Pundits Lower Expectations For Thompson: If He "Doesn't Drool" At Debate, He'll Have Done Well
October 9, 2007 -- 10:22 AM EST // //
One of the things that never ceases to astonish this blog about your pundits is their constant assertion that underperforming politicians are actually doing well because they are facing "low expectations" -- expectations, that is, that the pundits themselves arbitrarily set in the first place.
Here, for instance, is NBC political director Chuck Todd on Hardball, discussing the low expectations for Fred Thompson at tonight's GOP debate in the wake of a "Saturday Night Live" skit painting him as lazy (via Nexis):
CHUCK TODD, NBC POLITICAL DIRECTOR: No, I`ll say this. Here`s the good thing that "SNL" did...The pundits are already agreeing in advance that as long as Fred Thompson doesn't fall asleep next to his podium or vomit on his audience, they'll cheerfully say he did pretty well, because they have decided that they...shouldn't expect him to do well.MATTHEWS: Right.
TODD: ... for Thompson is that the expectation bar is below the floor for him. I mean, if he just shows up and doesn`t drool, we`re going to say, Well, you know, that`s a better performance than I thought.
MATTHEWS: You really think we`re going to do that? That`ll be the day!
TODD: No, but I think...
MATTHEWS: You think standards are going to drop because the PR has dropped?
TODD: Look, I think -- this happens every time. Bush did it with Gore. Remember? Bush said, Oh, Gore`s going to clobber me. He`s -- you know, he`s the best debater that there`s been in a generation. And Bush won...
MATTHEWS: OK.
TODD: ... won the spin war.
But look, these "expectations" of Thompson were not etched into stone tablets by Moses. They are being created by the pundits themselves, based on almost entirely arbitrary decisions about what does and doesn't constitute a "gaffe" and about what storyline should or shouldn't be damaging. Should one SNL skit really be what determines our expectations of Thompson?
The pundits already know they're going to do this, because, as Todd confesses here, "this happens every time." You'd think this doesn't have to happen every time -- pundits could simply choose to not do it -- but we've now been told that they're helplessly doomed to repeating this pattern.
In the case of Bush-Gore, we're told, the pundits agreed that expectations should be low for Bush -- and as a result, he "won the spin war." But Bush was declared the winner of the spin war by pundits who said he'd defied expectations -- expectations that were predetermined to be low by those same pundits, even though they knew that Bush was deliberately trying to lower them for himself. As always, your pundits and commentators just won't acknowledge their own role in shaping public perceptions of public figures.
Meanwhile, here's The Politico's Roger Simon, playing the same game with Thompson: "All he has to do is not fall asleep. All he has to do is not throw up. All he has to do is not drool." Todd and Simon are so locked into the same narrative here that both of them actually use the same formulation -- that all Thompson has to do is not "drool" for them to say he defied expectations.
Will this happen again tonight? Well, since we now know that this "happens every time," I'd say our expectations for the punditry should be pretty low this time around, too.
To reach the homepage of this blog, where you can see many more posts, click here.