A Quick Thought

An odd and always changing sleep schedule is just about the only consistent thing in my life right now. But it's not necessarily a bad thing. I do my best to take advantage of different waking hours and enjoy them for what they offer. One of my favorite things about being awake this early in the morning is watching the news networks start their political coverage at 5 am. Yes 5 am!!! I'm a diehard political junkie and even I don't want to know what's going on in politics at 5 am. Give me game scores, jokes, and water skiing squirrels!

Sigh.

Sadly, I crave the silly, non-essential stories because the media have long since abandoned covering pertinent issues in a responsible and rational manner. After all, they have 24 hours of television to fill every day. For the past three days I've watched MSNBC's Morning Joe (Fox News isn't an option and the CNN people don't randomly joke about being drunk) and they've been obsessing about President Obama's weekend media blitz on five Sunday morning talk shows and the Letterman program on Monday night. The consensus on Morning Joe: President Obama is wasting his political capital by overexposing himself.

Jokes about exposure aside, I really just want to observe aloud that there is no winning with the media these days. (President Bush rarely spoke to the people and that too was criticized) It's been true for a long time that the weekly stories in politics are set and controlled by what is said on Sunday mornings. That means a strong communications strategy will effectively use Sunday newspaper stories and popular surrogates on the morning talk shows. So when lies and distortions (death panels anyone?) have made it impossible for a fair and honest debate about health care reform to take place, it makes sense for the president to put himself out there in order to re-establish the facts by presenting his argument directly to the voters.

Unfortunately, rather than focus on the President's message, the pundits have decided it is necessary to obsess about the number of interviews the President gave one weekend in mid-September. When the President speaks to the people it is far more important to analyze his words than to debate the process story. There is a time and place to discuss new political strategies in this constantly changing media environment, but it should be kept separate from policy.