Matt Bai, a columnist for Yahoo News, has written a “look-back book” entitled “All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid,” and while the new release initially focuses on the 1987 incident that ended Gary Hart's quest for the presidency, it also lists John Kerry as one of the victims of the media's new motivation “to find character problems, hypocrisies that will drive web traffic and segments on cable news.”
According to Washington Post blogger Erik Wemple, one example of this change in covering politicians took place in 2004, when Bai interviewed Kerry -- while he was a presidential candidate -- for New York Times Magazine.
While the discussion was intended to focus on the Democrat's “foreign policy vision,” the senator began a session by rejecting a bottle of Evian water, demanding instead that an aide furnish “my water.” When Bai asked about the candidate’s aversion to Evian, Kerry responded: “I hate that stuff. They pack it full of minerals.”
Bai then asked what kind of water Kerry liked. “Plain old American water” was the reply. The reporter than asked whether that meant tap water. “No,” Kerry said carefully. “There are all kinds of waters.”
“He tried to think of some while I sat there waiting, awkwardly,” the interviewer stated. “Saratoga Spring,” Kerry replied. “Then, after a pause: 'Sometimes I drink tap water.' The rest of our conversations went more or less like this.”
“Was I going to write that he made a show of drinking tap water like a regular person, even though we all knew he could afford to buy Evian’s entire spring if he wanted?” Bai asked.
“Then comes an interesting twist,” Wemple stated. “Bai comments that Kerry’s skittishness was entirely justified” because of a quote in the finished article: “We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance.”
“The Bush campaign ran ads off of the quote, and the 'nuisance' quote 'dominated the coverage on cable TV,'” notes Bai, who continued:
All this punditry had virtually nothing to do with any real debate over the nature of terrorism and ideas for combating it; it was about character and hypocrisy.
Once again, Kerry had been caught pretending to be something people wanted him to be (in this case, a fervent anti-terrorist), when in fact we now had proof that he didn’t consider terrorism to be a problem any bigger than an illicit game of Texas Hold-’em.
Of course, this was only one of many stumbles the Democratic candidate made during his presidential campaign.
For example, while visiting New Hampshire in August of 2003, Kerry made what seemed to be an innocent choice while ordering food during a campaign stop, according to an article written by Craig LaBan, who stated:
It used to be the New Hampshire primary that augured the chances of a candidate. But now -- at last -- the cheesesteak has got its due as the true ring of fire any Oval Office hopeful must survive.
Just ask Sen. John F. Kerry, who's going to have to do some fancy chewing if he hopes to recover his front-runner image after stumbling this week through his first try at Pat's King of Steaks. He ordered a steak with Swiss cheese
“Swiss cheese, as any local knows, is not an option,” LaBan declared. “The Massachusetts Democrat may as well have asked for cave-aged Appenzeller.”
“News of Kerry's gaffe, first reported by the [Philadelphia] Inquirer's Nancy Phillips, then gleefully retold by the Washington Post, spread like a can of Cheez Whiz spilled on a hot day -- across the country, then the world,” he stated.
“An employee sweeping around the tables at Pat's ... couldn't fathom all the uproar: 'All this over a sandwich?'”
As NewsBusters previously reported, the incident that significantly turned reporters away from significant issues and onto personal foibles took place in May of 1987, when Colorado senator and former presidential candidate Gary Hart dared people in the press: "Follow me around. I don't care.”
However, reports of the Democrat's womanizing with a young model named Donna Rice on a boat called the “Monkey Business” reached reporters at the Miami Herald, who caught the pair leaving his townhouse in Washington, D.C., and the scandal exploded on the national scene.
Wemple concluded his blog on Monday by stating: “That U.S. politics have become shallow and trivialized, of course, is hardly news, though examples like [Kerry's choice of drinking water] certainly add context and gravity to the pile of evidence.”
