John Kerry’s choice of John Edwards as his running mate hardly came as a surprise to many who’ve been watching the Presidential race closely. But his approach — cloaked in secrecy until today, reported first thing this morning by the broadcast media, then officially announced in an e-mail to his supporters — was a novelty. I spoke about that approach with David Hawkings, senior editor at Congressional Quarterly (which is owned by Poynter), in a phone interview today.
What was behind Kerry’s timing of his announcement this morning: By keeping it as secret as he did, he got — in my memory — the maximum ability to control the story there was. I think I first heard about it at 7:40 this morning on CNN and he announced it at 9:00 … So he was able to create the buzz of a surprise, more so than past nominees in my memory. And by doing it first thing in the morning, he gets the entire day. He got the morning shows, he got the whole cable news universe for the day, and he’ll probably get daily coverage in probably every newspaper in America tomorrow. And that will be by far the most concentrated publicity buzz his campaign has received since he won New Hampshire.
What Kerry’s veep-picking process and announcement might reveal about him as a politician: He’s very disciplined. His search was run with extraordinary discipline, secrecy, he did not court people in the press or test-market his thoughts in the press with leaks, which is a departure from past practices. The deliberateness of the decision-making, some will read into that (as being) an example of his governing style … If that were the case, then his style you’d have to view as deliberate and considered and ultimately, I suppose one might say, predictable, given that he picked the person who most Democratic insiders expected him to pick. Almost, I might say, anticlimactic.
What Kerry was aiming for by announcing his pick in an e-mail: I think it was trying to make the best use available of today’s technology to do a lower-case “d” democratic thing and give a heads-up to his known supporters … or presumably his fans. He was kind of making an innovative use of technology to reach out to his base, to people who were actually motivated enough to put themselves on his e-mail list. Kerry, like Dean before him, has done a lot of fundraising on his e-mail list; this is sort of the payoff for that, that communication goes both ways.
Whether news outlets running with the story before the e-mail and rally undermined Kerry’s strategy: It wasn’t undermined by the media, I don’t think at all. Had this leaked out yesterday, this morning’s rally would have been anticlimactic, I suppose, but the leak was only 80 minutes before the rally … It seemed like as a result of this, it was everywhere this morning; there was maximum exposure, to me. Those of us in the print press, we were able to get our story up today online, but we’re already working on our second-day story.
What’s to come in the next week of media coverage about the pick: There will inevitably be the stories reiterating all the times Kerry and Edwards said unflattering things about each other when they were campaigning against one another. Hopefully there will be more stories … like ours in which we’re trying to compare and contrast the way in which … this choice reflects something that hasn’t happened in the past 44 years, since Kennedy and Johnson: two people with the same job on the same ticket at the same time. This allows apples-to-apples coverage of the way these two men have voted and behaved in the past five and a half years.
Hawkings: “This choice reflects something that hasn’t happened in the past 44 years … two people with the same job on the same ticket at the same time. This allows apples-to-apples coverage of the way these two men have voted and behaved in the past five-and-a-half years.”What might get lost in the media coverage: It usually takes a few weeks for the inevitable stories deconstructing the last-minute machinations of the candidate and his advisors over whom to choose. Now having said that, maybe this has been secretive enough that those stories will never leak out. This will be sort of a treat for political reporters over who … the runner-up was, who the second runner-up was … That story will probably come out in a week or two.
Hawking’s hopes for the coverage: I hope, for democracy’s sake, we do a good job … really explain(ing) how it’s so unusual for these two people, since they have the same job, you can actually see where they’re the same, where they’re different, where they complement each other … How similar or disparate are these two people?
Final thoughts for journalists: Well, for once, the conventional wisdom was right. And it almost never happens that the person who the press perceives as the frontrunner all along actually ends up getting chosen. What that means I have no idea, but it’s nice for those of us who’ve been poked and prodded for the last several months that we actually got this one right.
