John McQuaid

I’m sure I’ll have more to say about the incipient Obama administration going forward. In the meantime, a side note about newspapers. It was a banner day for the traditionalists: Many papers had to do midday press runs because their dead-tree editions sold out. (I was lucky to find a non-empty Washington Post box near my gym and picked up a copy. Now I have to keep it forever?)

One observation: historic newspaper headlines announcing an election result or other event were straight declarations. Think: NIXON RESIGNS, MEN WALK ON MOON, et al. This is what made them, well, historic. They concisely described the moment.

But today it’s different. Most people picking up a paper the day after something big happens already know all about it. When I got my paper, I had already watched election results the night before on TV, read news websites and political blogs. So the hard news headline is no longer needed. Meanwhile, newspaper design is also becoming flashier, more photo-heavy, the headlines bigger – and shorter.

So instead of the declaration of history — OBAMA ELECTED PRESIDENT — today’s headlines were impressionistic:

* • “Yes We Can.” (The Record of Stockton, Calif.)
* • “Change Comes to America.” (Canada’s The Hamilton Spectator)
* • “Change of Course.” (Athens (Ga.) Banner-Herald)
* • “Face of Change.” (Omaha (Neb.) World-Herald)
* • “A New Hope.” (Iowa City Press-Citizen)
* • “In Our Lifetime,” declared The Anniston (Ala.) Star.
* • “Obama Overcomes,” said The Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News.
* • “Race is History,” The Beaumont (Texas) Enterprise offered.
* • “Obama Reaches The Mountaintop,” said The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.
* • “Obama!” (The Patriot-News of Harrisburg, Pa.)
* • “Oh-Bama! (The Orange County (Calif.) Register
* • “Mr. President.” (The Chicago Sun-Times)
* • “It’s Obama.” (La Tribune of Paris, France)

What does this mean, other than that today’s newspapers are like yesterday’s magazines? It’s sort of paradoxical. People seek commemorative editions because they are, of course, physical objects, and they distill something of the day that a web page, changing every 15 minutes, can’t. At the same time, though, because papers no longer have a monopoly on information and are desperate to grab attention any way they can, the headlines (and in many papers, much of the content as well) are softer, less matter-of-fact, less “serious.” When we look back on these headlines in 40 years, it’s hard not to think they’ll show more about the steady fading away of the paper edition than the historic event they record.

I first covered national politics in 1988, the year that George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis with a classic culture war campaign that focused on Willie Horton and the Pledge of Allegiance. In late October of that year, I spent a day knocking on doors in working class Ohio, asking people who they were voting for and how they viewed the stakes in the election. And I was struck by how disengaged people were. Many weren’t paying attention at all.

But this year the feeling at the polls — in my own polling place and, reports indicate, around the nation — was palpably different than it was in 1988, and, well, than in every election in between. At my local elementary school just outside Washington, DC (an area where Obama has overwhelming support) the line was about 100 yards long. It took about 50 minutes to work my way past the bake sale table to the voting booth. My fellow voters were both patient and cheerful; the act of voting was, for once, deeply satisfying.

It’s not hard to see why. This year, the vote matters. It is a referendum on the Bush years, and an opportunity to pronounce on the future at a time when all seems terribly uncertain. Americans have been through about a half-century’s worth of history in eight years. We’ve seen a bare-knuckle fight over a presidential election results that called the functioning of our democracy into question. We’ve seen a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil, a pointless and very long war in Iraq, and torture adopted as official U.S. policy. We’ve seen an American city nearly destroyed and the effects of global warming grow ever more pronounced. And we watched our leadership retreat from many of the problems we face (as well as the ones it created) while dismissing the very idea of accountability. As it happens, the one mechanism of accountability Bush has acknowledged (in 2004) is a presidential election.

The election is a chance to correct that sense of helplessness that so many of us have felt as the country has drifted, and to wrestle with real issues that, in the past, had been supplanted by “issues” such as the Pledge of Allegiance. Economists often say that voting makes no sense, inasmuch as the material impact of any one vote is nearly zero. But today, the communal feeling of consequence at the polling place was unmistakable, as was the sense that we’re about to embark on something not just new, but different.

If you haven’t been able to figure it out by reading earlier posts, I’ll come right out and say it: I am voting for Obama. In general, I don’t like making partisan statements. I don’t put signs in my yard or bumper stickers on my car. One reason for this is habit. I used to be a newspaper reporter, and with the exception of opinion writers, newspapers prohibit their employees from openly supporting candidates or taking public stances on issues. But part of it is I don’t like boiling down my thoughts on politics to slogans or yes-or-no propositions.

But of course that’s exactly what an election is – a binary choice. And for me, and the country, I think the choice has been clear for some time. For me, George W. Bush’s biggest failing was that, with only a couple of exceptions, he simply didn’t care about governance. Bush (with Rove and Cheney) treated problems the country faced primarily as opportunities either to expand the support of the Republican Party or the power of the presidency. And as bigger, ever-more complex problems loomed, the Bush approach remained constant. Only over the past year, with its once-mighty political project in total collapse, has a semblance of pragmatism returned to the White House.

Barack Obama offers a return to reality-based government, in which problems will be examined empirically and policies devised to respond to them, and in which making government work will be a high priority. It’s really that simple. This is, of course, second grade-level civics. It’s amazing how far we strayed from it these past eight years. There are a lot of problems – climate change, the global financial meltdown, health care – that require some major governmental re-engineering, and require some fights with the Republican-allied business lobbyists that will like them the least. With his obvious political and managerial talents, Obama is obviously the man for this job.

Like many others, I didn’t much care for John McCain’s campaign. It summoned up many of the worst elements of the culture wars. The socialism charges were both divisive and ridiculous. It set new standards for blatant dishonesty. But unlike many others, I didn’t find any of this particularly surprising or “dishonorable” or the worst ever. It was just politics, and it wasn’t effective, and it will probably be even less effective the next time around. What was more disappointing about McCain’s effort was its slavish attachment to eye-catching, empty symbolism, from the choice of Sarah Palin to the September “suspension” of the campaign.

The symbolism masked a serious substance deficit. McCain’s policy proposals were mostly tired, off-the-shelf Republican ideas that poorly fit our current reality. He seemed to have no political priorities beyond stopping Obama. It was impossible to discern what he’d do as president. This isn’t that surprising either; if you’re behind, you’re going to be tearing down the other guy. But it still left a void. I expect a President McCain would likely be far more pragmatic than Bush, simply by virtue of facing solid Democratic majorities in Congress. But he would be whipsawed by Pelosi-Reid on the one side and the remaining Republican power structure of lobbyists and neocons on the other. Not a recipe for success.

So, I’m off to vote at Sligo Creek Elementary School.

Is there any job in American journalism hurtling toward obsolescence faster than that of the ombudsman, the “readers’ representative” who mediates between the myriad comments/complaints/suggestions of readers and the management of the paper?

With the collapse of the newspaper business model, many papers have eliminated this position. That’s probably a good thing. Not long ago, I felt differently: newspapers are traditionally opaque institutions that call other people to account, but are reluctant to acknowledge their own mistakes. Good to have an in-house critic who could get answers from the publisher, from editors and reporters. But with the rise of countless online sources of media criticism and the migration of newspapers online, the ombudsman’s function is becoming redundant. Newspapers are starting to open up and join the conversation; those who go into a defensive crouch when they make a mistake do themselves no favors.

And the ombudsmen still on the job seem increasingly caught betwixt the giant forces grinding down and transforming newspapers and the conventions still holding them back. In today’s New York Times, for example, public editor Clark Hoyt goes to great lengths trying to wave reporters off prematurely calling the election for Obama:

There are only two days left until the next president is elected. I think The Times would be wise, in the words of my former colleague Tom Fiedler, dean of the College of Communication at Boston University, to “forgo the temptation of the horse race” and focus on issues and what the candidates are saying. That is just what the paper did Thursday, with articles on their positions on student loans and summarizing their final stump speeches.

He’s right that it’s silly to write articles saying “it’s over” before it’s over. And I’m no fan of horse race coverage, with its endless focus on what might happen weeks or months in advance. But it’s different now: The horses are very close to the finish line. It would be ridiculous for reporters to ignore that one of them is ahead by a length. That reality shapes everything, from campaign decisions to voter behavior itself. In making the most predictable of all ombudsmanic pronouncements – cover the issues – Hoyt dispenses the strangest kind of journalistic advice: Cover your eyes! Ignore the facts!

And let’s face it: Obama is very likely to win. The odds of an election-night shocker are quite small. If you want an example, look at the indispensable 538.com, which runs 10,000 computer simulations every day incorporating the latest polling results, taking into account polls and election results going back to 1952. As of tonight, 538 gives McCain a 6.3 percent chance of victory. That’s not zero, of course, and the vote could turn out to be a black swan – that totally unanticipated outcome. But that must be weighed appropriately against the preponderance of the evidence.

Moreover, the cautionary examples Hoyt uses – the recent Rams upset of the Redskins and Hillary Clinton’s surprise victory in the New Hampshire primary – are weak analogies to a national election. A football game is not an election at all. And the New Hampshire primary had a small and volatile pool of voters. It’s a bobbing cork compared to the aircraft carrier of a national election campaign that, in spite of its drama, has not been close for weeks.

Update: 538.com crunched the numbers again overnight and now gives McCain a 3.7 percent chance of winning.