{"id":32198,"date":"2011-09-28T09:39:35","date_gmt":"2011-09-28T15:39:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=32198"},"modified":"2012-07-09T06:42:58","modified_gmt":"2012-07-09T12:42:58","slug":"the-media-shouldnt-decide-who-gets-to-be-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2011\/09\/the-media-shouldnt-decide-who-gets-to-be-president\/","title":{"rendered":"The media shouldn\u2019t decide who gets to be president"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Heath Haussamen<\/p><\/div>\n

Though he has a strong r\u00e9sum\u00e9, ideas about how to fix America, and a penchant for being brutally honest, Gary Johnson\u2019s presidential campaign is dead simply because the mainstream media decided he couldn\u2019t win<\/h4>\n

The mainstream media\u2019s successful efforts to shut down the presidential campaign of former N.M. Gov. Gary Johnson<\/a> are outrageous.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been angry for months about the media\u2019s subjective judging of who is and who isn\u2019t a serious presidential candidate and how it has destroyed the hopes of a candidate who should have been credible.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not because I have a high opinion of Johnson or want him to be president. It\u2019s because I believe voters should get to decide whether to take Johnson seriously. Instead, the media has made that decision for them.<\/p>\n

GQ\u2019s recent profile<\/a> of Johnson illustrates how it happened:<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay, so maybe it\u2019s fairly easy for the mainstream media, and even the weirdstream media, to write Gary Johnson off. He doesn\u2019t fit the script. Not any script. But as Gary would ask, how successful has the script been? In fact, the Gary Johnson story is about a lot more than a highly unusual candidate. It\u2019s also a window into the arbitrary, screwed-up way we pick our candidates. Or rather, the way a small number of major media outlets \u2014 rather than the voting public \u2014 decree who the \u2018legitimate\u2019 candidates will be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to put too fine a point on the \u2018unintended consequences\u2019 (one of Johnson\u2019s favorite phrases) of CNN\u2019s decision in June not to invite Gary Johnson to its debate, the second of the Republican primary campaign. He was just picking up some steam, having turned in a very respectable performance in the first debate in May, hosted by Fox. At least enough to make people say, Who is this guy? \u2018Then I got hosed,\u2019 as Gary puts it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026It wasn\u2019t just that CNN chose not to invite a widely respected two-term governor who\u2019d officially declared his candidacy ahead of everyone else and had a PAC (Our America) and a serious campaign committee up and running. The network invited Sarah Palin (who has yet to announce and may never), as well as Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee, both of whom announced that they\u00a0weren\u2019t\u00a0running in the weeks\u00a0before\u00a0the debate. CNN says the invitation list was based entirely on who was polling at least 2 percent in three polls they used as a basis \u2014 and that Huckabee and Trump were invited before they dropped out. (And Palin? That was just wishful thinking.)\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Things went downhill from there. Other media outlets followed CNN\u2019s lead, and Johnson raised only $180,000 to Mitt Romney\u2019s $18 million during the fundraising quarter that ended June 30. We may never know whether Johnson\u2019s inability to fundraise was due to his own weakness or the media\u2019s shutting his campaign down.<\/p>\n

A media-orchestrated circus<\/h3>\n

At a time when America\u2019s economy remains on the brink, and many on the right believe the size of the federal government is one of the main problems, Johnson is a true fiscal conservative, a libertarian who has tangible ideas for balancing the budget and healing our economy. He\u2019s anxious to discuss them with anyone. But he can\u2019t get most mainstream media outlets to pay attention to him.<\/p>\n

What we get instead is a media-orchestrated circus in which Mitt Romney and Rick Perry duke it out while Chris Christie teases and candidates answer mostly superficial questions with largely superficial answers. The only real attention the mainstream media has given Johnson came because of a catchy one-liner<\/a> that fed the circus, not because of his ideas for fixing our country.<\/p>\n

And even in covering Johnson\u2019s insult of Obama, some in the mainstream media called him a candidate who isn\u2019t credible.<\/p>\n

At a time when the nation needs leaders who are willing to take the political hit of proposing unpopular solutions to America\u2019s problems, we have in Johnson a candidate with a strong r\u00e9sum\u00e9 and a penchant for being brutally honest.<\/p>\n

But most people didn\u2019t even know he was running for president until he agreed to play the mainstream media\u2019s game with a joke about dog crap.<\/p>\n

Why has the media sought to shut Johnson\u2019s campaign down? For starters Johnson proposes, in a more articulate way than the media-anointed token libertarian candidate (Ron Paul), dramatic changes in the way government operates. He threatens to shake up the status quo. Lots of people get rich off the status quo.<\/p>\n

It also appears to be because Johnson is socially liberal. The media seems to have decided that a guy who favors legalizing drugs, keeping abortion legal and allowing gay marriage can\u2019t win a GOP primary, so he\u2019s not worth covering.<\/p>\n

Diversity of opinion is healthy<\/h3>\n

The Washington Post forgot to mention Johnson as a candidate in one article on the GOP primary in May, but came back with a short posting<\/a> apologizing and calling Johnson a \u201clegitimate and serious candidate.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a hollow apology. Within days, another Post article<\/a> stated that Johnson was \u201cexpected to have little-to-no influence on the identity of the eventual (GOP) nominee.\u201d Then another article<\/a> just before the CNN debate labeled Johnson \u201ca fringe player, at best, in this debate and the race.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem isn\u2019t just CNN and The Washington Post. Virtually all mainstream media organizations with the ability to reach significant numbers of voters decided that Johnson wasn\u2019t serious before voters had an opportunity to make that decision. Though Fox included Johnson in its most recent debate, it did so based on his barely meeting polling criteria in a decision that was almost as arbitrary as CNN\u2019s.<\/p>\n

When we\u2019re talking about a requirement that a candidate poll at 1 or 2 percent, we\u2019re really talking about an excuse to do what you want. That\u2019s within the margin of error of any poll.<\/p>\n

To be fair, I make decisions when I\u2019m covering elections about who is a serious candidate and who is not. I do that mainly to decide where to spend my time and energy. And I do believe there should be some criteria for being invited to a presidential debate.<\/p>\n

But Johnson has better credentials to be part of the debate than some others the mainstream media has allowed to partake in the circus, such as Donald Trump (and arguably Sarah Palin). At times Johnson has polled better than others allowed into debates.<\/p>\n

When I decide that someone probably isn\u2019t a serious candidate, I may write fewer articles about him or her, but I send the same questionnaires that I send the other candidates and provide the same opportunity to schedule interviews for profile articles. Those are my equivalents of hosting a debate.<\/p>\n

For example, you\u2019ll see responses from all four Las Cruces mayoral candidates in an article later this week to questions I asked about growth and development. There\u2019s one candidate I could have justified excluding if I was looking for a reason to do so.<\/p>\n

But all four candidates have filed declarations of their candidacies and are campaigning. Why exclude any? Isn\u2019t a diversity of opinion in the debate about how to improve our society a healthy part of democracy?<\/p>\n

Facilitator of the conversation<\/h3>\n

I believe that voters, not the media, should decide who gets to be president. I\u2019ve spoken out against newspaper endorsements<\/a> in the past. NMPolitics.net doesn\u2019t endorse candidates because I believe media endorsements are an attempt to exert undue influence over voters.<\/p>\n

Deciding which presidential candidates are legitimate based on policy views and excluding those deemed un-credible is similarly offensive. The media should instead be seeking to empower voters by providing information and facilitating serious debate.<\/p>\n

Candidates with policy views outside the mainstream of their parties occasionally do have a chance at being credible, and Johnson might have been one of those candidates. He argues that most of America is socially liberal and fiscally conservative, and he\u2019s probably right.<\/p>\n

Regardless, Johnson would add something significant to the conversation about the future of America if the media allowed him to do so. The media should facilitate that conversation, not exclude certain candidates because of their policy views and orchestrate circus shows starring the others.<\/p>\n

America has serious problems. It needs serious leaders from across the political spectrum to rise to the challenge of fixing things. It also needs the media to take its role as facilitator of the conversation about fixing those problems seriously. The media has huge influence over whether our political leaders are problem-fixers or circus performers.<\/p>\n

The presidential race should not be a circus performance or an episode of American Idol. It should be about fixing a broken country.<\/p>\n

Haussamen bio<\/a>\u00a0\u2502\u00a0Commentary page<\/a>\u00a0\u2502\u00a0Feed<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Though he has a strong r\u00e9sum\u00e9, ideas about how to fix America, and a penchant for being brutally honest, Gary Johnson\u2019s presidential campaign is dead simply because the mainstream media decided he couldn\u2019t win. That\u2019s outrageous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,10],"tags":[156,297,134,107,116],"class_list":["post-32198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-haussamen-columns","tag-2012-election","tag-gary-johnson","tag-media","tag-roundhouse","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}