Times panel: Major issues ignored in '04
by Ryan Hagen Staff Writer
On the eve of today's Super Tuesday primaries, members of the New York Times editorial board said last night that presidential candidates are ducking key issues to win swing votes.
The six-person panel fielded questions from the 400-plus audience in the Kimmel Center auditorium on issues from Haiti to higher education, but was not asked about today's election. Each spoke about pet issues they felt did not receive enough coverage.
Some speakers said that one reason the media do not cover substantive issues in the race is because the candidates themselves don't talk about them.
"When you talk to [candidates], it turns out that you're actually having two conversations with them," said Adam Cohen, a Times editorial writer. "One is the platitudinous one where they repeat all the things they say on the stump, but then they're always saying 'Oh, can we go off the record?' And when they go off the record, what they mean is, 'We're going to talk about tactics,' which is what they really want to talk about."
The candidates are especially worried about alienating rural voters, he said.
"The substance is not coming out," Cohen said. Although the greatest difference between the parties is in judicial nominations, it receives scant coverage and public interest, he said. "Issues that matter to core Democratic constituencies are just not the issues that [the candidates] are focusing on for their swing groups."
Editorial page editor Gail Collins explained how TV news limits reporters' abilities to pursue follow-up questions on-camera.
"It's very hard for a journalist to press someone in authority on television, because you very quickly look like you're picking on them," she said.
Even the Times' editorial page did not substantially address why it endorsed Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts last week, said panelist John Billings, an associate professor in the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.
"There wasn't a single substantive issue discussed in that editorial," Billings said. "It was all about experience - it was all about gravitas versus charm."
The panelists did not respond to Billings' comment.
The Times' editorial board had thorough discussions about whether to endorse Kerry or Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, Collins said.
"We had Edwards and Kerry in twice over the last month and a half for long discussions," Collins said. While editorial board members generally try to arrive at a consensus on whom to endorse, Collins said, the board "is not a democracy."
Editorial board member Brent Staples said he'd like to see more coverage of the widening canyon between the classes in the United States. The Bush tax cuts, he said, were stimulating a "class secession," in which the wealthiest Americans withdraw their money from things like public education, libraries and other instruments of "upward mobility."
"We need to have a down-and-dirty, frank discussion about class in America," he said.
The board weighed the benefits and drawbacks of marginal Democratic and third-party candidates, who linger into the final stages of the race.
"I think that the discussion in '92 was enhanced by Ross Perot," Collins said. "But right now I don't think there's a third party out there that's capable of forming an alternative to the two we've got."
Former Green Party candidate Ralph Nader would have a negligible impact on this year's election, she said.
"If a great number of people decided to vote for Ralph Nader this time," Collins said, "the Democratic candidate would be in such huge trouble that Ralph Nader would be the last of his problems."