Summer beats election season

I like to think of myself as an optimist, but I do have a complaint I would like to share today. Actually, two of them.

I think summers in the Northwest are too short, and I think political seasons (especially presidential ones) are way too long.

Peter Callaghan, The News Tribune columnist, seemed to agree with me the other day when he said it's too early to be talking about presidential politics.

"I'm not even going to recognize the political season until it's a year before the election, " he told me. That means he still has about two months to ignore the story that's all over the cable networks, and regularly on network news and in our newspaper.

For me, it's impossible to ignore the stories about presidential politics, but I'd like to. I find many of them galling at this stage.

Especially on cable news. The cable networks have already declared that the Republican race is between Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. Mind you, there are more than a half-dozen Republicans actively campaigning for the job, and no voter anywhere has cast a ballot for a candidate yet.

It's all apparently been decided by the insatiable cable news machine and by polls, at a stage when almost no one knows that much about any of the candidates or details of their position on the issues.

And last week I heard Chuck Todd, NBC's White House correspondent, say that the president had 60 days to win back the trust of the American public or the campaign was essentially over for him. (Silly me. While all sides are jockeying for positions now, and raising money, I didn't realize the campaign was virtually over. I thought that the real campaign would begin when a clear opponent had emerged or been selected by the Republicans. Or a third party, if one emerges.)

I think I'm with Pete.

I acknowledge that some early reporting helps winnow the candidate list. And I think one year is about the right amount of time to spend intensely focused on the election for president of the United States.

By November, the Republican field will be further narrowed, and we will begin to be focusing on some real elections in the early primary and caucus states.

But for me, the election really begins when we get down to the president versus the obvious Republican nominee (and a third-party candidate, if there's a viable one). At that point we can start comparing real people against one another, and start dissecting their records and their positions on the particular issues that seem most important to the country at this moment in history.

A lot of political news in this season isn't worth much. There's a lot of posturing. The cable networks are simply filling airtime with faux stories and trumped-up controversies.

And the constant polling, especially, is pretty much worthless. The only time polling will tell you much is when it gets down to one candidate versus another, or one issue, where we can examine public sentiment among real alternatives. Then we can begin to develop a picture of how the American public is feeling about the issues and the candidates.

So if you are enjoying the political coverage even now, help yourself. Peter and I will instead revel in what remains of this too-short but wonderfully prolonged summer. We'll check in on the campaigns in a couple of months.

Hersh to speak at UWT

One of the most able and controversial journalists of modern times, Seymour Hersh, is coming to the University of Washington Tacoma on Oct. 18 to deliver the Paulsen Lecture.

Hersh won a Pulitzer Prize for disclosing the cover-up of the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, and covered U.S. foreign policy, national security and the military in recent years for The New Yorker magazine. His most notable series for the magazine was about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

He will be speaking on U.S. foreign policy. The event is free, but seating is limited and registration is required. Tickets will not be available until Sept. 19, but can be reserved after that date at tacoma.washington.edu/paulsenlecture.

Dave Zeeck: 253-597-8554
david.zeeck@thenewstribune.com