missiles to distract the public from his sex scandal. I think, at this point, we can all concede that we were the ones missing the real story.
In the 2000 presidential election, the money available to political extremes had become apparent. It was the first campaign in history where the candidates spent less money on TV advertising than the national political parties. The Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee combined to spend $79.9 million on so-called soft-money attack ads. Those ads, featuring wedge issues, energized their respective political bases and drew in more money. The candidates participated in this politically correct campaigning by holding closely to scripted, politically correct positions for fear of contradicting any of the ads being run by their most animated supporters. Spending by the political parties fit with third-party attack ads, funded again by “soft money” also removed from direct candidate accountability. For example, in the 2000 campaign the NAACP ran an ad falsely accusing candidate George W. Bush of going easy on two white menwho killed a black man by dragging him behind their car until he died. The Gore campaign did not have to respond because it had not run the ad. The truth, however, was that the men had been given the maximum sentence for the crimes they committed. But Bush had strong ties with the black and Hispanic communities in Texas, winning substantial minority votes in his successful campaigns for governor. The NAACP was simply trying to squelch popular support for Bush among blacks nationwide in their attack ad.
In this acid media environment the candidates changed their tactics. The Bush campaign spent its ad money narrowly, avoiding general audiences and open debate in favor of targeting heavily Republican areas, with the goal of getting out as many Republican voters as possible. Even in so-called red states, the GOP did not spend time or money on urban areas with high percentages of young people, minorities, single women, and educated professionals—or, as one GOP strategist described them, Volvo-driving, latte-drinking NPR listeners. They were not in the business of persuading people to vote for them so much as increasing the turnout of known Republican voters. The debate in the media narrowed as the big-city daily papers were attacked as liberal leaning by the openly conservative talk radio and blog universe. Bernard Goldberg’s attack on the socially liberal media,
Bias
, became a top
New York Times
best seller in 2001.
The 9/11 attacks provided a rare retreat from rising political polarization as the country rallied around the flag and the president. The pause proved to be temporary. By July 2003 more than half of the public told pollsters that the news media—meaning big newspapers and the broadcast networks—had aliberal bias. That was a sharp rise from the 40 percent who had agreed that the liberal press was out of control in 1985. And in 2003 only 36 percent of Americans said they trusted the media to tell a straight story. Separate realities, with Democrats consuming liberal media and conservatives responding to right-wing media, meant stories that attracted headlines on one side of the political divide got no mention on the other side. Conservatives attacked liberal media for questioning the war effort, while liberals attacked the Bush administration for failing to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The result was the new “law of group polarization,” a term coined by Cass Sunstein, at the time a University of Chicago law professor. He made the case that independent-minded voters suddenly found themselves taking sides as they drank in news from echo chambers on the Left or Right that created a clubhouse atmosphere for anyone who shared the host’s political views.
During the 2004 presidential campaign the polarization ratcheted up again around the issue of President Bush never having gone to war. His Democratic opponent,
In the 2000 presidential election, the money available to political extremes had become apparent. It was the first campaign in history where the candidates spent less money on TV advertising than the national political parties. The Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee combined to spend $79.9 million on so-called soft-money attack ads. Those ads, featuring wedge issues, energized their respective political bases and drew in more money. The candidates participated in this politically correct campaigning by holding closely to scripted, politically correct positions for fear of contradicting any of the ads being run by their most animated supporters. Spending by the political parties fit with third-party attack ads, funded again by “soft money” also removed from direct candidate accountability. For example, in the 2000 campaign the NAACP ran an ad falsely accusing candidate George W. Bush of going easy on two white menwho killed a black man by dragging him behind their car until he died. The Gore campaign did not have to respond because it had not run the ad. The truth, however, was that the men had been given the maximum sentence for the crimes they committed. But Bush had strong ties with the black and Hispanic communities in Texas, winning substantial minority votes in his successful campaigns for governor. The NAACP was simply trying to squelch popular support for Bush among blacks nationwide in their attack ad.
In this acid media environment the candidates changed their tactics. The Bush campaign spent its ad money narrowly, avoiding general audiences and open debate in favor of targeting heavily Republican areas, with the goal of getting out as many Republican voters as possible. Even in so-called red states, the GOP did not spend time or money on urban areas with high percentages of young people, minorities, single women, and educated professionals—or, as one GOP strategist described them, Volvo-driving, latte-drinking NPR listeners. They were not in the business of persuading people to vote for them so much as increasing the turnout of known Republican voters. The debate in the media narrowed as the big-city daily papers were attacked as liberal leaning by the openly conservative talk radio and blog universe. Bernard Goldberg’s attack on the socially liberal media,
Bias
, became a top
New York Times
best seller in 2001.
The 9/11 attacks provided a rare retreat from rising political polarization as the country rallied around the flag and the president. The pause proved to be temporary. By July 2003 more than half of the public told pollsters that the news media—meaning big newspapers and the broadcast networks—had aliberal bias. That was a sharp rise from the 40 percent who had agreed that the liberal press was out of control in 1985. And in 2003 only 36 percent of Americans said they trusted the media to tell a straight story. Separate realities, with Democrats consuming liberal media and conservatives responding to right-wing media, meant stories that attracted headlines on one side of the political divide got no mention on the other side. Conservatives attacked liberal media for questioning the war effort, while liberals attacked the Bush administration for failing to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The result was the new “law of group polarization,” a term coined by Cass Sunstein, at the time a University of Chicago law professor. He made the case that independent-minded voters suddenly found themselves taking sides as they drank in news from echo chambers on the Left or Right that created a clubhouse atmosphere for anyone who shared the host’s political views.
During the 2004 presidential campaign the polarization ratcheted up again around the issue of President Bush never having gone to war. His Democratic opponent,
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