The Tale Of The Anecdote

Every two years, it seems to come up - news of some "average voter" who receives a "mysterious phone call." Sometimes it's a pollster who asks leading questions designed to make one candidate look bad; other times it's a  caller for one campaign whose behavior, or demeanor, or approach suggests the worst sales job ever, and seems designed to turn one off from ever voting for said candidate.

These are generally known as "dirty tricks", and were probably first described in detail in All The President's Men, Woodward and Bernstein's seminal investigation into Watergate and the Nixon campaigns of 1968 and 1972, in particular.  Nixon's people were notorious for all sorts of under the radar activities - setting up fake rallies, calling voters in the middle of the night, and worse - which culminated in breaking into the Headquarters of the Democratic National Committee to check on files and probably place wiretapping equipment.

In the years since, it's been clear that these dirty tricks, and others, never go away; they just disappear and reappear like the wind. There has been, so far as I can tell, no serious, comprehensive investigation into push polling operations, obnoxious supporter calls, or anything else to help give these stories shape, or heft, or anything like a firm, factual underpinning.

This year Republicans in particular have been slinging charges of push polls and obnoxious calls in state after state, followed by vigorous denials by senior officials at each campaign. There's also been some back and forth between the Clinton and Obama camps about similar tactics, again with vigorous denials... and little proof.

That, I think, should give some context for this post by Harold Meyerson yesterday on an allegation of calls gong out in an attempt to discredit Barack Obama.  After initially suggesting that the Clinton camp was responsible, the Clinton campaign issued it's... er, vigorous denial... and Meyerson came back with a fuller explanation, which amounts to "someone told me" and "I have a theory."

And my only point is there's way too much of this.  This approach of reporting by anecdote, which is the easy bake approach to Reporting For Bloggers, is just too prevalent and organizations - like The American Prospect - need to try harder. Anecdotes and speculation and first person narrative are no substitute for digging and interviewing and finding out the whole story.  And on these push polls and dirty calls, we are well past the time when someone should be looking into it, finding out who does this stuff and giving s something more to go on.  Until then, "My Aunt Minnie got a call from someone claiming to be from the [candidate's name] campaign" just doesn't do it for me.

Well, why are you just standing there? Go do something.

Comments

[Redstar]

i thought you were going to write about Obama's Harry & Louise ads...

[weboy]

Funny you should mention that - J in Baltimore and I were just discussing http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=02&year=2008&base_name=health_care_debate_mandates_as> Ezra's post on that yesterday. I agree with Ezra, but I'm not sure it's worth a separate post.

[jinbaltimore]

you know, now that you mention it, I so easily believed Huckabee was doing the push polling alleged, but was incredulous when it came to the Democratic camps