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Al-Ahram Weekly 26 Aug. - 1 Sep. 1999 Issue No. 444 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 26 Aug. - 1 Sep. 1999 Issue No. 444
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Focus Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Buying votes
By James Zogby *
Last week's Iowa straw poll and this week's press frenzy over unsubstantiated rumours that Texas Governor George Bush once used drugs provide evidence of the disturbing relationship between America's media and its politics.
The Iowa straw poll was a perfect example of this game. The poll was intended as a fund-raiser and an opportunity for Iowa Republicans to listen to the Republican contestants for the 2000 presidential race. At the end of the day, those Republicans who paid $25 were allowed to vote for their preferred candidates.
But it was not a real election. In fact, no Republican who won Iowa straw polls in the past has actually gone on to win the presidential nomination.
This year's winner was George W. Bush with over 7,400 votes -- that is 31 per cent of the votes cast. Publisher Steve Forbes came in second with 21 per cent (over 4,900 votes), tailed by Elizabeth Dole with 14 per cent (3,400 votes), and followed by two religious conservatives, Gary Bauer and Pat Buchanan, who shared 16 per cent of the total vote.
Not an election -- just a fund-raiser? Wrong! A combination of media-sponsored razzmatazz (600 reporters covered the event, all the major networks sent their stars, and cable TV carried the entire proceedings live) and the candidates' desire to impress (they spent millions of dollars on this non-election) transformed the simple fund-raiser into the first major contest of the 2000 presidential race.
With so much attention focused on the straw poll, the candidates channeled significant resources into the event. Since it was in reality only a fund-raiser, there were virtually no rules or limits on what the candidates could do or spend in order to win.
The Iowa Republican Party, for instance, auctioned off land outside the convention centre in order to allow the candidates to set up their booths and attract voters by distributing material. The Bush campaign won a plot of land for $43,800 -- not a small price for a day's use of a few thousand square feet.
In this area, the candidates set up elaborate tents with a spectacular array of singers, athletes, Hollywood celebrities, and amusement park rides for children.
To attract voters, the candidates provided free transportation to and from the event. One contender even rented a Boeing 747 to shepherd older supporters from a distant part of Iowa to the poll. Others organised car rides. Reportedly, the Bush campaign also offered college fraternities $500 to persuade their members to come. And all of the candidates provided free tickets to those who promised to vote for them. Forbes alone bought 7,700 tickets. Not to be outdone, Bush bought over 10,000. At the end of the day, it appeared that very few, if any, spectators actually had to pay the $25 entry fee.
Most of the contestants spent more than $100 on each vote that they received -- although Steve Forbes' efforts to attract a constituency was the most expensive at $305 per vote.
Clearly the Iowa straw poll is not an election. If anything, it was a day of entertainment and organised bribery. If the money transfers had not been so transparent, the event would have been downright scandalous.
But why, given all of this, did the candidates take it so seriously and pay so much to participate in the farce? The answer is quite simple. Pressured by the media, the candidates must have felt a collective need to be there and -- once there -- not to be embarrassed by losing.
Sanctimonious commentators labelled Bush's victory everything from a "promising sign" to a "less than convincing performance" (70 per cent of those who came voted for other candidates). Forbes, who spent more than $2 million "to get his people to turn out," was crowned as "Bush's main competitor". Elizabeth Dole was praised for her "respectable third-place finish" and Gary Bauer was congratulated for his "surprisingly strong showing".
Amid all the surreal din, no one remembered that much the same was said when Senator Phil Gramm won the Iowa straw poll leading up to the 1996 presidential elections and spent $750,000 on the contest. In fact, Gramm won 27 of the 28 straw polls he entered that year, before proceeding to lose miserably in the real election.
In the midst of the game, however, few commentators paid much attention to reality. The media and the politicians combined their efforts to play this game of illusions. And the result was five solid days of press coverage sounding as if this was a real contest and an important political event.
Ironically, the winner of the Iowa poll could have been the one candidate who stayed away -- Senator John McCain. As the dust settled, McCain gained rather significant coverage by denouncing the event for the joke that it was. "It's a meaningless, kind of senseless thing and now that it's over," he said, "I think we'll start probably next month focusing on the issues, hopefully have some debates, so that people can make informed judgments rather than paying people and having tens and millions of dollars spent... I didn't think I should go. I have a fiduciary responsibility to my contributors not to waste their contributions."
Equally ironic is the fact that George Bush may yet become a victim of the straw poll. Now that he has won, the press has declared him "fair game". Bush's honeymoon with the press is now over as journalists and broadcasters have begun to interrogate him on the issue of his alleged cocaine abuse.
This, in itself, is a rather bizarre development, since there is no evidence to suggest that the governor has consumed drugs. At best, there are unsubstantiated rumours to which the Texan governor refuses to respond. But his evasiveness has only made the press hungrier.
The headlines of the past three days have thus been filled with reports of his prevarication. As a result, Bush is widely believed to be guilty -- perhaps yet another sad commentary on the power of perceptions.
* The writer is president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute.
