Whoa, Nelly!
by Janice Leber (5/26)

Is this a horse race?

Why am I always on the dark damn horse?!?

I have long enjoyed making fun of the "news" casters who talk about political campaigns as if they were horse races or other sporting events.  It's as if this whole get-in-the-booth-and-choose-your-President stuff is a big game we all participate in every four years.  Lots of fun, of course, but all in all, not too relevant.

Well, after the 2000 election, I think it's safe to say this picking-a-president jazz is serious stuff.  Why don't our "journalists" see that?

CNN's "Inside Politics" is a great source of audio clips for my work, so I check in on their web site to see what they're planning almost every day.  Here's what I found on May 24…

TODAY ON INSIDE POLITICS (May 24, 2004)
• The President makes his case to the world tonight, launching a series of speeches on the future of the situation in Iraq. The political stakes couldn't be higher, and we'll pregame the address with experts including former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger.

Janice's note: Is "pregame" a verb now?  Is Bush playing a game with us?  What else am I to conclude?  Never mind; CNN.com continues:

• Bush is banking on the transition of power to boost his standing among voters, and today we'll reveal his latest approval rating in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll.

Janice's note:  Do we need to hear approval ratings every day?  Doesn't this practice make it seem more like a game than electoral politics? 

Dubya is always telling us he doesn't govern by polls, which would seem like the God's truth since just about everybody agrees he's screwing up.  But I still think he tests the wind before he does anything.  On second thought, no he doesn't.  He has people who do that kind of thing for him.

• We'll also bring you up-to-date on the horserace numbers. As the president talks Iraq, John Kerry talks gas, kicking off his latest theme week. We'll take the pulse of the presidential race and bring you up to date on the Democrat's possible nomination-less convention strategy. It's all coming up at 3:30p.m. ET on "Judy Woodruff's Inside Politics" -- the place for campaign news.

Janice's RANT!:  Now they've gone and done it, they've actually called it a horserace.  My fellow Americans, this is NOT a horserace.  This is life and death, openness and brutality, democracy and fascism we're talking about here.  A horserace is two horses running and one of them runs a little faster and most of the time nobody dies.  The election of 2004, in case I'm not being clear here, is NOT A HORSERACE.

These people ought to know better.  After all, they're on TV.

But they have a hard time seeing beyond their narrow frame of reference.  After all, they're on TV.

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