Too Soon For Campaign Coverage; Tell Barack, Hillary, Mitt, Rudy and Them to Get Back to Work

The most asinine news story — and it will run sometime early next year in the major papers, on CNN and on MSNBC — will be the trend piece about “voter fatigue.” Actually, maybe editors will run the story sooner, maybe even more than a year before the election. Asinine is a strong word, yes. But how else to describe the duplicitous logic of the news media? Especially today, in this paralyzed, war-torn age desperate for hard-won and ingenuous ideas?

Therefore, I hereby pose a challenge to editors and reporters across the country: Slash reporting on presidential candidates. Debates are not news. Ban all stories about $400 haircuts, boyhood basketballing and Mitt Romney’s personal fortune. YouTube — and gaffes caught there — is off limits. There will be plenty of time for all that petty politicking later.

If a Golden Age were upon us, we would have that luxury. Instead, we are spending billions of dollars a day on a war with no plan and no path to victory. It almost feels like we have tossed up our hands. Soldiers patrol the crumbled streets of Iraq while we wait to cast ballots — not this fall, but the next. The candidates may squabble from their debate podiums on Fox News about votes they cast long ago, but they should actually be on C-SPAN legislating in the halls of Congress. The country needs hearings on war spending, veterans’ mental health and foreign policy. It’s hardly as sexy as getting dolled up for the cameras and rattling off co-opted one-liners, but if someone doesn’t get to it, we will continue to flounder.

As for all the resulting empty hours of airtime and blank inches of column space, news editors can shift the national agenda. There’s a green storm brewing in the country, and with it could come much-needed explanatory reporting on the renewable energy industry. Never have we needed more analysis about our country’s place in the world. Genocide in Darfur; the 10,000 who will die of poverty today; nuclear proliferation; al-Qaida in Lebanon, East Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan; escalating violent crime in U.S.; the cooling American economy; forgotten 9/11 Commission recommendations; Iraqi refugees; China.

Nothing Rudy, Hillary, Barack or Tommy says matters right now. This, unfortunately, is no time for fodder. So let us stick them on the shelf. There’s one thing I can guarantee: They’ll be there when we’re ready to hear from them. Later. Much later.

(Also published in Metro.)