Instant analysis is almost always worth the time it takes to produce it, and Todd S. Purdum's article today (
"Shattering Iowa Myths") is no exception to the rule. Useful, though—you can watch the alimentary process by which the conventional wisdom reabsorbs a slightly off-kilter event:
[
Crossposted from Reading A1, a new blog watching the NY Times front page.]
Here's the top of the piece:
For Iowa Democrats, Senator John Kerry showed himself to be what he has argued all along he was: the reassuring establishment candidate with the war hero's record, solid policy positions and broad experience in government to be a strong challenger to President Bush. He shattered conventional Iowa wisdom that organization is all.
Shattered the conventional wisdom. That last sentence is complete and utter horseshit. The Iowa caucuses are a statewide, precinct-level set of mini-conventions, the site of a complex, distributed process of deliberation and horse-trading. It's not "conventional wisdom" that organization is all in such a process; it's a fact of the process itself. Kerry and Edwards didn't win because, in some magic way, "organization" got pushed aside as a determining factor this time around in Iowa. They won because their organizations were better adapted to take advantage of the particular circumstances that obtained on the ground at the moment of the election. (One of the key circumstances, possibly, being the relative seasoning and savvy of the troops themselves running the caucus operations, an area in which the more establishment politicians seem to have had the upper hand. Check out Jerome Armstrong's
illuminating short post to that effect on Daily Kos, as well as Tom Schaller's
"first cut at deconstruction" of the results—scroll down to the graf that begins "But let me tell you exactly what I saw in Precinct 63" to get to the real reportorial meat. Both these guys were on scene for the caucuses, and both accounts beat anything I've seen yet in the mass media.)
And God knows, Purdum's analysis has nothing to do with upsetting the
important conventional wisdom. The media have been holding open a "Presidential" slot for somebody other than Dean to occupy for some time; watch now as the counters slide into place:
In [Kerry's] final weeks of frantic campaigning ... he managed to change the subject from perceived doubts about his own personality—often caricatured as cold and uncomfortable—and his will to win into questions about whether Dr. Dean's temperament was too hot to make him electable. At his post-caucus rally Monday night, Dr. Dean looked more like Howard Beale, the angry anchor in "Network," than "Marcus Welby, M.D.," while Mr. Kerry was every inch the veteran senator he is.
"John Kerry is the one who has that presidential way about him," said Artelle Payne, a retired liquor wholesaler in Waukee, echoing the words of Mr. Kerry's own stump speech and scores of voters interviewed on their way into caucuses.
If Dean loses, it's because he's angry—that's the permanent
factesque truth about him, after all— and naturally whoever beats him is going to do so because he's "presidentially" un-angry. For now, that's Kerry: whose personality flaws (in addition to being "cold and uncomfortable", he's also
weird and a liar) are just hovering there, waiting for the moment when the story will demand that they be deployed.
Analysis? I don't know whether Todd S. Purdum is otherwise capable of thought, but this lazy diddling around with received iconography sure as hell doesn't demonstrate any. The myths are shattered! Long live the myth!