(HOST) Opinion polls show the race between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama as much closer than many analysts expected. This morning commentator Barrie Dunsmore, a veteran correspondent for ABC News, has some thoughts on why that might be.
(DUNSMORE) For many weeks, when pollsters asked Americans about their party preference, the Democrats have held a strong double-digit lead. This reflects the two-thirds of voters who say they think the country is moving in the wrong direction. But when the choice for President is between Senator Obama and Senator McCain, Obama has never had a double-digit advantage. He usually has a lead ranging between 6 and 7 percentage points. Even after his successful overseas trip last week, his highest rating was a 9 point edge.
So what’s going on?
There is the obvious. He is an African American and, as exit polls in the primaries regularly indicated, in some regions up to twenty percent of the voters would have a problem voting for a black man for President. There are also the questions of his relative youth, his limited experience and his exotic life story.
But there is another significant reason Obama may be having trouble breaking through: the myth of the liberal bias in the media. Actually, George Mason University’s Center for Media and Public Affairs has just published a new study which concluded that in recent weeks, all three networks – ABC, NBC and CBS – were significantly tougher on Obama than on McCain. The study found that when network reporters and anchors offered opinions, which in my day was greatly discouraged but now is commonplace, 72% of their comments about Obama were negative and only 28% were positive. The McCain spread was much closer to 50-50.
Beyond the networks, McCain has long been the darling of much of the print media. On his "straight talk express," he offers what is mother’s milk to political reporters: almost non-stop access to the candidate. Thus he is mostly forgiven when he makes mistakes – such as confusing Iraq’s Shiites and Sunnis – or talking about the Iraq-Afghanistan border, when the two countries are about a thousand miles apart. These may be slips of the tongue, but can you imagine if Obama had made similar gaffes on his most recent foreign tour?
Meantime, a theme of McCain’s negative ads on Obama – that he is an elitist – is being picked up by the so-called liberal media. A Washington Post column began this week, "Barack Obama has long been his party’s presumptive nominee. Now he’s becoming its presumptuous nominee." Columnist Dana Milbank goes on to recount Obama’s return to Washington on Tuesday, when he supposedly behaved as though he had already been elected. Obama’s real sin, it seems, is that most of the news media were kept in the dark about his schedule. However, Milbank also included this zinger: Obama’s biggest challenger may not be John McCain but rather his own hubris.
This is not good news for Obama. Especially when elections are close, such as in 2000, when much of the media decided George W, Bush was a nicer guy than Al Gore, how the candidates are perceived by those who cover them can make a decisive difference.