But couldn't it have something to do with the way the campaign press reports news? Back in 2000, the exit polls showed that among the 24 percent of the electorate who said it was very important to them to select an "honest and trustworthy" president, 80 percent voted for George W Bush. This, I assume, had something to do with the fact that the press repeatedly weaved through its coverage of Gore a narrative about Gore's alleged difficulty telling the truth, even though most of the data points where Gore lied or "exaggerated" were actually made up by the press. McCain, by contrast, has not only been caught in several bald-faced lies, but in a few instances -- this business with Palin and the bridge most notably -- keeps on doing it in very high-profile contexts even though they've gotten called on it repeatedly. So where's the narrative about how McCain's key strategy introducing Sarah Palin to the public and turning his campaign around is based on putting lies at the heart of the presentation? There are a few dozen people, of whom Marc is one, in a position to create this narrative. They've chosen not to do so, but that's a decision they've made not a fact about "the way consumers process news."
The positive point is that a small but significant fraction of the electorate seems astonishingly inured to misleading charges and negative attacks. They seem to understand that charges are false, but they don't seem to penalize the offending candidate. They understand that John McCain's summer attacks against Barack Obama were negative, and yet they believed the attacks. The facts suggest that Gov. Sarah Palin did not oppose the Bridge to Nowhere when it was politically inconvenient, but when it became a national bugbear, she opposed it -- although many Alaska politicians continued to support it.
And, of course, though the press has pointed out the Bridge to Nowhere exagerration ever since it was uncovered, it must somehow be the press's fault that John McCain is enjoying a post-convention something-or-other because Americans don't realize that he's a lying liar, or whatever.
To move to a Greenwaldian debate about the duties, obligations and frustrations of the press -- well -- read elsewhere if you want to play that game. I'll abstain.
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