The more things change

I pulled out an old book to read during these September-like nights: The Boys On The Bus, a novel by Tim Crouse about how the media covers presidential campaigns, specifically the 1972 campaign between Richard Nixon and George McGovern. It's a very interesting book on the subject, but what is very scary is how very little has changed in the 30 years since it was written. To read this book is to know where the seeds of today's media were sown.

There's the completely inept White House Press Corps, who titter and play jokes and do just about anything but ask hard questions about our leaders. There's the incredibly scripted nature of political events. There's the rise of cable news and the fall of the TV networks. There's the attempt to completely bypass news media and take stories and images directly to the people. The only person asking hard questions is Helen Thomas. Robert Novak is still around shilling for Republicans. The major networks still gloss over any stories that don't have a good visual component. Reporters still don't get that if other politicians aren't asking the president hard questions about what is going on (Where did the Iraq money go? Who authorized torture? Why can't Bush simply ask Rove what happened with regards to Valerie Plame?), it's their job to do it.

It's not a terribly positive revelation: if this stuff has been going on for the past three decades, is there any hope of change? It doesn't seem likely; in fact, the people in power today learned from Nixon and his cohorts and have made the process all the more efficient. It's odd to see that although technology and culture have changed greatly in the intervening years, things really have stayed the same.