What Do You Do When The Media
Falls Out of Love with You?
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“It's too early to tell who's going to be the nominee,” Axios
proclaimed
on March 15th, “but Beto's early buzz is clearly something his Democratic opponents aren't taking lightly and can't afford to ignore.”
That hyperbole over Beto O’Rourke’s candidacy for president has not aged well in the two months since it was printed, but it seemed justified to many at the time. Beto Mania had been growing for months by then. “Stop the Press Before it Profiles Beto O’Rourke Again,”
pleaded
Jack Shafer in
Politico
that fall. “
Not since the press corps fell in love with Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign has such a sirocco of worshipful candidate profiles and commentaries appeared in the national press.
”
The day before Axios’ breathless item appeared,
Vanity Fair
turned its entire cover over to a breathtaking Annie Leibovitz photo of the candidate posing in jeans with his dog on a dirt road, looking like a newly-anointed American sex symbol. Soon afterwards, he announced his candidacy for president.
This has been a busy season for infatuation politics. The clearer it becomes that the battle for th
e Democratic nomination is being fought between two white-haired male
septuagenarians
(assuming Joe Biden ever joins the race against Bernie Sanders), th
e more attractive each ingenue who enters the race becomes.
The media’s months-long infatuation with Beto O’Rourke is over, however. The beginning of the end came on March 10
th
, four days prior to the publication of the
Vanity Fair
cover. That night, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg made his national debut at a CNN Town Hall event, delivering a performance that earned universal raves (“I have rarely seen a candidate make better use of a televised town hall,”
tweeted
David Axelrod. “He’ll be a little less of a long shot tomorrow”).
Axelrod’s enthusiasm was soon surpassed by that of
Morning Joe
host Joe Scarborough. “The only other time in twelve years that we heard from as many people about a guest was after
@BarackObama
appeared on
Morning
Joe
,” he tweeted.
Mayor Pete, with his Harvard and Oxford degrees, military background, cool husband and fluency in seven languages, was fascinating. Editors, producers, columnists and bookers who once swooned over O'Rourke's youthful idealism suddenly viewed him as a callow pretender. They hopped off the
Beto Express like tourists headed for the next attraction.
on April 15
th
. “
There’s no signature issue yet, no single
policy proposal sparking his campaign
,” wrote David Siders.
The
Washington Post
’s Molly Roberts was far more direct, penning a
column
entitled “
How Pete Buttigieg stole Beto’s Mojo.”
Six months after lamenting the media’s unrelenting fixation on O’Rourke, Jack Shafer declared the worm had turned.
“The things that once seemed so appealing about O’Rourke to the press—the generalities, the platitudes, the offhanded charisma, the rolled-up sleeves—seem off-putting now,” he
wrote
. His article was headlined
“Why the Media Dumped Beto for Mayor Pete.”
This tale of love and despair doesn’t have a neat ending. The Iowa caucuses are
ten
months away. As of Thursday, the Real Clear Politics Average had Biden at 30 percent, Sanders at 22, and four other well-known rivals bunched together in the 6-9 point range (O’Rourke, Buttigieg, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren).
You can imagine what the other presidential candidates, many with far more experience and bigger accomplishments, must be thinking as they watch the media's obsessional moods swing from ogling one less-experienced white male to another.
The senators and governors among them had their media infatuation phases years ago - many are significantly older than Buttigieg and O’Rourke. Like older folks everywhere, they’re not searching for a short-term romance - they're looking for a long-term commitment.
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Someone Point a Hose at that Metaphor!
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Many of us hold Paris dear to our hearts, so it was wrenching to turn on the TV and watch the Cathedral of Notre Dame engulfed in flames on Monday.
To our surprise, though, what we thought was a burning church turned out to be something completely different. We just needed some talking heads, bloggers and art critics to explain it to us.
“Notre Dame’s Ruin Is A Metaphor for The Western Church”
“The smoldering ruin of the cathedral now stands as a tragic metaphor for the church, not just in France, but in much of the developed West more generally.”
“The fire you’ve just been watching is in some ways maybe a metaphor for the decline of Christianity in Europe.”
“Notre Dame is a metaphor for the planet”
“The more you wait, the harder it gets to fix. You can say that about buildings, infrastructure, and, of course, climate. But nobody wants to pay the price.”
“The medieval architects, builders and craftsmen who created Notre Dame were fully aware that they were constructing not just a monument, but a metaphor.”
“A France in Turmoil Weeps for a Symbol of Paris’s Enduring Identity”
“Generations that had come to rely on (France’s) social safety net, as a matter of national pride and identity, see it going up in smoke.”
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Here and There
Comings and Goings in Media and Communications
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Today we bid farewell to our Communications Breakdown co-conspirator, the great
Wendell Jamieson
. A former Metro Editor of The New York Times, Wendell was present at the creation of this monster, and we thank him for investing so much work, creativity and journalistic skill into this effort. Wendell is still texting us his ideas for items at all hours, something we will wholeheartedly continue to encourage.
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“Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency.
I’m f--ked”
–
President Trump, upon learning about the appointment of a special counsel.
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Have a career announcement for Here and There? A Quotable quote?
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Kirtzman Strategies is a strategic communications and public affairs firm that works with public officials, nonprofits, companies, tech startups and education organizations.
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