At the moment, history seems to be holding its breath. The reporters, pundits and pollsters all agree: The presidential race is a dead heat.

Despite the magnitude of what’s at stake, the vast majority of daily reporting has a fragmented quality. Yet the sum is immensely greater than the parts.

Journalism is potentially a terrific clarifying force. During the days and weeks ahead, we’ll see whether the news media are up to the challenge. The signs are not encouraging. So far this election year, under the guise of being evenhanded, the standard news reports just give us snippets of information, misleading assertions, speculation, claims and counterclaims.

The battle between George W. Bush and John Kerry is much more than a struggle for power. It puts to the test our capacity for democracy. Voters are supposed to choose the president. But this essential right is under dire threat. That’s the big story — the GOP elephant in the national living room…

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“There He Is, Mr. America…”

Less than two weeks before Election Day 2004, the ABC television network cancelled Miss America. Fifty years after it premiered on national TV, the famous “beauty pageant” has fallen on hard times. Last month, the annual show drew just 9.8 million viewers, the smallest audience ever.

“The pageant has changed, but not for the better,” commented an editorial in a New Jersey newspaper, the Asbury Park Press. “Eliminating most of the talent portion of the competition from this year’s broadcast was a mistake. Trotting the contestants out in string bikinis rather than one-piece suits probably did more to alienate traditional viewers than attract new ones.”

Despite this year’s modernizing make-over, the Miss America pageant is a throwback to the 1950s, the decade that launched it onto the nation’s TV screens — an era when sexism was inseparable from supposed Americanism. Women were reduced to competitors in bathing suits who could sing and flash their shiny white teeth while they briefly made conversation. Perhaps subtly but pervasively, the spectacle was an exercise in humiliation.

These days, we shouldn’t burn a lot of calories patting ourselves on the back. In 2004, television routinely features a steady flow of rigid gender roles — as a close look at an array of commercials attests — and the use of women’s bodies to sell products is standard media operating procedure…

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We’re at a moment in history when progressives must work together — not with a false kind of unity that papers over differences, but instead with a candid kind of unity that recognizes and fights for a vital common goal. Our collective task is to kick George Bush out of the White House.

The thousands of African-American women and men lining up at early-voting sites in Florida are sending a profound message across this country. After nearly four years of “Hail to the Thief,” we
have a chance to oust the Bush-Cheney gang. We’re depending on each other…

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With the presidential debates now behind us, the struggle for the White House will tilt even more toward decentralized media battles for electoral votes. Between now and Election Day, vast resources will go toward spinning local news coverage in swing states while launching carefully targeted commercials on radio and television.

For the Bush campaign and its allies, the media endgame will include these components:

* Smearing John Kerry

For months already, paid advertisements and interviews with pro-Bush operatives have portrayed Kerry as a betrayer of American troops in Vietnam. President Bush gained a temporary lead in the polls thanks largely to deceptive commercials aimed at discrediting Kerry’s bravery under fire. Next came a fierce propaganda assault on the most laudable actions of Kerry’s life — his antiwar efforts as a Vietnam veteran…

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More than any other events on the campaign trail this year, the debates have drawn intense public interest. Viewers are eager for something more than the carefully packaged junk that usually passes for political coverage — the nonstop media mix of countless photo-ops, canned speeches, evasive interviews, calculated sound-bites, programmed national conventions and manipulative TV commercials.

There’s a lot wrong with the debates, especially the narrow range of views. But on the plus side, with no editing and no TelePrompTer, the contenders are on their own for 90 minutes. After watching a debate, people have gotten a look at the core of a presidential campaign’s artifice — the candidate himself.

The exalted media persona of George W. Bush thrives on edited snippets along with scripted speeches and rousing deliveries of one-liners in front of adoring crowds. And the hunkered-down, hunched-over gravity of Dick Cheney is unaccustomed to direct challenge. But the debate format has forced both men to come down from their pedestals.

Bush and Cheney have been stumbling when confronted with information about their deceptions on Iraq. Their biggest enemies are memory and videotape…

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PORTLAND, Ore. — More than any other month of the last four years, October will be filled with reporting about polls. And many stories about them will be as puzzling as a recent Associated Press dispatch that focused on the latest surveys about the presidential race in this hotly contested state.

“One poll conducted by an East Coast research firm gives Democrat John Kerry a 7-point lead over President Bush in Oregon,” the AP wire reported. “Another gives Bush a 4-point lead.” While observers scratch their heads, the battle for Oregon’s seven electoral votes continues.

Four years ago, Al Gore carried Oregon by a razor-thin margin. The results may be just as close this time around, so the men on the Republican and Democratic tickets — especially Dick Cheney and John Edwards — keep flying in for their quick sound-bites and photo-ops…

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The race for the White House now runs through media terrain that looks appreciably different than the landscape of a decade ago. Among the new factors: The Internet is an important source of news and punditry. Cable television gives the broadcast networks a run for their money. And 9/11 has shifted the terms of many debates. Overall, the political atmosphere is nastier and — if we consider some TV attack ads — much sleazier.

But below the surface, a lot of the bedrock rhetoric hasn’t changed much. And the language of politics, as some American leaders have acknowledged, is crucial.

James Madison wrote: “The use of words is to express ideas. Perspicuity, therefore, requires not only that the ideas should be distinctly formed, but that they should be expressed by words distinctly and exclusively appropriate to them.”

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The big media themes about the 2004 presidential campaign have reveled in vague rhetoric and flimsy controversies. But little attention has focused on a matter of profound importance: Whoever wins the race for the White House will be in a position to slant the direction of the U.S. Supreme Court for decades to come.

Justices on the top court tend to stick around for a long time. Seven of the current nine were there a dozen years ago. William Rehnquist, who was elevated to chief justice by President Reagan, originally got to the Supreme Court when President Nixon appointed him a third of a century ago. The last four justices to retire had been on the high court for an average of 28 years.

Vacancies are very likely during the next presidential term. Rehnquist, 79, is expected to step down. So is Sandra Day O’Connor, 74, a swing vote on abortion and other issues that divide the court in close votes. Also apt to retire soon is 84-year-old John Paul Stevens, who usually votes with the more liberal justices…

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Soon after the American death toll in Iraq passed the 1,000 mark, I thought of Saadoun Hammadi and some oratory he provided two years ago.

At the time, Hammadi was the speaker of Iraq’s National Assembly. “The U.S. administration is now speaking war,” Hammadi said. “We are not going to turn the other cheek. We are going to fight. Not only our armed forces will fight. Our people will fight.”

The date was Sept. 14, 2002. The venue was an ornate room inside a grand government building in Baghdad. And the gaunt elderly official was determined to make an impression on the four American visitors. So, with steel in his voice, Hammadi added: “I personally will fight.”

Looking across the room, I tried to imagine this frail man pointing a rifle at American troops. He sounded awfully brave…

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I just saw a horror movie — “Bush’s Brain” — the new documentary based on a book with the same name by journalists James Moore and Wayne Slater. The book’s subtitle is “How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential.” I’ll spare you the grim details. What matters most now is that Rove’s long record of shady and vicious media operations is not just in the past.

Rove is more than a master manipulator of the news media. He’s a stealthy smear artist who does whatever he can get away with. And Rove has gotten away with plenty. That’s how George W. Bush became governor of Texas … and president of the United States. What remains to be seen is whether Rove’s techniques will again prove successful when this country votes on Nov. 2.

For all his deft skullduggery, Rove is smart enough to always remember that you can’t beat something with nothing. It’s not enough to tar the opponent with accusations and innuendos. It’s also necessary to tout Rove’s candidate as a guy just this side of the angels. And so, the Bush campaign is combining out-of-sight stilettos and out-front verbal attacks with elaborate poses of ultimate Goodness…

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Bush’s Brain is playing in theaters in some cities and will be out on DVD on September 24th.