The Republican National Convention in Tampa has ended, leaving many questions behind. (Photo via PBS NewsHour.)
By Ashley Lopez
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting
The Republican National Convention has come to an end. The city of Tampa — as well as the delegates and journalists who hunkered down here for the past week — can now breathe a sigh of relief.
Modern-day political conventions have become exceedingly tedious, pointless and absurd. This convention was no different.
We didn’t learn anything of value about Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan — evidence that this was a waste of time for political reporters. But it was designed to be that way.
Tampa was anticipating the arrival of 15,000 reporters. In an age of newsroom budget cuts, that seems excessive considering those 15,000 journalists only had access to the same highly staged stump speeches.
Sure, some people argue conventions have real news value and purpose, but I have yet to be convinced. In fact, it was actually surprising to see how little news value this convention had, considering it was an event completely staged for news media.
This environment — coupled with a tropical storm, humidity and boredom — became the breeding ground for some ridiculous themes this week.
Let’s Talk About “Optics”
Thanks to endless political punditry, we all heard banter about “optics.” In fact, those 15,000 bored journalists I mentioned became pretty hung up on this, which makes for a good place to start explaining how absurd political conventions have become. Because so little of substance was said during the Republican National Convention, the news media fixated on how things looked — in other words, the optics of the staged events.
This fixation chafed some media organizations, including the New York Times:
This is not about lenses or really fast cables. That is what we used to be talking about when we talked about optics. But in America today, if you catch “optics” in the media, it very likely has to do with politics. A reporter or party operative or pundit will be analyzing the election in what has become the preferred style for such analysis — the chronicle of semblances.
“For Romney, there is little value in trying to compete with the optics of Obama’s trip,” Dan Balz, a veteran political reporter at The Washington Post, wrote before Mitt Romney’s recent visit to Europe and the Middle East. In May, the news outlet Politico reviewed an appearance by a surrogate for President Barack Obama this way: “The optics were awful for the Obama campaign.” Of Mr. Romney’s event on a farm in New Hampshire, a column in The Union Leader, an influential local newspaper, said: “The optics on the event were well planned and executed.”
The best political reporters — and there are many excellent ones — treat optics as a veneer to be deconstructed. But there is also a common habit today of covering optics for their own sake. For some reporters, narrating the optics of a thing can substitute for covering the thing itself. This is confusing, because the whole point of journalism is to go beyond optics — to probe how things really are beneath the trickery of how they seem.
…At times reporting from a strategist’s vantage point goes all the way. In these cases, the reporter ceases merely to write from that perspective. Instead, he internalizes the strategist’s problems so fully that they become, in a sense, his own problems. And so he might venture to become a strategist himself, offering a campaign advice.
“From here on out, Mitt Romney really should just shut up and smile,” Michael Hirsh, the chief correspondent of the National Journal, wrote before the candidate’s recent trip to Europe. Mr. Hirsh added: “What Romney really needs to worry about is the optics of this trip. No one expects him to say much.”
This is the circular logic inherent in the chronicle of semblances: a reporter counseling Mr. Romney to throw reporters like him off the scent — to create nice optics that liberate the candidate from revealing his beliefs or what kind of leader he might be.
Discussing how things are on the surface is the best news media can do during staged events such as political conventions. That partly explains why the news media largely glossed over actual news from the convention, such as the sudden rule change that will prevent future insurgencies mounted by outside candidates. Needless to say, the Ron Paul delegates are very upset.
Pants on Fire
This brings us to another theme of the Republican National Convention, one emblematic of the GOP campaign so far. Simply put, there are a lot of lies going around.
It’s a stark contrast to four years ago. In 2008, then-Republican presidential candidate John McCain, acting like a statesman as lies about his opponent Barack Obama reached a fever pitch,began telling supporters that some of what they’d heard about Obama was untrue. At one campaign rally, responding to shouts from the audience, McCain told the crowd that Obama was not Muslim.
Jump to 2012, and it’s the Republican candidates who are spreading lies. Both Romney and Ryan made erroneous comments during their big speeches.
Ryan’s speech, in particular, was full of so many untruths that the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein described how hard it was to point to actual facts in it:
This has been a central challenge during this election. The Republican ticket, when it comes to talking about matters of policy and substance, has some real problems – problems that have nothing to do with whether you like their ideas. Romney admits that his tax plan “can’t be scored” and then he rejects independent analyses showing that his numbers don’t add up. He says — and Ryan echoes — that he’ll bring federal spending down to 20 percent of GDP but refuses to outline a path for how well get there. He mounts a massive ad assault based on a completely discredited lie about the Obama administration’s welfare policy. He releases white papers quoting economists who don’t agree with the Romney campaign’s interpretations of their research.
All this is true irrespective of your beliefs as to what is good and bad policy, or which ticket you prefer. Quite simply, the Romney campaign isn’t adhering to the minimum standards required for a real policy conversation. Even if you bend over backward to be generous to them — as the Tax Policy Center did when they granted the Romney campaign a slew of essentially impossible premises in order to evaluate their tax plan — you often find yourself forced into the same conclusion: This doesn’t add up, this doesn’t have enough details to be evaluated, or this isn’t true.
Klein’s colleague at the Post Greg Sargent wrote that media outlets are unsure how to approach the unrelenting wave of lies from the Romney and Ryan camp. This is considered uncharted territory for most journalists, who seem to agree that the Republicans are not playing by the basic rules of campaigning.
“The Land That Time Forgot”
The Chamber of Commerce probably isn’t too happy about how the media portrayed Tampa during the Republican National Convention.
Throughout the week, the host city received harsh criticism from its guests. The Daily Show described Tampa as “the land that time forgot” and compared Florida’s third-largest city to a “subway platfrom in Haiti.” Then, of course, Daily Show correspondent Samantha Bee was kidnapped by a giant palmetto bug and flown to an even worse place than Tampa — neighboring St. Petersburg!
The New Yorker’s George Packer, familiar with the area from his reporting on the foreclosure crisis, trashed Tampa’s downtown area, describing it as a big parking lot that can be deadly for people who aren’t in cars:
It’s not a great downtown in the best of times, combining the charm of urban renewal—highway overpasses crisscross the area where the convention is being held—and all the convenience of the largest metropolitan area not to have commuter rail. It’s also one of the two most lethal cities in the country for pedestrians and bicyclists. (The other is Orlando.) In other words, it’s all cars. Half of downtown Tampa is parking lots, and anyone with enough money to own a car drives to work (there aren’t many other reasons to go downtown).
All this criticism, despite the extra precautions the city took for the delegates during a tropical storm that threatened the area, begs the question:
Was it worth it, Tampa?
Location, Location, Location
Whether the convention was a boon or bust for Tampa, Republicans were set on hosting their party in Florida during the height of hurricane season.
Florida is the most important state for Republicans looking to reclaim the White House this year. Any political strategist will tell you that if Romney can’t win Florida, he can’t win the election. The Sunshine State is the fight’s center stage.
But that doesn’t mean it’s the best place to hold a national political convention. As others have pointed out, mass transit is not easy to come by in Central Florida. As Tampa’s mayor says, it’s not his fault. This one’s on Gov. Rick Scott.
And then there’s the weather. In addition to being hot and muggy in August in Tampa, it’s the height of hurricane season. The Republican National Convention fell right around the anniversaries of Hurricanes Katrina and Andrew — two of the worst storms in modern U.S. history.
There is also the added gem that Tampa isn’t exactly GOP-friendly territory. Ruth’s List Florida, a progressive group that supports Democratic women for elected office, put up a billboard near the intersection of Interstate 275 and Armenia, just west of the Tampa Bay Times Forum and the Republican National Convention.
“Welcome to Tampa! Where the mayor and all city council members are Democrats,” the billboard read. “Enjoy your visit.”