlines, and the ominous black & white images of villains in a political commercial.

But there are enough facts in the newspaper accounts and pathos in the filmed interviews to merit an honest discussion of whether Romney’s experience running Bain Capital makes him anymore qualified as a “job creator” than anyone else.

Maybe the voters of South Carolina, inundated by pro and con 30-second testimonials about the impact of Bain on jobs, will yawn and dismiss the furor over Romney’s tenure at Bain as just another political kerflufel. But the questions won’t go away, nor will the obvious follow-up questions about what taxes Romney paid on his Bain profits. Did he take advantage of the lower capital gains tax rate? Use the loss carryover exemptions granted to hedge fund managers? Or as the movie suggestions, put some of that gain into offshore accounts and blind trusts?

Romney has adamantly refused to release his personal tax returns. But the media should never stop demanding that he does. Because it doesn’t matter if Romney is a politician or a businessman. He’s a candidate for the presidency of the United States. And, by his own admission, he’s a money man. He made his money by making money, so how he did it and what he paid in taxes on the profits are relevant. The full picture of his character won’t come into focus until he does.

A good rule of thumb, simple but enduring, is that the race doesn’t really start until the first votes are cast. Somebody has to go first, and for the last 35 years, that somebody for better or worse has been Iowa.

Confused . . . and Expensive

Tuesday’s voting in the Iowa Republican caucuses showed that Iowa is as confused as the rest of us are about the state of the nation. There was no groundswell of Republicans beating a path to the caucuses, signaling Iowa’s widespread dissatisfaction with President Obama, as party leaders hoped. Out of the three million Iowa residents, only 122,000 attended––about 4,000 more Republicans than in 2008, but far short of the 150,000 party officials predicted or the 240,000 who attended the Democratic caucuses Obama won four years ago.

They came, they voted and they left with all the enthusiasm of people going down to the DMV to renew their driver’s license. After spending $3.2 million on TV ads, Mitt Romney received 30,015 votes––six less than he did four years earlier. Rick Santorum got 30,007, only eight fewer, with a bare bones expenditure of $120,000. Texas Gov. Rick Perry poured the most money into Iowa––nearly $6 million––and came away with 12,604 votes, setting a new record for wasteful extravagance – $476 per vote – in primary balloting.

In the quest for Iowa’s 25 delegates to the Republican national convention in Tampa, Tuesday’s virtual dead heat finish means the top tier of Romney, Santorum and Ron Paul will each will come away with 7 delegates––out of the 1,144 needed to win the nomination­­––and now the race moves on to New Hampshire where five major contenders will vie to slice up its 12 Republican delegate slots.

January in Des Moines

Forgive my skepticism, but when the winner of the Iowa Republican caucus can’t muster enough supporters in the whole state to fill Wrigley Field––average attendance: 37,000––I question why Iowa gets so much attention. And when pundits then go on to predict Romney will be unstoppable with back-to-back wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, I have to wonder why we even let the other 98 percent of Americans vote.

And then I take a deep breath and remember: oh that’s just so the media has something to talk about. Just like every campaign needs a place to start, all the reporters and TV stations covering politics need some votes to hang their theories on. They need some numbers to plug into the Magic Wall whiteboard on the new Election Night set, some sound bites to underscore the new graphics open, some tangible evidence of an election in progress to keep the talking heads in their roundtable of talking heads talking . . . and, of course, some reason to get together with each other on the campaign trail again.

And what better time to do that every four years than January, in Des Moines?

Glimpses Into What’s Ahead

It’s no knock on the people of Iowa to say the Iowa caucuses are overrated. As any reporter will attest, Iowans are among the nicest voters in the land: solid, upstanding citizens who, if they take the time to attend the caucuses, tend to take the responsibility seriously. They may not pick a winner every time. (Only George W. Bush, among Republicans, has won both the caucuses and the presidency.) But they do lay down some out of bounds markers for the race. This year, thank you, Iowa, that put the unhinged musings of Michelle Bachmann and sanctimonious stumbling of Rick Perry over the line.

One of the reasons Iowa is not a great predictor of Republican nominees, however, is that the Republican electorate here lies far to the right of much of the party. At this year’s caucuses, 58 percent of the attendees were evangelical Christians (compared to 37 percent of Republicans nationwide); 82 percent identified themselves as conservative or very conservative (versus 64 percent nationwide); and 65 percent said they support the Tea Party (versus 48 percent nationwide). To curry their favor, all of the candidates (with the exception of Jon Huntsman, who stayed out of the race) were driven to take right wing social positions on abortion, gay rights, and prayer in the schools.  They were drawn into the rhetoric of freedom vs. socialism in stump speeches that did little to address the hard issues of debt and economic stability, and went out of their way to avoid appearing like a “moderate” when, in fact, that’s how most independent voters would characterize themselves. Positions taken in Iowa will be hard to walk back when the electorate widens out to include a more diverse pool of voters.

A Changing Media Landscape

More telling than how the candidates are lining up after Iowa, however,  is how the media covering the race has changed. Since the advent of the Internet, the ranks of what are considered political reporters have grow exponentially. Four years ago, bloggers and talk radio hosts flooded party officials with requests for credentials. This year, anyone with a cheap video camera wants the same access.  All three cable news networks seem determined to flood the zone with camera crews. Broadcast news operations embed camera-wielding, laptop toting interns with campaigns for months at a time. And print reporters who used to bury their heads in their laptops to meet city desk deadlines now answer to digital editors who demand constant updates by iPhone to feed their blogs and twitter accounts. Four years ago, Politico, The Huffington Post and Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo were experiments in online political journalism still in their infancy. Today, they and a half dozen other political web sites spread a multipoint net of political commentary over the whole process that has become as important as the race itself.

Twitter Rules

This year’s political tool of choice for reporters and political campaigns alike is Twitter. It’s where campaigns disseminate schedules and news releases, where stories are leaked, rebuttals are launched, spinners do their spin, and reporters post their snarky comments about real time events they are covering. All at lightning speed. On more than one occasion this year, I’ve seen a blogger post a link to an embarrassing old video on Twitter, a reporter share it with the candidate, and the candidate issue his response––all inside of an hour. I’ve also watched one reporter’s funny one-liner zip across the Twittersphere and draw 50,000 laughs only moments later.

Twitter’s pervasive reach into the poli-sphere speeds along the transfer of political information to a wider circle of insiders (and outsiders), and thus increase the pace of campaigning. The rapid rise and fall of various non-Romney alternatives (Tim Pawlenty, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich) and Santorum’s last minute surge can in some ways be attributed to this new phenomenon. There’s no reason to think in the months to come that it won’t lead to more sudden twists and turns in the campaigns, the speed of which and impact will be magnified by Twitter’s ubiquitous use.

Money Unleashed

The Iowa caucuses also gave us a first look at how the Citizens United vs. FEC decision by the Supreme Court lifting campaign finance restrictions on independent political committees will play out in the coming year. There are now 240 of these so-called SuperPACs––all free to raise and spend unlimited amounts of dollars on political causes, so long as they do not “coordinate” their efforts with the candidate himself.

In Iowa, the SuperPAC supporting Mitt Romney was called “Restore Our Future” and it played a pivotal role in the outcome. In early December, after Herman Cain’s departure from the race, Newt Gingrich was surging to the front of the Republican pack. That’s when “Restore Our Future” stepped forward to buy $1.7 million of airtime on Iowa television attacking Gingrich. Along with a $1 million buy from the Ron Paul campaign, the ads eviscerated Gingrich by pointing out all the baggage he carried over from his days as House Speaker. Three weeks after they started, Gingrich’s ratings in the polls dropped 19 percent and he limped home Tuesday a distant fourth.

For his part, Romney told Fox News  that he can’t control the independent committee or even communicate with it. But, as the New York Times reported, “Restore Our Future” doesn’t need to talk with Romney to know what he’s thinking. It is run by Romney’s 2008 political director Carl Forti, his former chief counsel Charles R. Spies, and Larry McCarthy, an alumnus of Romney’s political media team best known for making The Willie Horton ad; and it’s chief fund-raiser is Steve Roche who, until this fall, led Romney’s own finance team.

“Iowa is ground zero of what we can expect in every competitive state for the rest of the presidential election,” Ellen S. Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, which tracks outside money in politics, told the Times. As proof, media outlets have already tracked major new outlays by “Restore Our Future” in Florida and South Carolina, the next two primary states after New Hampshire.  A SuperPAC sympathetic to Gingrich – “Winning Our Future” – went up with an ad attacking Romney in New Hampshire Wednesday. And another SuperPAC close to Santorum – “The Red, White and Blue Fund”–– is raising money to go on the air in South Carolina next week.

Iowa has done its small part in getting the 2012 presidential race launched, but the field is hardly set in stone and it looks like a wild ride ahead. What we know after Iowa is that there’s more than just the candidates and their campaigns to look out for this time around. There’s the independent SuperPAC, the media in all its new incarnations and, oh yeah, the state of the country as it lurches, twists, hangs up, or pulls ahead into the future.

Now, we just have to ride it out and see what happens.

Cain entered November riding atop the polls. Over a brief 30-day period marked by two debates and the release of his autobiography “This is Herman Cain: My Journey to The White House“, his popularity jumped from 9 percentage points on October 1 to 26 percent on November 2.

Mr. October

In baseball, that kind of meteoric rise would have made him another Reggie Jackson, Mr. October. Except Cain achieved this pinnacle of success not by hitting home runs but by essentially running the bases backward.

He spent no time in the pivotal early voting states of Iowa or New Hampshire. Instead, he went on a book tour promoting his book about his journey in Florida, Wisconsin, Tennessee, California and New York. He said little of substance in the debates but told the magazine GQ that his idea of a “manly man” pizza was one with all the toppings.

And just to rub a cigarette butt in the eye of the first baseman, he authorized an Internet video showing his campaign manager Mark Block declaring “We’ve run a campaign like nobody’s ever seen, but then nobody’s ever seen a candidate like Herman Cain” – then puffing on his cigarette for the camera.

The Politically-Incorrect Option

Conservative Republicans ate it up. Cain has given this campaign its first goofy idea: The 9-9-9 income/sales/business tax proposal to simplify the tax code. But he has also proposed its second and third: barring Muslims from cabinet positions and putting alligators in a moat between Mexico and the United States. His offer this week to make Henry Kissinger his Secretary of State (which Kissinger refused) would have made it a reverse grand slam if Rick Perry hadn’t come up  with the idea of making Congress part time.

“It was a joke,” Cain said when pressed on the alligator patrol. “Can’t anyone take a joke?” If you are a libertarian, as most Republicans are, and don’t trust Washington to produce anything but political gridlock, Washington is a joke. Just ask Jay Leno, David Letterman, Jon Stewart or Rush Limbaugh.

So is Herman Cain running for president or trying to take over Mike Huckabee’s slot on Fox TV?

Four Reasons Why Cain is Not Serious

The Nation recently published an article citing four reasons why Cain is not seriously running for president:

1) He doesn’t have a field organization in Iowa.

2) He doesn’t have a field organization in the next two early voting states of New Hampshire and South Carolina.

3) His campaign organization has spent more buying up copies of his autobiography ($36,000) than it has spent on TV advertising in Iowa 60 days before the election.

4) He continues to accept motivational speaking engagements (“I have not raised my prices.”) even though his campaign reports it has raised $9 million in this quarter.

Iowa

Cain tried to rectify his lack of organization in Iowa on October 21 by hiring Steve Grubbs, a former Republican party chairman, as his field coordinator. Grubbs admitted that he was starting late but so were all the other candidates. (At this point in 2008, Barack Obama had an active field organization in almost half of Iowa’s 99 counties.)

In advance of Saturday’s Thanksgiving Family Forum debate in Des Moines––an event where Cain should do well––Grubbs wanted to get Cain into the state for two days. He showed up for one. It would be only his second appearance in Iowa since his 5th place showing in the August Ames straw poll, and his first since charges of sexual harassment surfaced.

The candidate went to a restaurant in Urbandale, Iowa, for breakfast Tuesday. Since he was late in committing, there was no advance publicity and his audience consisted largely of reporters trying to get Cain to explain his fumbled answer to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel question about Obama’s handling of Libya that went viral Monday on YouTube.

Then Cain climbed onto his bus and headed straight to the airport, canceling his other scheduled appearance at the opening of the Des Moines Cain headquarters because OCCUPY DES MOINES protesters were threatening to picket. The plane took him back to Florida where he held yet another book signing in Miami and attended a $999-dollar-a-plate fundraiser in Palm Beach.

He Said She Said

Cain’s “oops” moment before the Journal Sentinel editorial board came just as the controversy over allegations he sexually harassed two women while he was head of the National Restaurant Association in the late 90’s was flagging. Ever since Politico reported on October 30 that the NRA made cash settlements with two women who accused Cain, a dark cloud settled over Cain’s otherwise sunny demeanor.

The story was bulletproof in all the details, but incomplete because the names of the women and the specific allegations were protected by a non-disclosure agreement. So Cain staved off disaster with a hazy recollection of the lawsuits.

“I never sexually harassed anyone,” he told Fox’s Greta Van Susteren. But he did sort of recall one time when he had a conversation with one of the women at NRA headquarters. “She was in my office one day, and I made a gesture saying, ‘Oh’ — and I was standing close to her. And I made a gesture, ‘You’re the same height as my wife,’ and brought my hand — didn’t touch her — up to my chin and said, ‘You’re the same height of my wife because my wife comes up to my chin’, my wife of 43 years. And that was put in there as something that made her uncomfortable as part of the sexual harassment charge.”

Another Accuser Steps Forward

It was not a particularly convincing denial, and certainly didn’t explain why the NRA paid the woman $45,000 to settle the claim. Then on November 7 another woman who worked in the NRA Chicago office, Sharon Bialek, stepped forward with celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred at her side to say she too had been harassed.

After being fired from her job, Bialek said she flew to Washington to appeal to her old friend Cain to get re-instated. He upgraded her hotel room, took her to dinner, and on the way back to the hotel stopped by NRA headquarters. In the car, “he ran his hand up my skirt, reached for my genitals and pulled my head toward his crotch,” she said.

Watching the press conference on TV, CNN’s legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin turned from the screen and announced, “If what she says is true, that’s not sexual harassment, that’s sexual assault.”

The next night, Cain fervently denied the charge on Jimmy Kimmel’s late night talk show. “I watched the press conference with my staff. They could see steam coming out of my ears and the feelings that you have when you know that all of this is totally fabricated, you go from anger, then you get disgusted,” he said.

“You try to control yourself to make sure you watch this thing all the way through it, and I was listening very closely,” he added. “And when it was all over with, I said, ‘well, I know what we’ve got to do because there’s not an ounce of truth in all of these accusations.’ I will talk about any and all future firestorms because here’s one thing people don’t know about Herman Cain. I’m in it to win it and I’m not going to be discouraged.”

At a press conference in Phoenix the next day, Cain went further. He said he never met the woman and offered to take a lie detector––if his women accusers would as well. His denial creates an especially bright line between who is telling the truth in this he said-she said episode of Herman Cain’s Journey to The White House. A single photo of the two of them together could be his undoing. (And does anybody doubt in this age of iPhone cameras that it, or something even more damning, will?)  But as serious as the sexual harassment is, the brouhaha so far has hardly proven fatal in this Republican race.

Cain’s poll numbers have slipped from 26 to 15 percent nationwide since the controversy broke. But he remains in a four-way tie with Romney, Paul and Gingrich in the Iowa polls. (All are bunched around 18 – 20 percent.) He claims to have taken in $1 million over the Internet the day after his press conference. And his supporters still love him.

“A Crazy, Surreal, Potentially Disastrous Day”

After his awkward 5-minute brain freeze in the Journal Sentinel editorial board room, reporter Craig Gilbert climbed aboard Cain’s campaign bus as it made its way from Milwaukee to a Monday night football game in Green Bay. It was Cain’s first appearance in Wisconsin since he announced his candidacy. (The primary isn’t until April 3.) He stopped along the way to shoot television commercials, joked with his staff, watched his wife get interviewed on Fox TV (“She hates that stuff.”) and was mobbed by Packer fans when he stepped off the bus for a tailgate party outside Lambeau Field.

“I don’t think anyone is having more fun that we are,” he told Gilbert when they boarded the bus. A few hours later, after the Journal Sentinel posted his fumbling remarks on the Internet, he still seemed oblivious to the potential damage to his campaign.

“I’m not supposed to know anything about foreign policy,” Cain said. “I want to talk to commanders on the ground. Because you run for president (people say) you need to have the answer. No, you don’t! No, you don’t! That’s not good decision-making.”

“I paused to make sure I didn’t say something wrong. Fact of the matter is, I didn’t. I didn’t say anything wrong,” he added. “I call it flyspecking every word, every phrase, and now they are flyspecking my pauses, but I guess since they can’t legitimately attack my ideas, they will attack words and pauses. I’m kind of flattered that my pauses are so important, that somebody wants to make a story out of it. Now when you go to PC school you don’t say what I just said. Since I didn’t go to PC school, you say what I just said.”

“It was a crazy, surreal, potentially disastrous day inside the Cain for President Campaign. Or maybe it was a perfectly normal one,” Gilbert wrote.

And it’s not going to end soon. Herman Cain is having too much fun. And there’s still a lot of books to sell.

After 9 debates––with 10 more slated before Iowans cast the first votes––the Republican field is shaping up to look like Mitt Romney versus everybody else. Or maybe anybody else.

A Floundering Opposition

The conservative wing of the party has only produced a series of flash-in-the-pan challengers. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty came and went after blowing the opening debate in New Hampshire. Michelle Bachmann got her bump after winning the meaningless Ames straw poll in August then faded; Rick Perry jumped into the race in September and promptly fell through the floor. This week, it’s Herman Cain’s turn to learn that the media giveth, and the media taketh away.

Romney, by contrast, has been the steady-as-she-goes centrist at the party determined to win over Republicans by saying as little as possible. On the debate stage, his past experience shows. The long-winded and bombastic answers that characterized his 2008 debate performance are gone. He still delivers his points like a man giving a PowerPoint presentation. (Some habits are hard to break.) But he has practiced the fine art of projecting authority not demonstrating it, and he delivers his pre-planned rejoinders to the inevitable attack questions well enough to make you think he just came up with them.

Lukewarm Support

But as well as Romney has done in the debates his standing in the Republican polls has never risen above 25 percent in the 80 separate polls that have been taken over the last 12 months, a pretty clear indication that 75 percent of Republicans (those who are paying attention at least) don’t like him.

The Republican establishment has always resented Romney. His imperious attitude to the party professionals in Washington has always made him an unreliable ally. Karl Rove, no friend of Romney, was one of many Republican powerbrokers who worked behind the scenes last summer to get Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, New Jersey’s Chris Christie or Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan into the race. None felt ready to make the leap. Marching to the beat of their own special drum Donald Trump and Sarah Palin also tested the waters, but decided not to dive in –– yet.

The Arc of Campaigns

There is a traditional arc to presidential campaigns. It starts with a candidate introducing himself to voters in living rooms of Iowa and New Hampshire. A win in either or both states is then deemed by the media to be “momentum” enough to carry the candidate into the next couple primaries––South Carolina and, this year, Florida––and, using the money generated by the early successes, to seal the deal when the campaign suddenly goes wide in an 8 or 10 state Super Tuesday contest shortly thereafter.

The formula is so predictable it has created a kind of media  “mission creep” into Iowa for the first caucus. Political reporters looking for early insight into the race start poking around the state as much as a year before. In 2004, the first year I covered the caucuses, 1200 reporters were on hand for the caucuses. In 2008, that number swelled to 4,500. This year, New Year’s Eve will see more reporters in Des Moines than in Washington, New York and Chicago combined. By election day (January 3) you’ll need to bring your own Winnebago to have a place to stay.

All this media attention comes in spite of the fact, as most reporters know, Iowa’s 28 delegates to the Republican convention will have no meaningful impact on the nomination. Whether Romney chooses to compete in Iowa or not, under new Republican rules dictating proportional distribution of delegates, the “winner” of the Iowa caucuses will probably get no more than 9 delegates. And the third place “loser” will get as many as 7 –– out of 1,143 needed to win the nomination.

When the race heats up seven days later in New Hampshire, the stakes are even more paltry: 12 total delegates with the winner likely to garner no more than 6 or 7. (Three of the 12 are technically unpledged Superdelegates.)

Lessons from 2008

Barack Obama’s 2008 primary campaign both confirmed the traditional model, and shattered it. Obama desperately needed to win Iowa, his campaign manager David Plouffe wrote after the election, because his campaign strategists didn’t see another opening for him to win a primary before February. So they poured millions of dollars into Iowa building a grassroots field organization and turned his narrow victory into a stunning media event. But when Clinton came back four days later to win New Hampshire, the race quickly evolved into an epic state-by-state battle for delegates that didn’t end until South Dakota and Montana cast their ballots on June 3.

The principal culprit in prolonging the race was the shift, now adopted by both Republicans and Democrats, from “winner-take-all” primaries to “proportional voting.” There were other factors, the growing role of unelected Superdelegates in convention voting being one. Another, also noteworthy in the Republican race this year, was Obama and Clinton’s discovery that the Internet could provide an instant and ongoing source of cash week to week as the campaign goes on; so the traditional motivation for a candidate to concede (i.e. “I’m broke”)  isn’t as persuasive as it once was.

A Traditional Campaign Expecting Traditional Results

The Romney forces seem to be running a traditional campaign expecting traditional results: A respectable showing in Iowa, a convincing win in New Hampshire, a strong showing in South Carolina and a clear victory in Florida can easily be spun in the media into making Romney the inevitable nominee, and he has the political operatives on staff to do it.

But there is nothing traditional about the Republican primary calendar in 2012. Even if the single digit losers in the early voting drop out––even if all the current candidates in the field except Romney get spanked in the January primaries––that doesn’t necessarily mean Romney is home free. Because after the Florida primary January 31, 95 percent of the Republican delegates to the convention will still not have been chosen. And Romney’s share of the 115 that have been selected is likely to be less than 60. (Remember, 1,143 are needed to win.)

If there were a Super Tuesday primary the following week, Romney might consolidate his early lead by showing strength across the board in 5 or 6 other big states. But February this time around is a dreary four-week stretch when the campaign goes into limbo. Four small states will hold caucuses, but the next primaries aren’t until February 28 when Arizona and Michigan go to the polls. That’s plenty of time for conservatives to regroup around a single anti-Mitt candidate, or for an entirely new candidate to emerge. Maybe Daniels, or Christie, or Ryan? Or, dare I say, Palin?

If by mid-January, Romney appears the be the last man standing, there’s nothing that keeps a new anti-Mitt from stepping into the race promising a fresh face when the party desperately needs one. He’d have his choice of campaign consultants from the faltering campaigns; new money in his pocket (not having blown millions on Iowa and New Hampshire TV ads); no stigma left over from participating in all those silly debates. And plenty of running room ahead.

Even after the Florida primary, 2,169 out of the 2,284 delegates to the Republican convention will still be up for grabs. So depending on how deep the anti-Mitt feelings are running, its not too late for any of them to join the fray––because the Republican race is just ramping up.

March Madness

The Republican Super Tuesday this time around comes on March 6 when 10 different states go to the polls. They include Texas (155 delegates), Georgia (76),  Massachusetts (41) and Virginia (49). In all, 25 percent of the Republican convention delegates will be selected that day.

Right on the heels of Super Tuesday come primaries in Alabama, Mississippi, Illiinois, Lousiana, Maryland and Wisconsin. Then comes a mini-Super Tuesday April 24 when New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island go to the polls. But that may still not be the end. The Republicans have saved the best until last. California and New Jersey won’t cast their votes until June 5. Ohio doesn’t vote until June 12. And Utah brings up the rear June 26.

Conventional wisdom says we can’t have two presidential elections in a row when the primary race goes down to the last day. Surely the wise men of the party won’t let that happen. But wouldn’t it be ironic if Romney had to wait for Utah to get his 1,143rd delegate vote?

It’s that kind of year. Anything can happen.

Semi-Good Economic News

I drove to work listening to radio reports that America added 103,000 jobs in September. Not a stand up-and-cheer number, but better than expected. Walgreens, Target and Macy’s reported consumer sales were up over the same month a year ago. The radio news commentators warned of traffic delays and bus route changes over the weekend because the Chicago Marathon was attracting a record number of entries.

When I got into the office, my inbox was filled with a dozen emails from clients about videos I am producing. As a freelancer––which in statistical parlance means one of the permanently unemployed––that is a good sign. It means you are working.

Ambivalent Feelings About Occupy Wall Street

Only a couple week ago, I struggled to write a story about Occupy Wall Street. The nebulous protest against corporate greed started with a few hundred unemployed performance artists camping out in Zuccotti Park across from Wall Street. When 700 more were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge, news coverage spread like wildfire and so did the protests. By midweek, they had spread to 800 cities in 30 states.

The protests eclipsed the decision of Sarah Palin and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie not to enter the presidential race. They made Mitt Romney’s major foreign policy speech irrelevant. Even President Obama’s successful take down of Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen with hellfire drones didn’t make a dent in the coverage. The story led the evening news on CBS and NBC. Angry people and clever signs always do. MSNBC detached its anchors to broadcast the protest live from the demonstration site, much as Fox News did when the Tea Party was in ascendance. The pundits predicted that Occupy Wall Street might be a welcome alternative on the left to the Tea Party on the right. In the media––the only place where America’s economic plight is being seriously debated––it did.

A Malarkey Manifesto

“They Got Bailed Out, and We Got Sold Out” and “We Are The 99%” quickly became catchphrases for the movement. (“This is My Sign”––a protest sign captured by a Wall Street Journal photographer––did not.) Then two things happened: one good, one bad. The Teamsters, United Auto Workers and Service Employees International unions joined the fray; and a website called nationofchange.org issued what it called “the first official, collective statement of the protests in Zuccotti Park.”

If you read it carefully, it amounts to a malarkey manifesto charging corporate America with all manner of malfeasance: excessive salaries, illegal foreclosures, poisoning the food supply, torturing animals, discrimination, colonialism, using the military to suppress freedom of the press, murdering prisoners and creating weapons of mass destruction.

Stump Takes a Pass

With apologies to his many followers, our chief political correspondent Stump Connolly sent a letter to his editor the next day saying, “Sorry, I can’t write about these nut jobs. I sympathize. I marched against the war in the 60’s and spent many late nights around kitchen tables in college coming up with a bold new agenda for America. But I never expected anyone to take me seriously. These people do. They’re as delusional as Rick Perry jogging around Texas with a .308 Ruger strapped to his thigh in case he’s attacked by coyotes.”

At The End of The Day

When I got home Friday night, my son threw himself into my arms after a good day in school. I took the laundry in to the cleaners and returned home to open the mail. Among the few missives that are still sent carried by postal workers was my Cook County property tax bill. This one is 27 percent higher than last year. The schools, the park district, the forest preserve district, the county itself needs more money, and the only way they can get it is through a property tax increase. If only the federal government could follow suit.

These are the things we think about at the end of the day. That, and whether the roofer is going to show up to fix the leak in the ceiling. It all seems kind of small bore when the headlines are filled with trillion dollar deficits, but for most of us, that’s life.

Who is to Blame?

There’s not much to be gained from looking back and assessing who is responsible for all this. The city, the county, the state, the federal government, the Wall Street bankers who facilitated bad loans or the main street consumers who ate them up? A president who promised change? Or a hard core nucleus of 60 Tea Party Republicans in the House who made sure he didn’t deliver?

We are at the end of a decade of delusional optimism. And we can’t blame President Obama or Congress for it. We can only blame ourselves. In a democracy, we were a woeful citizenry. We let things go on that we never should have. We were ignorant, self-absorbed, and profligate in spending more money on ourselves than we earned. We were, in a word, stupid. And I don’t expect we will get smarter any time soon. (Especially, if we fail to improve our educational system.)

Sure, when the pollsters call us on the phone, 46 percent of the respondents say we support the Occupy Wall Street protests, according to the latest NBC/Time poll. (20 percent oppose it, and 34 percent are understandably confused.) But what does that mean? And what does it matter? In 2010, when the Tea Party captured control of the House of Representatives,  62 percent of the eligible voters didn’t even bother to vote. If you care, you have to vote.

Maybe the Occupy Wall Street movement will rekindle the spirit of change in America. But where do you start? And who do you vote for? For now, Occupy Wall Street isn’t so much a protest as an expression of our despair. Because there’s a lot to occupy us just trying to get by – like how to pay for fixing our teeth and waiting for the next perfect day.

While most of the Republican presidential candidates are reaching back in history to pick up the mantle of Ronald Reagan, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas seems to have overshot the mark, landing instead in the boots of Barry Goldwater.

The similarities are hard to ignore. Both Perry and Goldwater come out of the western tradition of rugged individualism and say what they mean with a bluntness not often heard in politics.

“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue,” Goldwater famously told the Republican convention in 1964.  “Use both hands, “ Perry said recently when asked about his stance on gun control.

Free Individuals Will Always Find The Best Way

Both also believe that free individuals will always find the best way to prosper without government interference in a capitalist economy. (Those that don’t, they presume, will be caught by a safety net of Christian charity.) And they champion states’ rights because, frankly, they don’t trust Washington to do anything right. Goldwater went so far as to suggest the country would be better off if it sawed off the Eastern seaboard. Perry more modestly proposed Texas save itself by seceding.

Goldwater decried social security as a socialist scheme, urged the use of “strategic” nuclear bombs in Vietnam and once suggested the way to end the Cold War was to “lob one into the men’s room of the Kremlin and make sure I hit it.” Perry has gone him one step better to call Social Security a Ponzi scheme, scoff at climate change, express doubts about evolution, and compare homosexuality to alcoholism.

The similarity in ideology and tone suggest that Goldwater and Perry are two peas in a very conservative pod ­­–– and that’s not such a good deal for Perry given that Goldwater lost the 1964 election to Lyndon Johnson, 60% to 40%, carrying only his native Arizona and five Deep South states.

Déjà vu All Over Again

At this point in the 1964 election cycle, the presidential race was shaping up to be an epic struggle between the liberal President John Kennedy and conservative Goldwater. Before Kennedy was assassinated (in November 1963) Goldwater claimed that he and the president discussed a series of Lincoln-Douglas style debates around the country focusing on their philosophical differences.

After Kennedy’s assassination, the Republican side of the race was eclipsed by the succession of a new president. Lyndon Johnson was not popular (or trusted) among liberals. To gain their confidence, he used his first State of the Union address to propose a sweeping set of federal programs he called “The War on Poverty.” He pushed through The Civil Rights Act (with 80 percent of the Republicans in the House voting against it) and a 24^th amendment barring states from imposing a poll tax on voters. He also proposed and eventually passed a health care addition to Social Security he called “Medicare”.

As happened with Obama, the media declared that Johnson’s first year in office had produced the most progressive agenda since the New Deal. But it didn’t take long before the opposition weighed in.  Republicans called it “creeping socialism.”

Republican Schism

Goldwater’s supporters in the Republican Party were no less vociferous than today’s Tea Party. Their bible was a thin little book authored by Phyllis Schafley called “A Choice, Not an Echo.” They read it together at house parties, handed out free copies at state fairs, and clutched it in their hand when they went to Goldwater rallies.

The primary schedule in 1964 was a battle for the soul of the Republican Party, but it took place on a playing field much more limited than today. Most delegations to the national convention were then chosen at state party conventions. There were fewer than 12 primaries on the campaign trail, and only a handful mattered.

The first was New Hampshire in March, and it was not an auspicious start for Goldwater. Henry Cabot Lodge, newly-returned to America after serving as President Kennedy’s ambassador to Vietnam (Think Jon Huntsman), won it decisively.  Goldwater rebounded with a big win in Texas on May 2, garnering 75% of the Republican vote. Three weeks later, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller struck a blow for the party liberals with a win in Oregon. But Goldwater appeared to have sealed the deal when he came back with a win in California on June 2.

The Republican establishment, fearing Goldwater was too much of a loose cannon to put their faith in, put up yet another moderate opponent, Pennsylvania Gov. William Scranton. At the July convention in San Francisco’s Cow Palace, Goldwater backers steamrollered Scranton and set the stage for Ronald Reagan’s ascendance to party figurehead.

Then and Now

Goldwater’s campaign in 1964, like Perry’s today, rested on his promise to curb federal regulations that keep free enterprise from doing what it does best: create jobs. Although he won the Republican nomination on that pledge, Goldwater lost the election because he came to be perceived as a reckless cowboy in the dangerous nuclear atmosphere of The Cold War.

The economy in 1964 was not as dire as it is today, but it dominated the political discussion. Unemployment was a stubbornly high 5.7 percent. America was on a trajectory to a fourth straight year of economic growth, but not all Americans were sharing in the prosperity. One in five Americans lived below the poverty line. (Today, the ratio is one in six.) But there was a color line that blinded white America to the implications.

Johnson’s poverty programs and civil rights legislation would eventually bring a long-suffering underclass into the political process. But change did not come quickly, or quietly. The Democratic convention that nominated Johnson by acclaim was still roiled by Fannie Lou Hamer challenging the credentials of the all-white Mississippi delegation. Six days later, a race riot broke out in Philadelphia that led to 341 injuries and 774 arrests.

More racial incidents would dog Johnson through the rest of his presidency, along with a chorus of protest over Vietnam that grew to be a deafening clamor. (The Gulf of Tonkin incident that marks the official start of the Vietnam came after the Republican convention, but two weeks before the Democratic one.)

In this election, at this moment in history, Johnson was the best candidate the Democrats had to offer, and that proved to be good enough to win.

Promises Are Easy

Presidential candidates campaign on the premise they have new solutions for America. More often than not, they offer up their solution to one problem only to find they are confronted by a different one.

Ronald Reagan campaigned for small government and a balanced budget, but presided over unprecedented growth in both government spending and deficits. George W. Bush promised to end “nation building” abroad only to undertake two monumental ground-up rebuilds of the governments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Barack Obama campaigned on hope and change in Washington only to discover America’s economic condition was so dreadful––and the gridlock so pervasive––he’d become an advocate of “reasonable compromise”.

It’s Not the Issues, It’s the Candidate

For all the attention the media gives to the issues of the day in presidential elections, the electorate has shown remarkable prescience over the years in not getting too bogged down in who is right or wrong on the issues. In ways both subtle and overt, voters like a candidate who can roll with the punches in office, someone they think has the right temperament to make the right decision (in their place) when all the facts are in.

And that proved to be Barry Goldwater’s downfall in 1964. He was “The Conscience of a Conservative” in his book and the campaign. But ultimately the people decided he didn’t have the temperament to lead the nation.

Will Perry make the same mistake? Here’s an excerpt from his campaign book “Fed Up”:

“We are fed up with being overtaxed and overregulated. We are tired of being told how much salt we can put on our food, what windows we can buy for our house, what kind of cars we can drive, what kinds of guns we can own, what kind of prayers we are allowed to say and where we can say them, what political speech we are allowed to use to elect candidates, what kind of energy we can use, what kind of food we can grow, what doctor we can see, and countless other restrictions on our right to live as we see fit.”

He might be right, but I’m seeing this temperament thing as sort of an uphill climb.

Never mind that the most popular political tweeter, Slate political reporter and CBS TV anaylst John Dickenson, has 1,387,703 followers. That still pales before the 22 million people who tune in every night to watch the evening news.

But there are certain reporters who now tweet so regularly, and so constantly––and are read by so many of their fellow reporters––their combined Twitter feeds have become the narrative web on top of which the 2012 presidential campaign bounces along. I call them The Twitterati, and they are well worth their own Tweetdeck.

The Top 20

I have listed my Top 20 below. They are by no measure the only, or best, political reporters I will be following in the upcoming campaign.

Anyone who has walked the campaign trail before watches the Washington Post’s Dan Balz and New York Times’s Adam Nagourney for signals on voter trends. Magazine columnists like Joe Klein, Frank Rich, Matt Taibbi, Jonathan Alter, Howard Fineman, and John Heilemann, just to name a few, are also essential reading. And there’s no substitute for enterprising new reporters who put their boots on the ground to give a fresh perspective on what’s happening in American politics.

But I’ve singled out these 20 because they are a) insightful b) wide-read c) funny and d) prolific posters.

My list includes people I’d read whether they had a Twitter account or not: Roger Simon of Politico, Jeff Zeleny of The New York Times, and Chris Cillizza, the Washington Post’s master conductor of political gossip. It includes the proprietors of three websites that are critical for any political reporter: Politifact, the Pulitzer-prize winning fact-checking site produced by The St. Petersburg Times; Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight that statistically analyzes political trends; and Ezra Klein’s twitter link to his Washington Post Wonkblog that simplifies complex political policy issues with words and charts.

My list this year is also weighted toward Republican pundits – because that’s where the action is: Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief political advisor; Byron York, chief political correspondent of the Washington Examiner; Kevin Madden, the former press secretary for both George Romney and House Speaker John Boehner (now a K-street lobbyist); and Mike Murphy, the Republican political consultant now trying to make a name for himself in Hollywood. If I expanded the list to 21 (and if he were funnier), I would have included Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review.

I have a few obscure names in the list: Jennifer Jacobs, a political reporter for the Des Moines Register, who is fast becoming Twitter’s canary in the Iowa coal mine alerting other reporters to what’s happening on the ground there. And the Huffington Post’s Jon Ward, who is no great shakes at political analysis but a good conduit of links to articles and other posts worth reading.

Everyone Has Their Own Tweetdeck

Everyone has their own favorite pundit. Usually it’s the person who agrees with them most. Tweetdeck allows us to pick and choose who we want to follow. I can, for instance, put my conservative pundits in one deck and my liberal ones in another. But these are my current favorites. Think of them as my Fantasy Politics Team: 20 people I want to watch the next election unfold with. They are my real time guide to what’s happening day-to-day in the presidential race. Follow them along with me, and you too can enjoy the show.

The Tea Party Debate

Roger Ebert once defined a film critic as someone who watches himself watch a movie. With that in mind, I sat down last Monday watching my 20 chosen Twitterati watch the CNN Tea Party debate. I had a TV remote control unit in one hand and a laptop opened to Twitter in the other. It didn’t take long before the tweets started pouring in.

politicoroger Roger Simon

Just waiting for the #CNNTeaParty debate my hands are getting sweaty. No, wait. That’s from the beer bottle.

jonathanweisman Jonathan Weisman

I can’t believe I have to turn this tennis match off to cover this.

ktumulty Karen Tumulty.

Pre-game warm-up guy is coaching the audience to applaud. Have never seen that at a debate.

The CNN coverage kicked off with a hyped-up graphic opening introducing the candidates that could have been a Monday Night Football promo. It was duly noted:

pwire Taegan Goddard

The pro wrestling match, I mean presidential debate, is about to begin.

jonward11 Jon Ward

do i really, truly have to listen to two hours of this voice? #thewolf

NKingofDC Neil King, WSJ retweet by KevinMaddenDC

Jeez, is this the World Series or a debate?

pwire Taegan Goddard

Is there a home run derby before the game starts?

mattklewis Matt Lewis retweet by jonward11

When do the two helmets collide and explode?

KevinMaddenDC Kevin Madden

It’s gonna get smoky in there when they shoot the cannon off…

The introductions and hoopla lasted for some 12 minutes. At 7:13 PM, a member of the Tea Party rose from the audience to ask the first question: How are the candidates going to convince senior citizens to vote for them?

jeffzeleny Jeff Zeleny

Debate is opening now. Turning my typing — and attention — to the main event. Tight newspaper deadlines=limited tweeting.

pourmecoffee pourmecoffee retweeted by benpolitico

All candidates must sing their answers in the form of an anthem.

jonward11 Jon Ward

wow – Bachmann says Obama “stole” $500 billion from Medicare to put it into Obamacare

jaketapper Jake Tapper

.@MicheleBachmann says she had “feet” in the private sector and “a foot” in government. That’s at least three feet, congresswoman!

fivethirtyeight Nate Silver

Bachmann is considerably sharper tonight than last week.

pwire Taegan Goddard

Romney goes in for the kill. He knows this is his moment to fatally wound his rival and he can’t whiff. Democrats love this.

politifact PolitiFact

We checked Perry earlier on retirement programs in other Texas counties Mostly True.

jdickerson John Dickerson

Perry running away from his book at a high rate of speed on social security question but crowd seems to be with him.

fivethirtyeight Nate Silver

CNN doing much more to equalize the face time of the candidates.

jonward11 Jon Ward

ron paul on social security/medicare: “we should have never started it.”

ron_fournier Ron Fournier retweeted by politicoroger

Perry says it’s time for a serious conversation about Social Security. But, judging from his ducking and dodging, not tonight.

Thirty minutes into the debate, CNN broke for its first commercial and Jeff Zeleny wondered whether the audience at home was feeling the energy of the rightwingers in the auditorium.

jeffzeleny Jeff Zeleny

First quarter of debate is over: Perry is benefiting from very friendly audience. But how are Republicans responding at home?

Chris Cillizza of The Fix was wondering the same thing.

TheFix The Fix

Romney, smartly, is less focused on the audience in the room and more focused on Republicans watching the debate.

Over the next 90 minutes of the debate, the Twitterati were not the only politicos banging the keys as they watched. “Truth teams” – what used to be called “Rapid Response units” in past elections – were blasting out their own version of rebuttals and corrections on behalf of the candidates. The PerryTruthTeam, for instance, bombarded reporters with more than 18 tweets; Team Bachmann sent out 22; and Mitt Romney operatives (through a variety of accounts) matched them twit-for-twat all evening long. Some inevitably found their way into the online conversation:

jdickerson John Dickerson from @EdMorrissey

I got an e-mail from Team Newt just before the debate taking credit for job creation, by the way.

jonward11 Jon Ward

romney campaign now saying perry is retreating on prescription drugs as well, citing his criticism of Medicare part d in “Fed Up”

jonward11 Jon Ward

perry campaign puts out release saying Romney was gov during econ growth, & perry has governed during recession. why didn’t perry say that?

During the most inflammatory moments of the debate, the Twitterati pounced. Here are some comments on Michele Bachmann’s charge that Perry, while governor of Texas, issued an executive order mandating that 12-year-old girls get cervical cancer vaccine.

jonward11 Jon Ward

perry gives a flat out admission that he made a mistake on the HPV mandate. he did not do that last Wednesday.

RichLowry Rich Lowry

bachmann amps up attack on perry on vaccine, and makes obamacare comparison–first attack on perry that hit home

RichLowry Rich Lowry

bachmann brings in drug company–first time cronyism comes up, a real potential vulnerabilty

jonward11 Jon Ward

HPV issue spiraling out of control here for Perry

howardfineman Howard Fineman

Bachmann takes the gloves off on virus vaccine, accusing him of a corrupt deal. Perry says “offended” at the thought he can be bought for 5K.

politicoroger Roger Simon

Perry: “If you’re suggesting I can be bought for $5,000, I’m offended.” Right. It takes much more than that.

RichLowry Rich Lowry

perry staying cool, which is important, but he’s taken on some water here.

benpolitico Ben Smith

I wouldn’t sneeze at $5000.

benpolitico Ben Smith

Also, I want some of whatever they gave Perry before this debate. Took the edge right off.

jdickerson John Dickerson

Perry said “Amen”. Was that in response to Cain or that they’d moved on from the HPV issue.

murphymike mike murphy

Please, CNN … DON’T get her started on flurodated water!

And there were other randomly posted quotes from my fantasy deck of twitterers that are worth repeating. Among them:

murphymike mike murphy

Listening to Perry try to a put a complicated policy sentence together is like watching a chimp play with a locked suitcase…

politicoroger Roger Simon

Bachmann doesn’t think govt has the right to make us “buy a product or service.” What about the seatbelts in every car? V-chips in every TV?

Conclusion

The CNN Tea Party debate lasted two hours. By the time it ended, I had accumulated 46 pages of tweets from my selected observers. The debate drew an estimated 3.6 million viewers. The online chatter among The Twitterati, by contrast, was seen by fewer than 50,000. But these are the media mavens who talk among themselves, sharing impressions online of the momentary notions that make up our political life.

Everybody is in on it. The candidates, the political operatives, the reporters, even the media executives who are determined to find a way to “monetize” the process. The only guys who don’t really understand what’s going on here are the voters. For them, this presidential election is a decision on who is the best person to lead the nation into the future. For the rest of us political junkies, it’s an interactive game that all of us can participate in via our Twitter accounts.

So tweet away, you all so wise. There’s nothing wrong with being clever. At this point, a little humor isn’t going to hurt the political process. But when the days start ticking down to the November 2012 election, let’s hope this all sheds some light on the final candidates so the voters understand the choices before them.