Dan Calabrese

To normal people, elections matter because they affect things that happen in the course of life. To members of the national news media, things that happen in the course of life matter because they affect elections.

This phenomenon has grown more intense, and more serious, in recent years. I don’t know if it’s because the media confuse political analysts with actual journalists, which would explain why you get politics-obsessed, substance-starved people like Chuck Todd of NBC covering the White House. But if you follow the media’s coverage of just about any major issue, what you’ll find is that they only understand the issue in context of politics.

So it is with the Associated Press in its latest missive about gas prices. Reporter Mark Smith gets to the heart of the matter right away: High gas prices are jeopardizing President Obama’s re-election chances. Indeed, Smith goes so far as to imply that Americans are responsible for their own troubles, and that a wise president who knows better simply has no choice but to be the bigger man and absorb the undeserved blame:

As Obama well knows, Americans love their cars and remain heavily dependent on them, and they don’t hesitate to punish politicians when the cost of filling their tanks goes through the roof. Indeed, for presidents, responding to sudden surges is a recurring frustration.

Ah. The frustrating life of a poor politician, getting blamed for stuff by Americans who love their cars and fail to appreciate their superstar president.

Obama volunteered to a group of supporters during a fundraiser in Los Angeles recently that rising gas prices for the rest of us are resulting in plummeting poll numbers for him. Self-involved and narcissistic? I guess you’d have to say yes, but at least Obama was speaking at a political fundraiser whose entire purpose is to help ensure his re-election. However self-focused the comment was, it was relevant on that part particular evening.

But what is the reason for the AP to write a news story that takes exactly the same angle? The AP is not in the business of pimping for Obama’s re-election, at least not that it admits.  Why do the voters need to be told by the media how an issue affects an election that’s more than a year-and-a-half away? Why do we ever need to be told that about any issue?

We don’t. The problem is that the people writing the stories don’t know any other way to look at issues. They don’t really understand why gas prices go up and down. They just know what this politician and that politician said about it. They don’t really know how gas prices affect the rest of the economy. They just know how they affect the poll numbers of politicians who will be running in elections soon.

For far too many members of the media, news amounts to little more than an observation of impacts on the likely outcome of the next election. They are little more than sportswriters covering a different sport. The Tigers’ beat writer tells us on a daily basis, not only how the Tigers did last night, but what events have transpired that may affect how they will do in tonight’s game.

The news reporters look at the movement of gas prices, unemployment figures and national security matters in the same way the baseball writer looks at Victor Martinez’s groin injury: How will these things affect who wins?

As a result, they completely miss the reason we have elections in the first place, which is to put people in place who have the responsibility of governing, which affects the quality of our lives.

This is one of the reasons few people really understand the dire nature of America’s fiscal situation. The media doesn’t focus on the facts – that we’re $14.3 trillion in debt and still borrowing heavily, with no plan to ever pay any of it back. It covers everything as if it’s part of a political game. The Republicans want budget cuts to please their base in the Tea Party. The Democrats read in the polls that Americans don’t want changes to Medicare. Who, oh who, will benefit in the next election?

If gas prices help get Obama thrown out of office, the AP should report on that after it happens. By speculating about it a year-and-a-half before it might happen, all they’re doing is proving their inability to report on actual substance. And they don’t need to do that, because anyone who reads their reporting on a regular basis is already well aware of it.

If I want to read sports writing, I’ll read it on the sports page. If I want to read reporting of actual substance, I guess I’ll have to write it myself. Because it sure doesn’t look like anyone else is going to do it.

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