Mission Accomplished

On Sunday the Star Tribune came out with their endorsement for President. No need to tell you who it is, you won't be surprised. What is surprising is the teeth grinding, seething rhetoric used to state their points. It is at the embarrassing level of a City Pages/Steve Perry editorial, where professional standards and the need to persuade are sublimated to wounded ego gratification and left wing one upsmanship. It also reminds me of, dare I say, a blog. At least the kind of blog where immaturity, a nurtured narrow perspective, and high emotions combined with immediate publishing access results in prose the author will be embarrassed about when he finally grows up, if not the morning after.

Check out these excerpts and remember, this is the institutional voice of the dominant newspaper in this market:

Kerry recognizes that to prevail in the struggle against terrorism, America must return to the moral high ground rather than unilaterally pursue a perverted, narrow vision of its national interest.

[Bush] has proved to be the most divisive, insular and partisan president since Richard Nixon. He ran as a moderate, but has pursued radical goals that have plunged the nation into debt and injected the government into the most personal of family matters. He promised to conduct foreign policy humbly, yet he repeatedly spurned allies, culminating in his arrogant and misguided rush to war on Iraq.

The Star Tribune, the product of the finest professional journalists in town, our hometown press advocate, goes on to endorse the notion that George W. Bush is responsible for the 9/11 attacks:

Indeed, his preoccupation with Iraq and missile defense in early 2001 seems to have prevented him from recognizing the growing dangers of Al-Qaida -- despite the urgent warnings of his own counterterrorism expert.

Bitter, partisan rhetoric, deliberately misleading the reader, saying anything they can to influence Minnesota voters to vote against the Republican candidate for president.

Last week, I mentioned that there is no more alienating experience for select segments of a newspaper's readership than the official institutional judgment on who we should be voting for. Given the disenchantment engendered, and the suspicion of bias permanently planted in these readers' minds (the firewall be damned), I have to wonder why the Star Tribune, or any newspaper editorial board bothers to endorse candidates in the first place.

Last Monday, Pioneer Press editor Art Coulson wrote a column called "Why the Pioneer Press Endorses" (not available online). He states:

The endorsement is not designed to tell you how to vote. It is merely our preference as an institution, a look at how the Pioneer Press might vote were it to enter the polling booth on Nov. 2.

An argument I find to be ridiculous. If they truly didn't want to influence voting behavior, they could skip the winners and losers aspect entirely and just print fact based articles based on their reporting and candidate interviews.

But doing that removes the privileged status the press grants themselves as the preeminent source of local political knowledge and wisdom. And since they believe they possess these qualities, it's only natural for them to want to use this power to serve their desires. It's not easy to influence anything sticking to factual reporting. And make no mistake about it, influence is what they're attempting with endorsements. I was able to find Coulson's defense of the endorsement process from 2003 (which is online), where he states:

I have no doubt that just as many voters carry our endorsements into the booth and vote the opposite way as follow our recommendations. That's great.

I think Coulson's statement also reveals the component ego plays in the tradition of newspaper endorsements. The editorial board members fancy themselves immersed in thinking important thoughts of matters political every day of their lives. They've convinced themselves they are THE experts and it is their obligation to lead the willing sheep to the truth. Coulson admits as much (from his 2004 explanation):

We also know that many readers don't have a lot of time to meet personally with candidates, to wade through the campaign literature, to attend forums and debates. We have a chance to ask candidates tough questions and to gauge their responses. We see ourselves as another set of eyes and ears for the time-pressed readers.

Their assumption being that the citizenry simply doesn't have time to adequately inform themselves about something so apparently inconsequential to their lives as an election. According to this logic, the people don't even have time to read a detailed article, running down the facts of a certain race. Therefore an official endorsement, listing the specific name of the superior candidate, is critical in the process. But remember, they're not telling anyone who to vote for.

More absurd yet is that that newspapers consider themselves a primary source of direction not just for the major races. They deign to tell us who to vote for in all races. The Pioneer Press announced they've invited 221 candidates to be interviewed. They're planning on running endorsements on he Op/Ed page every day until the end of the month, on more than 50 different races, from US Senate to State legislative races to judicial races to municipal elections and school board races - in both Minnesota and Wisconsin. And realize, the editorial board members have never lived in the overwhelming majority of these communities. They don't have any direct stake in the outcomes. Yet they find it entirely necessary and proper to tell the voters in those communities who they should vote for.

I suspect (hope) the truth is that the newspapers' power to affect voting behavior is more limited than Coulson realizes. I would imagine most modern newspaper consumers are politically conscious enough to have their minds made up in advance of the candidate coronation ceremony by the editorial boards. The liberals will largely agree with the paper's choices, the conservatives will disagree. Those looking for guidance by editorial writers number too few to make any difference in an election.

So, the only consequences of these endosements are a growing segement of alienated readers and the enhancement of editorial board members' egos. Unfortunately, something tells me that's enough reason for the Star Tribune to continue the practice indefinitely.