There’s a diary up about an NPR profile of an undecided voter, who “claims [that] the most important issues to her are her retirement, her son’s safety in the military, and reproductive freedom” but “she still can’t decide between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.”
“Saturday Night Live” literally did a skit on this ahead of the 2000 presidential election. Nora Dunn’s undecided voter asked Will Ferrell’s George W. Bush where he stood on global warming, a woman’s right to choose, and fighting the big oil companies. Even after Bush told her that she should vote for Gore if those were her issues, she proclaimed, “I still can’t decide!”
The more I think about it, the more I believe that 2000 was the first Both Sides® election. What I mean by that is, it was the first election in which the so-called “mainstream” “news” media bent over backwards to “handicap” the candidates — one of whom was self-evidently better-qualified to the office than the other — by downplaying the strengths of the stronger candidate and the weaknesses of the weaker one, and vice-versa, to make them seem as indistinguishable as possible; equally strong, equally weak; equally qualified, equally unqualified.
In 1996, despite three-plus years of bad-faith scandal-mongering by the Gingrich Republicans, and despite the media’s relentlessly negative coverage of his first two years in office (which helped the GOP sweep the 1994 midterms), President Bill Clinton won re-election easily by 379 electoral votes to 179, with a popular-vote margin of about 8.2 million over Republican Senator Bob Dole. Based on (inter alia) polls and the national mood, a strong economy at home and relative peace abroad, it was clear by early Fall that Clinton would win; Clinton maintained consistent double-digit leads over Dole in polling aggregates from mid-August, and Dole didn’t break 40% until the week before the election, ending up with 40.7% of the popular vote. (Clinton got 49.2%; Ross Perot 8.4%, with about 2% total going to other third-party candidates including Ralph Nader.)
By all rights, the 2000 election should have gone the same way. Notwithstanding the intervening Lewinsky “scandal” and impeachment (which arguably hurt the Republicans as much if not more than it hurt Clinton), the relative peace and prosperity of the mid-’90s had continued unabated; there was no economic or foreign-policy crisis that would indicate to the public a pressing need to put the other party in the White House. To succeed Clinton the Democrats nominated Vice President Al Gore, a congenial, intellectual, dry-witted policy wonk, by all accounts a man of impeccable integrity, whereas the Republicans nominated Texas governor George W. Bush, a doltish dry drunk and born-again Christian whose principal accomplishment was being the son of the last Republican president. Objectively speaking, Gore was the superior candidate and clear favorite.
But the media — which now included Fox News, inter alia — could not have a repeat of 1996. By now the news was a for-profit industry, and an election whose outcome is in little doubt on Labor Day doesn’t draw viewers, listeners or readers and doesn’t sell advertising dollars in October and early November. So the media saw its job in 2000 as not to merely report on the candidates’ qualifications, proposals, etc. objectively, but to keep the race as close as possible for as long as possible. They could do that, as in a horse race, by “handicapping” the candidates.
So, Gore’s intellect and policy-readiness was portrayed as elitist, off-putting and aloof, while Bush’s lack of those same attributes was portrayed as charming and relatable; the Guy You Want To Have A Beer With™. The focus at the debates was not on Bush’s shallowness, poor verbal skills, and ideological myopia versus Gore’s articulate, detailed policy proposals, but on Gore’s mannerisms, facial expressions and “condescending” sighs at Bush’s shallowness, poor verbal skills, and ideological myopia. Bush’s history of alcohol and drug use, poor academic record, and frat-boy behavior as a political scion was drowned out by exaggerated tales about such things as Gore having claimed to have “invented the Internet.”
And it wasn’t just the news media. Like the “Saturday Night Live” sketch above, there were late-night comedy jokes and even TV commercials, for Pizza Hut and such, that used caricatures of the candidates to make them equally ridiculous; I distinctly remember one commercial with a cartoon elephant saying “My dad...” in response to everything and a cartoon donkey saying “I invented...” in response to everything. By November the prevailing narrative was that there’s really no difference between Bush and Gore, so it really didn’t matter which one won.
And we all remember how that turned out.
2004 was an anomaly, with the Iraq war raging and 9/11 still fresh in everyone’s minds; 2008 was a foregone conclusion when the economy crashed in September. But that election, coupled with the complete, total, abject failure of the outgoing Bush administration (which the news media had enabled for eight years), kicked Both Sides® into a high gear and basically made Both Sides® the north star, the sole guiding principle of what now passes for “journalism” and “news” “reporting” in the 21st century. As I’ve written before, it operates by three very simple rules:
- Rule #1: Both Sides® must be equally blameworthy, and equally praiseworthy.
- Rule #2: If one Side is objectively more (or less) blameworthy or praiseworthy than the other, see Rule #1.
- Rule #3: If individual conduct on one Side has no 1:1 analogue on the other, see Rule #1.
In 2016 the “news” media — especially The New York Both Sides® Times and CNN — actually managed to Both Sides® a demented racist gangster all the way to the White House. Indeed, look at the parallels between 2000 and 2016: an outgoing two-term Democratic administration, with no national or international crises going on, and no real reason for the country to put the other party in the White House; the Democrats nominate an experienced, pragmatic policy wonk while the Republicans nominate a self-evidently unqualified [ahem] “businessman”; the media “handicaps” the race by Both Sides®ing the Democrat’s strengths and the Republican’s shortcomings/dangers into oblivion; the Republican threads the needle to win the Electoral College despite losing the national popular vote — and both Republican administrations end in abject disaster for the country and the world.
By all rights, 2024 should be 1996. Instead it’s shaping up to be another 2000.