If you're a presidential candidate who starts with low expectations -- let's say Rick Santorum -- your biggest problem with the press is getting them to pay attention to you. It's very frustrating: You give speeches, talk to voters, and reporters couldn't care less. So you're locked out of the cycle that can increase your chances. Because you're not visible in the media, voters don't think you can win, donors don't want to waste their money on you, and you can't break through. You look with envy at the folks on top, who can translate their poll standing into money, which translates into advertising and more staff, which then translates into higher support, and so on.
But not all attention is good. If you start with reasonably high expectations, but then don't go anywhere, you can get the worst kind of attention there is: stories about how your campaign is going nowhere. Almost three decades ago, in a book called Over the Wire and On TV: CBS and UPI In Campaign '80, Michael Robinson and Margaret Sheehan termed this "deathwatch coverage." "The deathwatch," they wrote, "generally begins with a reference to the candidate's low standing in the polls, moves on to mention financial or scheduling problems, and ends with coverage of the final press conference, in which the candidate withdraws."
You're not completely doomed once deathwatch coverage begins -- in 2007 John McCain got plenty of it but eventually turned his campaign around -- but it's an awfully hard cycle to break out of. And now, the deathwatch coverage of Tim Pawlenty has officially begun. Look at these two headlines from today:
Bloomberg News: "Failure in Iowa's Straw Poll May Doom Pawlenty's 2012 Presidential Effort"
New York Times: "Will Republican Race's First In Be the First Out?"
Both pieces explain how, although he's not actually dead yet, he probably will be soon. If you're Tim Pawlenty, this is absurdly unfair. No one is going to cast a vote for six months. The entire field isn't set yet. So using words like "doom" in headlines about you seems awfully premature.
Nevertheless, Pawlenty is facing a fundamental problem. The rationale for his candidacy was always that he was a serious person like Mitt Romney, without all of Romney's glaring past heresies against conservative orthodoxy, yet not as crazy as some other potential candidates. The problem at the moment seems to be that a healthy chunk of the Republican electorate has learned to live with Romney's heresies, and for another healthy chunk, Pawlenty just doesn't seem crazy enough (ergo the rise of Michele Bachmann). That leaves him where he may always have been fated to end up: as nobody's first choice. Things can and will change -- there will be twists and turns in this race we haven't yet anticipated. But hey, being a VP candidate isn't so bad. Look what it did for Sarah Palin.
