By Leah Ceccarelli, UW associate professor, Department of Communication

Manufactroversy (măn’yə-făk’-trə-vûr’sē)
(N., pl. -sies)  A manufactured controversy motivated by profit or extreme ideology to intentionally create public confusion about an undisputed issue. The effort is often accompanied by imagined conspiracy theory and major marketing dollars involving fraud, deception and polemic rhetoric.

With all the sophisticated sophistry besieging mass audiences today, there is a need for the study of rhetoric now more than ever before. This is especially the case when it comes to the contemporary assault on science known as manufactured controversy: when significant disagreement doesn’t exist inside the scientific community, but is successfully invented for a public audience to achieve specific political ends.

Three recent examples of manufactured controversy are global warming skepticism, AIDS dissent in South Africa and the intelligent design movement’s “teach the controversy” campaign.

The first of these has been called an “epistemological filibuster” because it magnifies the uncertainty surrounding a scientific truth claim in order to delay  adoption of a policy warranted by that science. Language expert Frank Luntz admitted as much in his now infamous talking points memo on the environment, leaked to the public in 2002, where he confessed that the window for claiming controversy about global warming was closing, but he nonetheless urged Republican congressional and executive leaders “to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.” ExxonMobil was doing this when it published its “Unsettled Science” advertisement about climate science on the editorial pages of the New York Times in March 2000. A January guest editorial in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer  made the same claim. All three seemed to be following the playbook of the tobacco industry after scientists discovered that their products cause cancer. When a threat to their interests arises from the scientific community, they declare “there are always two sides to a case,” and then call for more study of the matter before action is taken.

I think it’s shortsighted to cede the public stage to the anti-science forces in the naive hope that no one will pay attention to them.

South African President Thabo Mbeki’s support for AIDS dissent eight years ago is a similar case. Like global warming skepticism, this assault on the science of HIV/AIDS research ingeniously turned the scientific community’s values against it by drawing on the importance of rational open debate, a skeptical attitude, and the need for continued research.

Mbeki alleged that the mainstream scientific community branded scientists who questioned the causal link between HIV and AIDS as “dangerous and discredited, with whom nobody, including ourselves, should communicate.” Claiming the successful dissident’s authority in post-apartheid South Africa, Mbeki condemned the mainstream scientific community for occupying “the frontline in the campaign of intellectual intimidation and terrorism which argues that the only freedom we have is to agree with what they decree to be established scientific truths.”

A parallel case is made by the intelligent design movement in conjunction with its “teach the controversy” campaign against evolutionary biology. Ben Stein’s movie, "Expelled," portrays scientists as participating in a vast conspiracy to silence anyone who questions  Darwinian orthodoxy.

This movie promises to be the most extreme application of the intelligent design movement’s wedge strategy to break the supremacy of evolutionary theory in contemporary science. Just as a wedge can be set into a chink in a solid structure and, with the careful application of some concentrated force, will split that structure to pieces, so too do the producers of this movie hope  it can break the scientific community and allow for a change in how science is taught. Of course, any biologist claim that there is no scientific controversy merely feeds the conspiracy theory.

In light of this difficulty, some have suggested that the best response to manufactured controversy is no response at all. They say that countering such nonsense merely gives these modern-day sophists publicity and enables their continued efforts to reopen debate on settled science. I understand this impulse to remain silent in the face of foolishness, but as a professor of rhetoric, I think it’s shortsighted to cede the public stage to the anti-science forces in the naive hope that no one will pay attention to them.

Ever since the field of rhetoric was born, there have been those who misuse the power of persuasion to mislead public audiences, and it has been only through vigilant counter-persuasion that such deception has been overcome.

The ancient sophists, or “wise men” (wise guys?) who taught the new art of rhetoric to those who would pay their fee in the 5^th century B.C., included Gorgias, who was said to have boasted that he could persuade the multitude to ignore the expert and listen to him instead, and Protagoras, who claimed that there are always two sides to a case, and it’s the sophist’s job to make the worse case appear the stronger. It was to oppose this kind of deception that Aristotle codified the art of rhetoric in his treatise by that title. He recognized that before lay audiences “not even the possession of the exactest knowledge” ensures that a speaker will be persuasive, so Aristotle promoted the study of rhetoric so experts could confute those who try to mislead public audiences.

Today’s sophists exploit a public misconception about science, portraying it as a structure of complete consensus built from the steady accumulation of unassailable data.

As a scholar of rhetoric, I have studied some modern cases of manufactured controversy to discover how to best confute these contemporary sophists, and I have come up with some preliminary hypotheses about what makes their arguments so persuasive to a public audience.

First, they skillfully invoke values that are shared by the scientific community and the American public alike, like free speech, skeptical inquiry, and the revolutionary force of new ideas against a repressive orthodoxy. It is difficult to argue against someone who invokes these values without seeming unscientific or un-American.

Second, they exploit a tension between the technical and public spheres in postmodern American life. Highly specialized scientific experts can’t spare the time to engage in careful public communication, and are then surprised when the public distrusts, fears, or opposes them.

Third, today’s sophists exploit a public misconception about science, portraying it as a structure of complete consensus built from the steady accumulation of unassailable data. Any dissent by any scientist is then seen as evidence that there’s no consensus, and thus truth must not have been discovered yet. A more accurate portrayal of science sees it as a debate among a community of experts in which one side outweighs the other in the balance of the argument, and that side is declared the winner. A few skeptics might remain, but they’re vastly outnumbered by the rest, and the democratic process of science moves forward with the collective weight of the majority of expert opinion. Scientists buy into this democratic process when they enter the profession, so that a call for the winning side to share power in the science classroom with the losers, or to continue debating an issue that has already been settled for the vast majority of scientists so that policy makers can delay taking action on their findings, seems particularly undemocratic to most of them.

Aristotle believed that things that are true “have a natural tendency to prevail over their opposites,” but that it takes a good rhetor to ensure that this happens when sophisticated sophistry is on the loose.

I concur. Only by exposing manufactured controversy for what it is, recognizing its rhetorical power and countering those who are skilled at getting the multitude to ignore experts and imagine a scientific debate where none exists, can scientists and their allies use my field. They can achieve what Aristotle envisioned for rhetoric: a study that helps the argument appears and truly is stronger before an audience of nonexperts.

By Paul Steven Miller, Henry M. Jackson Professor of Law, and Dick Thornburgh, former governor of Pennsylvania and former U.S. Attorney General 

A treaty that took effect in May could benefit one quarter of humanity: the 650 million people, as well as their families, who live with disabilities. The U.N. International Treaty on the Rights of People with Disabilities is also the first international treaty that guarantees the rights of such people to equality and self-determination.

People with disabilities are the world’s largest minority, yet the United Nations reports that only 45 countries have disability rights laws.

The U.S. hasn't signed the treaty, either, but it should.

The U.S. pioneered rights for people with disabilities when Congress enacted the Americans with Disabilities Act and other disability rights laws in 1990. As former political officials of two different presidential administrations, one Republican and one Democratic, we strongly believe that the U.S. should ratify this treaty. We believe that it is consistent with American law. It incorporates many of the principles in U.S. law, such as full inclusion and the right to reasonable accommodation. Disability rights are and should always be a non-partisan issue.

In far too many nations, people with disabilities lack rights to vote, work, marry, own property, sign contracts or retain custody of their children. Ninety percent of children with disabilities in less developed nations receive no education. In every nation, people with disabilities are the poorest of the poor. The U.S. is no different: 70 percent of people with disabilities who want to work remain unemployed, despite the fact that such people demonstrate better retention rates than workers without disabilities.

The treaty will change these statistics. Since the U.N. opened the treaty for signatures just over a year ago, 24 nations have ratified it. An additional 103 nations have signed the treaty, signaling intent to ratify it soon, and commitment to refrain from contradicting its purpose and object.

The treaty enshrines important principles that Americans hold dear: non-discrimination, equal protection under the law and the right to autonomy and independent living in integrated, community settings.

The U.S. pioneered rights for people with disabilities when Congress enacted the Americans with Disabilities Act and other disability rights laws in 1990. As former political officials of two different presidential administrations, one Republican and one Democratic, we strongly believe that the U.S. should ratify this treaty. We believe that it is consistent with American law. It incorporates many of the principles in U.S. law, such as full inclusion and the right to reasonable accommodation. Disability rights are and should always be a non-partisan issue.

The U.S. reluctance to sign this treaty has been painful and puzzling to us. The treaty provides important protections, beyond the specific protections of the American law, which level the playing field for people with disabilities. And we should not be so proud as to think we cannot learn from other countries about even better opportunities for people with disabilities.

We know that our society is richer, and that everyone benefits from including people with disabilities in schools, housing, workplaces, voting booths, houses of worship, public accommodations and every other sphere of life.

Countries that ratify the Convention agree to set up independent monitoring bodies to track treaty compliance, which would help us identify reforms we need to get more Americans with disabilities into the workplace, and to dismantle barriers to independent living in integrated and accessible housing.

Ratification would also help the U.S. stop disability discrimination around the world, thus helping us reclaim our role as champions of human rights. It would help the U.S. focus world attention on those whose rights have been ignored far too long.

By Walter Williams, UW emeritus professor of public affairs, and Bryan Jones, UW professor of political science 

As the United States teeters on the verge of recession, the emerging view is that the branches of government responded with notable swiftness to enact an economic stimulus package. Glowing accounts of the striking bipartisanship came forth from the president and congressional leaders of both political parties as well as mainstream analysts.

Quick, however, is not necessarily good. The stimulus package does not come close to bringing the biggest bang for the buck, despite widespread agreement among respected economists across the political spectrum about the most effective options.

One-third of the costs go for a business tax break that cannot help, while two options rejected by the Bush Republicans -- extending the unemployment benefits and increasing food stamps -- are actually six times more effective in stimulating economic activity per dollar of costs than the costly business tax break.

Rather than see the stimulus package as a political and economic success, we see it as a mark of the continued failure of the political system to face problems and design policies directed at ameliorating them.

First, the experience with the economic stimulus package shows clearly that the federal government now lacks the capacity to cope with the massive economic problems that are pushing the nation toward second-class economic status.

Second, the source of this inability is the unshakeable ideological belief of President Bush and the Republican Party that income tax cuts are the cure-all for the nation's economic problems. This core belief led to a flawed stimulus package, a repeat of the bad logic leading to the administration's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.

Third, the 2008 legislation has many of the same flaws as the earlier tax cuts that put the U.S. on the path toward fiscal insolvency, left the middle class in the worst financial straits in the post-World War II era, and brought the widest income inequality since the 1920s-effects we document clearly in our new book, "The Politics of Bad Ideas: The Great Tax Cut Delusion and the Decline of Good Government in America."

We watched in horror as the president and Congress traveled the same road to pass the ineffective economic stimulus package. It seems like we are seeing the movie sequel titled TAX CUT DISASTER III.

As in the first two movies, the ideological commitment to the Great Tax Cut Delusion has been buttressed by Bush's refusal to look at plain evidence of how severely the 2001 and 2003 income tax cuts damaged the fiscal balance sheet of the nation and the health of its economy. This intransigence has been aided and abetted by the continuing reluctance of the congressional Democrats to take a stand against Bush's destructive tax cuts.

A stimulus package similar to the final bill had been negotiated in the House by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and the House Republican leader John A. Boehner of Ohio. It provided full rebates for most tax filers of $600 for individuals up to $75,000 of income, $1,200 for couples up to $150,000 and $300 per child.

Those earning at least $3,000 a year but paying no income taxes receive $300 per individual and $600 per couple. The main business tax cut allows for "accelerated depreciation."

There is widespread agreement among respected economists of different political persuasions on the impact of available options for stimulating the economy.

Mark Landi, the chief economist of Economy.com, has assessed various tax and spending changes by determining the increased economic activity per dollar of cost. The greater the increase in economic activity for each $1 of outlay, the greater will be the effectiveness.

Landi found the most effective option to be a temporary increase in food stamp benefits that yields $1.73 additional economic activity per dollar of cost. A close second is extending unemployment benefits at $1.64 in increased activity for each $1 paid to the eligible unemployed.

The director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Peter Orszag, observed: "Food stamp and unemployment benefits can affect spending after two months, rebates would affect spending at the end of 2008." The Congressional Budget Office rated options on three criteria: cost-effectiveness, timeliness and certainty of effect. Unemployment benefits and food stamps were the only options to win CBO's highest rating as an effective stimulus in all three categories. No other option received the top rating in more than one category.

Accelerated depreciation write-offs -- the main tax cut for business in both the House and Senate --yields $0.27 in economic activity per dollar of tax cut. Thus, its impact per dollar of cost generates one-sixth as much economic activity as that of a dollar in food stamps or unemployment benefits. And the tax cuts cannot be implemented until late spring or summer at the earliest, while unemployment insurance and food stamps could have an effect almost immediately.

Democrats and Republicans made important trade offs in the House package. But the latter shaped the package both by forcing through the roughly $50 billion for business and blocking any benefits for food stamp and unemployment insurance benefits. The $50 billion for benefits to business that the Republicans demanded as the "price" for their support of the stimulus package rendered the $150 billion legislation marginally effective at best.

Senate Democrats lost in their fight for food stamps and unemployment insurance. The GOP won again in the case of a $300 payment to 20 million Social Security recipients and 250,000 disabled veterans after strong protests from the aged and veterans lobbies. The House quickly agreed to add a $300 rebate to the bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, sought to bluff the Republicans. He threatened to put up for vote only the Senate bill that included unemployment insurance benefits and the House legislation without the $300 rebates for Social Security recipients and disabled veterans. But he backed down and the Republicans added not only the $300 tax rebates but an amendment disqualifying illegal immigrants.

One can view the legislation as a victory over gridlock and partisan bickering. The stimulus package gained wide praise as a good bill mainly because it seemed to feature the kind of hard work and compromise by the two parties that had vanished in the Bush presidency. Yet the final legislation is an overwhelming victory for Bush's tax cut ideology over sane economic reasoning.

Why did the Republicans refuse to use the two most effective options developed by highly reputable experts? We can find no explanation in any of the usual suspects: The package was not sensibly designed to stimulate the economy, and, if politicians are held accountable for economic performance, it was not designed to help them stay in office.

In particular, Republican true believers refused to deviate from what the authors call "The Great Tax Delusion," in which tax cuts are the optimum fix for economic ills whatever the "facts on the ground."

Republican tax cut dogma rules out budget expenditures such as unemployment benefits or any other highly effective spending programs on ideological grounds alone. In contrast, the belief in the force of business incentives to stimulate investment is impervious to either economic reasoning or sound evidence showing how poorly this option works.

A September 2007 report by the major Wall Street investment firm of Goldman-Sachs made the point that companies invest money on hand if the expected returns are likely to exceed the costs of a new project, "and that usually requires growth in demand strong enough to put pressure on existing resources."

In the case at hand, it does not take training in graduate level economics, only a little common sense, to figure out that the declining demand in the current downturn makes investments unattractive even if funds are available.

Research gave the same answer. In their Federal Reserve study of the effects of the accelerated depreciation incentives initiated in 2002 and increased in 2003 to stimulate the weak economy, the researchers found "only a very limited impact" at best on new investment.

The Democrats did force the Republicans to improve the economic stimulus package somewhat, but The Great Tax Delusion still dominated the final legislation. Despite this, the economic stimulus package -- a replay of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts that warrants the label TAX CUT DISASTER III --won praise as the kind of bipartisanship needed in the federal government.

Putting the business benefits in the final legislation is the opposite of real bipartisanship. Bush intransigence and the Democrats timidity produced a bill that had none of highly effective stimulus options and wasted one-third of the total funds on business benefits shown to be ineffective by economic reasoning and research on a similar earlier effort.

The almost-uniform praise by the chattering classes and the press of a process that led to a flawed economic stimulus legislation as exemplary bipartisanship is deeply disturbing, bordering on a national delusion.

Rather than coming to praise this process, we'd like to bury it. It is just one more depressing example that the federal government lacks the will to cope with the major economic problems that threaten the United States.

For seven years, the Bush's tax cut ideology has trumped reality, harmed the nation's economy and its governing institutions, and pushed the middle class into the worst financial mess since the Great Depression.

The Great Tax Cut Delusion and its false promise of a free lunch for the American people must be cast aside as a patent medicine dangerous for the nation's health. If not, we risk speeding rapidly toward a second tier economy and a vanishing middle class.

"False Promise of Free Lunch," by UW Professors Walter Williams and Bryan Jones, posted Friday, March 21 to blogs.uwnews.org. UW news blogs is a service of uwnews.org, the University of Washington Office of News and Information.

by David Domke, professor of communication and head of journalism

A week ago, a group of University of Washington students traveled to Texas for five days to cover the "primacaucus" — a complicated combination of primary voting and caucusing that had the potential to end both the Democratic and Republican presidential contests on Tuesday, March 4. We thought it would be a grand learning experience, perhaps even a historic one. It was that and more: We saw the future of political journalism in America.

Along the way, we burned a shoe, were embraced by the Houston gay and lesbian community, went to church several times, met feminist icon Gloria Steinem and watched her words get twisted, saw the Clinton campaign literally turn things around overnight, experienced moments of mountaintop exhilaration as well as sleep-deprived exhaustion, and, on the final day, I — the professor on this wild ride — landed in the hospital, from which I am writing via wireless connection.

This is Journalism 2025. And it is good.

The trip to Texas was part of a last push of reporting on the presidential campaign for 16 students who, in recent weeks, had also covered contests in Idaho and Washington. Our forum has been a Web site called Seattlepoliticore, and we've sought to mix traditional reporting practices of verified facts and vetted sources with the kind of first-person commentary common among Internet bloggers.

When we created our site in early February, the students wondered if anyone would read it. A month later, they've posted hundreds of stories, photos, and videos on our site and also been invited to provide material to The Seattle Times, the Idaho Statesman, The Huffington Post, Crosscut, the popular "Texas on the Potomac" political blog of the Houston Chronicle, Texas' largest newspaper, and on the election section of KIRO-AM's Web site. The volume of output by the students has surpassed anything I envisioned and propelled them to become markedly better journalists.

Further, countless others began linking to Seattlepoliticore, and we found our content picked up by bloggers and traditional news outlets from New York to Miami to San Francisco to even Europe. Traffic increased so much and so fast that the site crashed twice within the span of a few days — both times engendering a mixture of unabashed joy and anxiety among the students. More than once while in Texas, the students interviewed people who said they had read things we had written, which made even their prof proud.

In today's politics and media environment, one can be part of the conversation within minutes and on a shoestring budget. We're proof of that.

For example, by the time we stepped off the plane in Texas, we were equipped with a web of contacts — aided by campaign staffers' always-on availability via cell phones and Blackberries, social networking sites such as Facebook, numerous blogs, and the online presence of news organizations. We split into teams and spent days traveling between Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Waco, and other points. The students took with them cell phones, laptops, pocket-size digital cameras, and wireless network cards (the latter have been the envy of several traditional reporters over the past month), which allowed me to talk with them roughly every few minutes, give or take a minute. I may not have been standing next to them, but I was with them every step.

One of those steps burned a hole in student Will Mari's shoe. He and two classmates were in East Austin, interviewing people at an Obama neighborhood event. While talking with the evening's burger-flipper, Obama volunteer Rudy Malveaux, Mari smelled burnt rubber. He looked down and noted that he was standing on a red-hot barbecue coal. He calmly stamped it out and kept reporting. When you've been in a van going 100 mph to get to a caucus in Idaho and now traveled across the country into the heart of Texas, you don't let a little shoe-fire stop you. But you don't disregard it entirely, either. Instead, Mari wrote it into his coverage of the event, providing a personalized, on-the-scene report that typifies journalistic blogging.

The following day, three other students headed to Houston to cover some campaign door-knocking. En route, they called a local contact (developed through a blog forum prior to arrival in state), who suggested the trio head to Montrose, a gathering place for gays and lesbians. The students found the community via GPS, walked into a coffee shop, and started asking about the locals' political leanings.

Soon they were talking with an out-of-state volunteer who was a former Montana state representative who had opposed gay rights and now was an Obama delegate living in Bellingham. Interesting stuff.

But wait, there's more: The volunteer had been Tom Lee when he lived in Montana but now identified as Rebekah Lee. For student journalists down from Seattle, this was like manna from heaven. But it also required sensitivity and top-to-bottom reporting. Time on the Internet verified some claims, and then the students went old school. They called the Montana Legislative Services Division in Helena and had the librarians fax information about the former representative. They tracked down other sources in Montana. Their initiative got them a first-rate story, which is now being picked up around the Web.

The students talked to so many people in Montrose — what the locals called "the gayborhood" — that by the time they left, they were honorary members: The coffee shop packed them food for the road, and there were hugs all around.

For good or for bad, this wasn't detached, objective reporting. But the end result was journalism featured in the mainstream San Francisco Chronicle's blog and alternative outlet The Advocate. Hitting the sweet spot of both is unusual these days but will be common in tomorrow's political journalism.

Hoping to feel similar Houston love, five other students spent Sunday morning, March 2, in church there. Actually, it was multiple churches. Some went to Joel Osteen's mammoth Lakewood Church — just missing Bill and Chelsea Clinton, who had come unannounced to an earlier service. Some went to hear Republican Party candidate Mike Huckabee at a nearby church, and yet others went to Antioch Missionary Baptist Church, a predominantly African-American congregation. The Houston Chronicle featured two of these pieces (here and here; the third is here), and its Washington, D.C., bureau chief, Richard Dunham, told me, "I think you have more people covering the primary than we do." That's what's possible in a new-media environment in which institutions are no longer as important as initiative, and costs are lower than ever.

Meanwhile, in Austin, a contact tipped us off that Gloria Steinem would be speaking, without fanfare, at a local eatery. Two of the students joined a word-of-mouth crowd of 200 or so. Both students took the cue and wrote about it in introspective terms (here and here).

The institutional press took an entirely different approach: It focused on a couple sentences and then offered a misreading of them.

Specifically, the only other reporter (apparently) in the room, from The New York Observer, reported that Steinem had said, "Suppose John McCain had been Joan McCain and Joan McCain had got captured, shot down and been a POW for eight years. [The media would ask], 'What did you do wrong to get captured? What terrible things did you do while you were there as a captive for eight years?'" The words were correct, but the headline over-reached and triggered a firestorm in which Steinem — and by extension the Clinton campaign — was portrayed as mocking McCain's military history.

But then one of the UW students in attendance, Devon Mills, found something interesting when unpacking her gear upon return to Seattle. She had shot three minutes of video during Steinem's address — and she just happened to catch the pivotal words. When she watched the video, she saw that media and pundits had badly misread Steinem's comments. I agreed. So we jointly posted a piece on Seattlepoliticore in which we do what online journalism and bloggers uniquely do: offer a forum in which anyone, anytime, from almost anywhere, can correct the public record. Don't believe us? Fine. Read what we say, watch the video, and join the conversation. That's the future of political journalism.

It's a dynamic that the Clinton campaign has seemingly come to realize, late but perhaps just soon enough. For almost a month, across Idaho and Washington, the campaign's on-the-ground staffers had kept Seattlepoliticore's student journalists at arm's length. Never dismissive, just not welcoming. In contrast, the Obama campaign and the Republican candidates took our phone calls, returned our e-mails, invited us to see their shops. It was a potent contrast that I wrote about on Crosscut. When we did our advance mapping of contacts in Texas, the pattern remained. And on day one, when we were on the ground in the state, the story was the same. But then, just before we wrote the "They Simply Don't Get It" story, the Clinton campaign got it.

On Friday morning, Feb. 29, the Clinton campaign headquarters in Austin had no time for the students, while the Obama office fed us local story angles. But that evening, at dueling rallies in San Antonio, the Clinton campaign treated us with the same respect and access as the Obama camp. The following morning, staffers at the Clinton H.Q. in Austin greeted the students warmly, invited them in, introduced them to people who came through the doors, fed them story ideas, fed them literally, and invited us to see the campaign through their eyes. The shift in posture toward us was astounding — and it stayed like that through the March 4 voting.

Something profound had changed. Perhaps it was a genuine change of heart, a sense of optimism in the campaign's progress against Obama, a renewed energy, a belief that Tuesday really was Hillary's last stand, or a recognition that how one treats the press actually shapes how the press covers the candidate. Regardless, if it continues, I think it's a shift that opens up possibilities for Clinton's candidacy that were unthinkable just a few weeks ago. And it also points to the realities of the new media landscape.

Everyone who walks through the door today is a journalist. She or he might not be driving a news van or carrying a shoulder camera and, indeed, is far more likely to carry a MacBook than a reporter's notebook. It is unlikely to be someone who is 60, white, and male; instead we will see a rainbow of ethnicity, gender, age, and sexual orientation. Video storytelling will be as important as — perhaps more than — written words. Digital media are the new printing press. They allow people to tell stories 24/7/365.

That's what I'm doing as I write this in a hospital room in Austin, which is where I arrived on the morning of March 4 after realizing I had contracted a nasty-but-treatable bacterial infection in my leg. From my hospital bed, with my trusty cell phone and laptop, I went to work with my students covering the day's primacaucus. They were out talking to people, and I was not standing next to them, but I was with them every step. This piece is dedicated to them. They have boldly brought this 40-year-old, old-school reporter into the 21st century of political journalism. The future belongs to the fearless.

"High Tex: A new generation covers the campaign its own way," by UW Professor David Domke, posted Monday, March 10 to blogs.uwnews.org. UW news blogs is a service of uwnews.org, the University of Washington Office of News and Information.

by David Domke, professor of communication and head of journalism and Kevin Coe, doctoral student at the University of Illinois    

On Tuesday, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee finally gave up on his bid to win the GOP presidential nomination. Let us be among the first to say good riddance.

Huckabee’s long-shot campaign should be remembered for what it was at its core: an unprecedented and dangerous implementation of “the God strategy.” Again and again, Huckabee showed he was willing, even eager, to use religious faith as a political weapon.

Early in the campaign, Huckabee mobilized supporters in Iowa by running an ad touting himself as a “Christian leader” and saying “faith doesn’t just influence me, it really defines me.” The implied contrast to Mitt Romney, a Mormon, was hardly subtle.

Then, as he gained ground on Romney, Huckabee ducked and dodged when reporters asked if he thought Mormonism was a religion or a cult. He eventually affirmed in a New York Times story that Mormonism was indeed a religion—the one that “believe[s] that Jesus and the devil are brothers,” right? Huckabee apologized to Romney for the remark, but the desired damage was done.

So distasteful were Huckabee’s tactics that several prominent commentators, even some within the conservative fold, voiced criticism. Peggy Noonan questioned whether Ronald Reagan could survive the de facto religious test being imposed on candidates, and Charles Krauthammer correctly labeled Huckabee’s “exploitation of religious differences for political gain” as “un-American.”

Perhaps Huckabee just couldn’t help himself; maybe he truly believed that he was an agent of God. When he finally gained ground in the polls, after struggling for the first several months of the campaign, he suggested his rise was due to divine intervention:

“There’s only one explanation for it, and it’s not a human one. It’s the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of five thousand people.”

Even as his hopes of winning the nomination dimmed, Huckabee kept the faith. In February he told the Conservative Political Action Conference that he would continue his campaign, saying: “I didn’t major in math, I majored in miracles, and I still believe in them.”

There is an uncomfortable and all too familiar arrogance in a politician who believes that God is on his side. In a world where millions are denied sovereignty, where poverty and disease are widespread, where people regularly kill each other because of their differing religious views, one would like to think that God has more important things to worry about than getting out the Huckabee vote.

Huckabee’s insistence on making his run for the presidency a faith-based crusade was all the more disquieting because of its implications for policy. In January, Huckabee called for the U.S. Constitution to be changed to conform to his own religious views:

“[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that’s what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards.”

Altering the Constitution based on one narrow interpretation of the Bible is, of course, exactly what the Founding Fathers sought to avoid.

And, after all of this—after doing absolutely everything possible to make religion the centerpiece of his campaign—Huckabee still had the gall to criticize those few journalists who actually scrutinized what his religious views might mean to his presidency. In February, he had this to say to the Christian Science Monitor:

“There has been an attempt to ghettoize me for a very small part of my biography. The last time I was in the pulpit was 1991.”

Last in the pulpit in 1991; last in a political campaign in 2008. God willing, it will stay that way—for the good of faith and the good of the American experiment in democracy.

By Bryan Jones, UW professor of political science

Back again is that successful Seattle company, Washington Mutual.  I noted here not long ago that WaMu paid its executives bonuses even though they lost almost two-thirds of the company's value (assessed by its stock price) during the year.  Today a Wall Street Journal article reports that the company has devised a new strategy for giving its executives bonuses that holds them harmless for losses involving the bad mortgage loans they authorized. 

Socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor....

By Kathy Gill, UW senior lecturer in the Master of Communication in Digital Media Program

Super-Delegate System By Design
If I were an elected Democrat -- governor or other statewide officer, senator or representative -- I'm not sure what I'd make of the current nomination competition between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

But I'm pretty darn sure that this contest is almost exactly what the Democratic Party leadership was thinking of when it established the super delegate system in 1984. The Party had come off of bruising battles, internally (1968, Humphrey v McCarthy; 1980, Carter v Kennedy) and in the general election (1972, McGovern v Nixon), and had survived the nomination of a little-known-outsider (1976, Carter v Ford).

The super-delegate system was designed so that party leaders -- those people with Democrat beside their elected name -- would have some control (not as much as initially proposed) over the nominee that they would be supporting by virtue their being in the same party. Their only other option would be to quit the party (a la former vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, D-CT).

Most media reports aren't providing any context or explanation for the super-delegate system. And fewer yet note the differences in the Democratic party proportional allocation of delegates and the Republican winner-take-all system (in most states). By the way, if the Ds used those ("un-democratic") rules, Obama would have the nomination wrapped up.

1984 versus 2008
After the 1980 battle, congressmen, stung by the lack of impact they had been able to have on the 1980 process, and fearing that 1984 would be a repeat, banded together to ask that 2/3 of the Democratic members of the House be elected by the House Caucus as uncommitted voting delegates to the 1984 Convention." (emphasis added)

However, in the current contest, independent and first-time voters are overshadowing Democratic party regulars, at least at the state level. For example, in the Wisconsin primary, first-timers and independents accounted for an astounding 40 percent of those voting in the Democratic contest.

This phenomenon is being touted as "democratic" -- and to the extent that it means more voters participate in the nomination process, that may be true. But it is disenfranchising to those who were party members and leaders before 2008, and it was an unintended consequence of the first reforms in 1968. The use of the "democratic" label reflects general election values (open to all). How many non-political organizations would let just anyone walk in the door and vote on important organization issues? This is why some state parties (Florida's Republicans, for example) require party affiliation long-before the primary.

A Little Democratic Party History : 1968
For those not alive in 1968 -- or those of us who, by virtue of age or interest, don't remember,here we go: back 40 years, to the 1968 convention. Remember, 1968 was marked by the assassination of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. The Vietnam War was dividing the country, and war protesters fought Chicago police in the streets outside the national convention. Images of the fighting were broadcast into the nation's living rooms.

The two main contenders were Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-WI). McCarthy,the anti-war candidate, had the better grassroots organization and had challenged then-President Johnson in the New Hampshire primary. (McCarthy took 40+ percent of the vote; Johnson later pulled out of the race. This is the first race where primaries were pivotal.) Humphrey had the support of established party leaders and his Vietnam policy mirrored that of Johnson. He won the nomination on the first ballot but lost to Nixon in the general election.

If you don't see the parallels between McCarthy and Obama -- an the primary vote in Wisconsin -- I don't know how I can draw you a better picture.

McGovern Leads Reform Effort
One legacy of the convention: an overhaul of how delegates are selected. The McGovern-Fraser Commission (Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection) was charged with recommending how to improve delegate representation for minorities.

Among the recommendations: "registered (emphasis added) Democratic voters should have 'the maximum feasible opportunity to participate in the delegate selection process'." In addition, the Commission recommended that women and minorities be better represented in the delegate mix and that state delegate allocation would be based on a combination of population (the congressional districts) and the Democratic vote in the prior Presidential election (rewarding states that voted Democratic).

The Commission effected change: in 1968, only 13 percent of the delegates were women but in 1972 they added up to 40 percent. Some of those women had defected from the Republican Party.

Perhaps it's not surprising (I feel jaded tonight) that McGovern (SD) would win the 1972 nomination after he led the rules change. Washington's Henry M. (Scoop) Jackson was a distant second. The 1968 election (McGovern v. Richard Nixon) was one of the biggest landslides for Republicans in the 20th century. Nixon carried 49 of the 50 states (but only 60% of the vote).

One unanticipated outcome of the rules change was that states began to shift from the caucus system to the primary system. Open primaries further diluted the influence of party regulars. Another change was a shift from pragmatism (party leaders pick a candidate who might win) to popularity. In 2003, Mark Stricherz wrote this for the Boston Globe:

A final effect of the McGovern commission was to change the rationale of the party's presidential nomination process. The old boss system focused on selecting candidates who would win. As John Bailey, DNC chairman from 1961 to 1968, often said, "I go with the bird that can fly, not with the pigeon that can't get off the ground." But the new primary-based system ends up producing candidates who appeal not only to primary voters but also to various ideological interest groups, not to mention the TV camera.

Flash Forward to 1984
In 1980, Kennedy (MA) challenged incumbent Democratic president Jimmy Carter (GA). The convention battle was nasty, as the Kennedy camp tried to convince Carter's delegates to ignore "Rule 11 (H) that bound delegates to support the candidate in whose name they were elected." The rule was subsequently changed, and this is still the 2008 language: "Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them." (emphasis added)

Elected Democrats -- especially those in the House of Representatives -- were concerned about the selection process. Congressman Gillis Long, Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus told the Hunt Commission:

We in the House, as the last vestige of Democratic control at the national level, believe we have a special responsibility to develop new innovative approaches that respond to our Party’s constituencies.

Gov. Hunt (NC) was one of those who felt party leaders should be allowed to exercise independent judgment:

An equally important step would be to permit a substantial number of party leader and elected official delegates to be selected without requiring a prior declaration of preference. We would then return a measure of decision-making power and discretion to the organized party and increase the incentive it has to offer elected officials for serious involvement. (emphasis added)

Who opposed the super-delegate system? Feminists, because they believed super-delegates would be inordinately white and male,and supporters of Kennedy, because the super-delegate system would favor Vice President Mondale.

Rep. Geraldine Ferraro (NY) brokered the compromise: she cut the number of super delegates in half and "left selection of the Congressional delegates in the hands of the House and Senate Democratic caucuses." Today, the congressional caucuses do not select all the superdelegates, but all are or were elected Democratic officials. In the 2008 contest, there are 3,253 delegates and about 796 super-delegates; 2,026 delegates are needed to win.

Whew! There you have it -- 40 years in a nutshell. I feel like a minority voice, but not only do I understand the rationale for the super delegate system, I don't think it's a bad thing. I agree with Gov. Hunt, and I don't think the super delegates have an undue amount of power. I do, however, dislike the candidate and media pressure on super delegates to declare early.

 by David Domke, professor of communication and head of journalism

Editor's note: David Domke,a UW communication professor and head of journalism, is teaching "Online Journalism and Politics" to a group of undergraduates. Read below about their experiences, and check out their work at http://seattlepoliticore.org

Journalists love to write about the rise and fall of politicians in America. The scribes watch candidates get built up, then chronicle them getting torn down. And, as often as not, journalists don’t just write these storylines — they contribute to them and cement them as well.

Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations today are in descent mode — or at least they seem to be so — and news media post-mortems for her campaign are getting churned out faster than newspaper copies. It was Bill’s fault. It was the lack of planning for a post-Super Tuesday campaign. It was poor allocation of campaign funds. Hillary was too wonky, not enough Bubba. The campaign couldn’t match the grass-roots prowess of Obama’s organization.

My students saw some of these elements up close and personal.

SeattlePoliticore.org
Since early January, a team of 16 journalism students at the University of Washington have been covering the 2008 presidential campaign. We’ve gone new media, adopting a mode of blogging that combines traditional reporting, insights from other news outlets, and first-person commentary. It’s somewhere between the voice of the Seattle Times’ David Postman and the rancor of the blogosphere: part journalism, part pundit, part political-newbies. Altogether, we have presented the campaign through youthful eyes. I’m the students’ prof and head of journalism at the UW.

Our forum has been http://www.seattlepoliticore.org, and our material has gotten play at huffingtonpost, the Seattle Times, the Idaho Statesman, and a number of blogs for which my students write. We’ve covered Democratic Party caucuses in Idaho — the state’s Republicans don’t use this method to select delegates — and the caucuses and primaries of both parties around King County, including Seattle proper and the Eastside. Later this week we head to Texas for our grand finale: coverage of the March 4 primary and caucuses (yes, Texas has both too, challenging Washington’s delegate process for most-screwed-up status). It just might be the last big contest for all of the campaigns.

It’s been a powerful experience, both as students and citizens.

We spent two hours stuck at Snoqualmie Pass working via cell phones and wireless network cards, and then sped to Couer d’ Alene to see Northern Idahoans brave ice and freezing weather to give Barack Obama 80 percent of their caucus votes. We were barred from entering the Republican caucus in the 37^th Legislative District in Rainier Beach — until the Seattle City Library and a sheriff’s deputy intervened — and scored an on-camera interview with governor Christine Gregoire at a Democratic caucus in Magnolia. We saw Mercer Island and Sammamish Dems and Repubs conduct themselves with calm and citizen pride.

And along the way we learned some important things about the Obama and Clinton campaigns. We didn’t set out to learn these pieces — but the campaigns taught us loud and clear.

The Worth of Youth
In our coverage of the Idaho and Washington state caucuses, there emerged a lean toward Obama in my students’ writing about the Democratic contest. This pro-Obama frame occurred for three reasons:

• because some of the students have serious political crushes on him, even though they’ve tried to keep all this in check. He inspires them — and I haven’t sought to squelch this, being a prof interested in helping students become citizens.
• because the class is set up as a blogging class, in which politics meets alternative journalism. So their opinion shines through in places, and this was fine as long as they didn’t cross over into fan mail.
• because the Obama campaign treated us like pros — they called us back within minutes, set up interviews, got us press passes, went out of their way to make the campaign accessible. The Clinton campaign, in contrast, didn’t return a single phone call, didn’t provide press access, and did virtually nothing to encourage our coverage. It was either arrogance or disorganization on the Clinton campaign’s part.

Here’s one example: Jeff Giertz, the Obama team’s on-the-ground point person for the press, answered my phone call when I called to ask about press access to the Obama event on February 8 at Key Arena. He said he’d check on getting passes for my students. I figured I’d wait and see if he actually did.  Within 5 minutes he emailed me back saying it was a go, and he could provide four press passes for my students.  I was impressed.  Clearly he had a vested interest in getting college students into the press area — and he did what a campaign person should do: he treated us well and welcomed us to his candidate. He told me to call him anytime.

So I did.

Lots of my students wanted to cover this event, so I called Giertz back 6 hours later and asked for four more passes.  He said yes. The next day when some of my students arrived at Key Arena after the local police had locked the doors and weren’t allowing anyone in — including reporters from local TV and radio outlets — the students dialed up Giertz and he personally came and vouched for them. He followed up the day after the event with an email checking in on how I thought things went. I don’t for a moment think he did all this just to be a nice guy; he had motives.  Of course. 

Still, it’s telling that I made the exact same pitch about “access to college students” to the Clinton campaign, and they didn’t do anything to facilitate our coverage.  Here’s the voice of one of my students, Jennifer Ware:

I noticed a difference between Obama and Clinton when I first started calling their campaigns in the week before the caucuses. At that point Washington state seemed like an afterthought for the Clinton campaign. Hillary wasn’t anywhere to be found in Seattle, but Obama had a campaign office in the heart of Pioneer Square. He had for months, and everyone there seemed more than happy to help.

When I called the Clinton campaign to ask for a contact at their Washington state campaign office, one staffer tried to tell me that Washington was where their campaign headquarters is. “Yes” she said, “Washington, it’s right next to Virginia.”

Obama had the foresight to know he might need Washington state, whereas Clinton apparently never thought she’d have to reach this far. And a tiny part of me felt excluded.

Every single person I’ve dealt with from the Obama campaign was upbeat, positive and helpful. Even when the press couldn’t initially get into the venue on Friday for Obama’s speech, and a reporter from the Seattle Times was yelling at one of the volunteers, she handled it with poise and kindness. It was almost so good it looked staged, but she was real. She said, “I’m just a volunteer from Shoreline, I’ve never done this before, please bear with me.” Even as Obama volunteers managed mobs of people at Key Arena, they did it with purpose, not burden.

And I think it’s because they feel part of a movement.

John McCain spoke in Seattle [the same day] to about 500 people at the Westin Hotel’s conference room. Clinton spoke to a gathering of 5000 at a waterfront pier [on February 7]. Obama spoke at Key Arena, home to the Seattle Supersonics, it seats 18,000 and it wasn’t nearly big enough. People were sitting on the stairs, in the aisles. Seasoned reporters were smiling and nodding softly as he spoke. Some people had tears in their eyes when he came on stage. There’s all kinds of spin out there, but you simply can’t spin those numbers. Or the stark contrast to the others in the race.

When my students had trouble reaching the Clinton campaign in the run-up to the caucuses, I made a call to her national office. I figured that maybe they’d respond to a UW professor better than a student — which would be an error on their part, but still one that we might use to help our coverage.  I told them we were having trouble reaching people — anyone — on the ground in WA state with the Clinton campaign, and I implored them to make sure my request on behalf of my students for press access to Clinton’s event in Seattle received a response.  They assured me I’d hear from them. I emphasized my point a second time.  They kindly repeated that I would certainly hear from people on the ground here.

I’m still waiting for that call.

The Obama and Clinton campaigns weren’t the only ones to come to town. On the Republican Party side, Ron Paul held a rally on the UW campus. Janet Huckabee held a rally at Northwest College and her campaign team reached out to my students covering her husband’s candidacy — returning calls and making sure they had press access. McCain’s campaign aides went out of their way to let my students know about his press event at the Westin, and to get them in. For those scoring at home, five presidential campaigns came to town — and four reached out to my students, treating them like what they are: journalists and citizens.

It seems that the take-home point here is this: the Clinton campaign has made the case that Obama is nothing but rhetoric; he’s supposedly all words, while she’s all action. Our experiences showed us that their campaigns — at least in Seattle — were exactly the opposite. In their treatment of my students, Clinton’s campaign was all talk, while Obama’s was all walk.

It suggests to me that the Obama campaign’s appeal to younger people is not just because of Obama himself. It’s a campaign that treats young people like full adults. As a college prof, I’ve got to give them props. They got my attention — and my students, and the many young people who have been reading our website. And across Washington state, Obama crushed Clinton, defeating her in every county in the state. It’s been a pattern repeated in every contest since.

By Michael K. Honey, Haley Professor of Humanities

Northern Illinois University is my alma mater. That's where I got my PhD, and the buildings shown on the news are my old haunts. NIU is a small, almost intimate campus, with the main buildings in a cluster. My niece just went there to do research at the library for her PhD. DeKalb is a semi-rural, almost quaint town, built as the railroads moved west. The flying ear of corn along the roadside signals the hybrid DeKalb corn, and maybe some of you have seen that in the Midwest farm country. It is horrifying and deeply saddening that another college massacre would occur here. On April 8, 1968, after Martin Luther King was shot in Memphis, his widow, Coretta Scott King, wondered how long "before we can have a free and true and peaceful society...how long will it take?"

by Michael Honey, UW Tacoma professor of history and labor studies

Editor's note:  Julian Bond, long-time leader in the American civil rights movement, spoke at several University of Washington gatherings on Feb. 6.

I remember Julian Bond first of all as that eloquent advocate of the politics of hope elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1965. He and his comrades in the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee had begun breaking down white supremacy by putting their bodies on the line. Because of his outspoken opposition to the Vietnam war, Bond's constituents had to elect him three times before whites in the legislature would let him take his seat. It was SNCC that started the refrain, “Hell no, we won’t go.”

My long-time progressive Seattle friend, Lyle Mercer, reminded me last night that the Washington legislature refused to seat someone in the 1930s because they suspected him of being a Communist. Likewise, the schools and various employers refused to hire Lyle because he had been the co-chair of the UW students for Wallace during the Progressive Party effort of 1948. Radicals always have a hard way to go.

Julian Bond served 20 years in the legislature, was nominated for Vice-President in 1968, and has been a voice speaking truth to power most of my adult life. I think of him as a truth-telling, pragmatic radical, always looking for and finding some path to change. At his UW talk, he inveighed against the Republican Supreme Court which has shattered our commitment to desegregation and the 14^th Amendment by claiming that all operations of government must be color blind. “The ludicrous has become law,” he said. “There are no non-racial remedies to racial discrimination.”

In 1968, the Kerner Commission told us we are evolving into two societies, “one white, and one black, separate and unequal.” Things in some ways have gotten so much better, but most whites still don’t understand that due to the heritage of slavery and segregation, white privilege still counts, it is inherited whether you want it or not. Hence, “as long as race counts, we’ve got to count race,” Bond said.

He cited a litany of ways in which the life chances of the majority of African Americans have shrunk under the Bush regime, at the same time as new paths to prosperity have opened up to a significant group of better-educated African Americans. And while we spend $720 million a day for a fiasco in Iraq, poverty rises in America to the highest level in the developed world. In this dichotomous world, the future is one of both promise and peril, Bond said.

By 2050, Hispanics and African Americans will make up 40 percent of the U.S. electorate. In that context, we can all benefit from the movement’s combination of tactics, from litigation, organization, mobilization. The future is about what all and each of us will and can do to make a better world.

Bond gave a similar message to a group of about 50 graduate students earlier in the day, convened by the Graduate Opportunities and Achievement Program, or GOMAP, under the always delightful and able organizing of Yvette Moy.  James Banks, Nikhil Singh, the students and I joined in an earnest conversation about the future, and we found much to be hopeful about.

Should the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People change its name? When we say colored people, said Bond, we take into account that all people are colored, in our various hues, and that all people of good will are welcome. Everyone can do something, make some choice, to give hope. Yes, we can join together to dig out of the horrific, disastrous mess created in the last seven years by a fundamentally dishonest, militaristic, and wrong-headed regime.

He also said one problem we have is we are falling back on leaders, but what we need in addition is organizers, and mass movements. "Engage your body in social change."

It was a good message to hear in a year when it seems, at last, there may be something to be hopeful about in taking the national political apparatus back from extremist reactionaries who would like to turn government into a profit-making enterprise for their friends, and leave the rest of us to fend for ourselves.

Fittingly, Bond ended his public lecture with a grand quote from the Socialist Party labor advocate, Eugene Debs, imprisoned for refusing to support World War I. On the eve of political primaries and caucuses, Julian Bond gave us a moment to savor a few words of reflection from one of the masters of don’t-give-up, stay-in-the-fight, be-pragmatic, but-don’t-lose-your faith exponents of hope. It reminded me of the best ideals this country has to offer, which come deeply from the history of our own struggles for freedom.

by David Domke, UW professor of communication and head of journalism

Editor's note: David Domke, UW communication professor and head of journalism, is teaching "Online Journalism and Politics" to a group of undergraduates.

They're blogging at seattlepoliticore.org, but he's also blogged at dailykos.com, billed as a progressive community blog. Here's his Daily Kos posting from Saturday evening after the Washington state caucuses:

This is how a team of 16 students at the University of Washington saw Democratic and Republican caucuses around King County on Saturday.  King County includes heavily-blue Seattle and the purple Eastside of Lake Washington, which includes Microsoft-dominated Redmond.

We liveblogged the Seattle-area caucuses at seattlepoliticore.org. I'm the students' prof and head of journalism at the UW. The site's content is part journalism, part pundit, part political-newbies. Altogether, the site presents these caucuses through youthful eyes.

Along the way we learned something important about the Obama and Clinton campaigns. We didn't set out to learn this -- but the campaigns taught us loud and clear.

Know this when looking at the site: there is a lean toward Obama in the coverage. This occurred for three reasons:

1. because the students have serious crushes on him, even though they've tried to keep all this in check. 

1. because the class is set up as a blogging class, in which politics meets alternative journalism. So their opinion shines through in places.

1. because the Obama campaign treated us like pros -- they called us back within minutes, set up interviews, got us press passes, went out of their way to make the campaign accessible. The Clinton campaign, in contrast, didn't return a single phone call, didn't provide press access, and did virtually nothing to encourage our coverage. It was either arrogance or disorganization on the Clinton camapign's part.

Here's one example: Jeff Giertz, the Obama team's on-the-ground point person for the press, answered my phone call when I called to ask about press access to the Obama event Friday at Key Arena. He said he'd check on getting passes for my students. I figured I'd wait and see if he actually did.  Within 5 minutes he emailed me back saying it was a go, and he could provide 4 press passes for my students.  I was impressed.  Clearly he had a vested interest in getting college students into the press area -- and he did what a campaign person should do: he treated us well and welcomed us to his candidate. He told me to call him anytime.

So I did.

I called back 6 hours later and asked for 4 more passes.  He said yes. The next day when some of my students arrived at Key Arena after the local police had locked the doors and weren't allowing anyone in, the students called Giertz and he personally came and vouched for them. He followed up today with an email checking in on how things went, from my perspective. I don't for a moment think he's doing all this just to be a nice guy; he's got motives.  Of course. 

Still, it's telling that I made the exact same pitch about "access to college students" to the Clinton campaign, and they didn't do anything to facilitate our coverage.  When I talked to the press folks at the national office, I told them we were having trouble reaching people -- anyone -- on the ground in WA state with the Clinton campaign, and I implored them to make sure my request on behalf of my students for press access to Clinton's event Thursday night in Seattle received a response.  They assured me I'd hear from them.

I'm still waiting for that call.

My point here is this: the Obama campaign's appeal to younger people is not just because of Obama himself. It's a campaign that treats young people like full adults. As a college prof, I've got to give them props. They got my attention -- and my students, and the many young people who have been reading our website. And tonight, across Washington state, Obama is crushing Clinton, 68-31 with 96% of caucus precincts reporting.

UPDATE: On the recommended list???  You just gave my students another reason to think politics and their voices aren't a waste of time. Thank you.

Here's the voice of one of my students.  A couple weeks ago she wrote this. This morning she sent me these thoughts:

I noticed a difference between Obama and Clinton when I first started my project calling their campaigns. At that point Washington state seemed like an afterthought for the Clinton campaign. Hillary wasn't anywhere to be found in Seattle, but Obama had a campaign office in the heart of Pioneer Square, a Seattle centerplace. He had for months, and everyone there seemed more than happy to help.

When I called the Clinton campaign to ask for a contact at their Washington state campaign office, one staffer tried to tell me that Washington was where their campaign headquarters is. "Yes" she said, "Washington, it's right next to Virginia."

Obama had the foresight to know he might need Washington state, whereas Clinton never thought she'd have to reach this far. And a tiny part of me felt excluded.

Every single person I've dealt with from the Obama campaign has been upbeat, positive and helpful. Even when the press couldn't initially get into the venue on Friday for Obama's speech, and a reporter from the Seattle Times was yelling at one of the volunteers, she handled it with poise and kindness. It was almost so good it looked staged, but she was real. She said, "I'm just a volunteer from Shoreline, I've never done this before, please bear with me." Even as Obama volunteers managed mobs of people at Key Arena, they did it with purpose, not burden.

And I think it's because they feel part of a movement.

John McCain spoke in Seattle to about 50 500 people at the Westin Hotel's conference room. Clinton spoke to a gathering of 5000 at a waterfront pier. Obama spoke at Key Arena, home to the Seattle Supersonics, it seats 18,000 and it wasn't nearly big enough. People were sitting on the stairs, in the aisles. Seasoned reporters were smiling and nodding softly as he spoke. Some people had tears in their eyes when he came on stage. There's all kinds of spin out there, but you simply can't spin those numbers. Or the stark contrast to the others in the race.

And here's the voice of another student in my class, from a comment in this diary thread:

If [the Clinton campaign] cared, they could have done more...  Read my diary I wrote this morning. After covering the Obama press conference that morning, we rushed to Key Arena, but the doors were already closed. The police would not let us in, however one call to Jeff from the Obama campaign, and not only did we get in, but he personally came out and got us.  Hillary's campaign didn't even give us the chance. If she care[s] about youth, she could have done something...anything...seriously, anything...

by mrsellers on Sun Feb 10, 2008 at 01:21:01 AM PST

One other thing, to be fair to all in this race: there were three other campaigns that came to Seattle this past week -- all on the Republican side. Ron Paul held a rally on the UW campus. Janet Huckabee held a rally at Northwest College and her campaign team reached out to my students covering her husband's candidacy. McCain's campaign aides went out of their way to let my students know about a press event, and to get them in.

To summarize, then: 5 campaigns came to town -- and 4 reached out to my students. I applaud those that did, and scratch my head over the one that didn't.

By John Gastil, UW professor of communication

This Saturday, February 9, Washington voters will participate in Democratic and Republican caucuses to select delegates in each party’s Presidential election. The caucuses have potential to be a remarkable campaign event, in which people meet fellow citizens—neighbors, even—face-to-face to discuss the candidates and issues of the moment. It's a lively scene.

The only problem is, it’s deceptive.

The truth is that the caucus is just a complicated method of head-counting. At best, caucuses are a ritualistic exercise in counting where people’s shoes end up on a gym floor. At worst, they can devolve into shouting and intimidation competitions, as they did at times in Nevada.

The image of a reflective, careful electorate is as false for a caucus as for a primary. The dominant narrative in the Democratic election is “change” (Obama) versus “experience” (Clinton), despite the fact that either candidate would be a radical change, and both have only a modest amount of experience in government.

More striking is that younger voters and African-Americans are flocking to Obama while older voters and women are lining up for Clinton, suggesting more of a demographic-matching process than careful deliberation.

On the Republican side, the press have declared McCain the Republican nominee well in advance of his likely triumph, a fact that incensed Huckabee, who amusingly pled his case once again on the Feb. 7  edition of Colbert Report.

The dominant explanation for McCain’s reemergence as the frontrunner is the alleged recent “success” of the war in Iraq, which McCain had supported even when it was unpopular; this supposedly helped him win over the voters of New Hampshire one at a time. That sounds like a reasoning electorate, but McCain only had a narrow 5-point victory over Romney in the Granite State, with only 37% of the vote. Were the other two-thirds of Republican voters unreasonable? Moreover, does this make the Iowa caucusers irrational for backing Huckbee five days earlier?

All these explanations strike me as tortured, overwrought attempts to rationalize an electoral process that is anything but deliberative. This is the essence of the argument I make in my new book, Political Communication and Deliberation. 

I show some of the ways civic reformers are trying to change the way we hold public meetings. They're working for a new kind of community politics, journalism,