Strange night Monday. President Bush on "Deal or No Deal." McCain, Clinton, Obama on "WWE Monday Night RAW." All four had pretaped segments within the shows — plus Clinton and Obama were twice featured in wrestling matches, one using animated characters (and plugging the Smackdown Vs. Raw 2008 video game), the other with actors appearing as them.

It was all pandering, of course, just like going on "SNL." But there are degrees. Bush's appearance — to congratulate an Iraq war veteran who was competing on "Deal" — felt the least sleazy of the lot. True, he's still trying to sell his war, but at least he wasn't begging for votes the way the other three did. I could have done without the federal-budget/"Deal or No Deal" joke, but part of this whole situation involves trying to seem clever.

An actor playing Hillary Clinton gets rough with an actor playing Barack Obama on "WWE Monday Night RAW." Obama got some payback later, but both candidates lost to the WWE wrestle Umaga the Samoan Bulldozer.(From WWE.com)

The best line of the night was Obama's "Can you smell what Barack is cooking." Made McCain look even less impressive that his video, run after Obama's, had "Can you smell what the Mac is cooking." But McCain overall seemed more forced than the others, more willing to kowtow to WWE fans than to just use the appearance to push his candidacy.

Clinton looked comfortable enough in her taped remarks even with the strained WWE-referring comments. (A president who "will go to the mat for you"? Please.) But I have to wonder how she felt about being treated as half of a team with Bill for the faux-Clinton/faux-Obama faceoff in the WWE ring.

At the end of the day, did these folks want votes so badly that they were willing to appear in the middle of the head kicks, shouting and overstuffed Divas in a brawl on "RAW"?

The answer is an obvious yes. And they may have helped WWE move some product along the way; that Smackdown Vs. Raw logo took up a nice chunk of screen during the animated Obama-Clinton match. But did the candidates at least get a free video game for their efforts?

A good story from CBS, via Jim Romenesko's site. …

(more…)

On Thursday, I wrote a story about the latest developments in the attempt to save the Akron-Canton newscast currently airing on Time Warner Cable. The newscast loses money, and if it doesn't find more revenue sources, it will probably be gone at the end of April. As a result, people, including Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic, have been trying to find a way to keep the telecast going. Those efforts included a meeting of community leaders.

The meeting was closed to the press. I knew that a few days ago, and it neither surprised nor bothered me. It was a meeting about a private enterprise, and one that involved money issues. Ed Esposito, a local radio news director, was unhappy about the decision, especially since Plusquellic was speaking at the meeting; he was also displeased that reporters were not only being kept out of the meeting, but out of the building where the meeting took place.

He sent a note to the mayor about his complaints; he also sent copies of his letter to other news organizations. After discussion with a couple of editors, I decided to attend a press conference by the mayor about the meeting, and to ask the mayor about Esposito's complaints. If nothing else, that gave the mayor a chance at a public reply, in case I decided to use the letter in my story.

At the press conference, Plusquellic talked some about the meeting, but — in response to another reporter's question — declined even to say who had attended.

I asked my question. And got a reply that, according to my audio recorder, ran a little over four minutes. Needless, to say, I didn't use all of it in my story. (You can read the story here.) But I thought it was amusing enough to transcribe here.

ME: Was it your idea, then, that this meeting be closed to news organizations, and do you find it at all ironic that a discussion of getting news to the people was held so privately?

PLUSQUELLIC: I'm surprised you take direction so much, so well, from Ed, who in my opinion has hyped that story, hyped that for his own, uh, good, for whatever he thinks comes of that. I hold meetings all the time with business people. It happens on almost an everyday basis. I do not believe that business people who are trying to come up with some solution to a problem — either for redeveloping their business, adding jobs, or in this case, acting in the best interest to provide news — want to have a news camera and a radio microphone sitting in the room while they're trying to talk about possible solutions.

And the idea that you're linking this up with, 'Gosh, isn't it unbelievable, such an unbelievable thing that the mayor is talking about protecting news, but he's closed it to the news media.' I mean, It's almost like our whole society is affected by electrical beams or something, screwed up our thinking.

I don't know what gets into you people. This is a meeting about getting something done. And  I, I read that crazy thing [Esposito's note] this morning and I don't know, maybe some of you sit in little cubicles, drinking too much coffee, by yourself, talking to [recording unclear] inanimate objects or something, that you're not right or something. I'm not sure. But this is a bizarre issue to try to bring up.

I'm a mayor of Akron who could do nothing, and could let the Beacon Journal go out there, and 162 people go out there, and wither on the vine. And I've been out trying to do whatever I can [to help the newspaper]. We put money into this [TV newscast] ourselves, as well as the county, to build the studio, even though we were not listed as sponsors, and said we wanted nothing of that, even though we obviously took it through council and you folks all knew about it. But we built the set and all the things that were permanent, so the content and all the other things on an ongoing basis, we couldn't be accused of being a sponsor and buying good news stories.

I mean, I've done everything to play this straight. And it's preposterous somehow to say that, because this private group of people representing mostly private institutions, can't meet and hold a meeting to discuss a private investment to private companies, to try to do something which is of general interest to the public, but which is still private, is somehow a horrible thing that we didn't open it so you folks can make your job easy, to sit in there and take notes or something, is really almost — It ranks up there with one of the most unrealistic and unbelievable turn of events I think I've seen. But it's very typical. Somebody, in some little cubicle, comes up with some strange twist — of paranoia or whatever else to describe something, and it's the lead story. And if that's what it is, that's what it is.

It's preposterous to think that we would open this up to radio or TV reporters, or anybody else. It just doesn't make sense. Why would we do that? If Goodyear was going to put a new plant in and put 3,000 employees here, do you think I would open that meeting up and have you come in there? And do you think there's any way that you could portray that as a bad story for me? 'Mayor Meets With Goodyear Top Official To Bring 3,000 Jobs to Community.' You can't screw me, no matter how you want to, on that one. But I wouldn't do it [admit reporters to the meeting] because it would be counterproductive.

Be nice publicity for me. The problem is, you folks in your business have dealt with too many folks in my business that are more interested in that positive story and positive spin. They'd have said, 'Oh yeah, come on in 'cause it's good for me and gosh, I'm afraid to stand up to anybody and do what's right because you guys will write front-page headlines.' I want to get things done on behalf of the citizens, and if you don't put that in that story, an explanation when you're doing some crazy twist to this story, then …

(On "then," the mayor stopped talking. And another reporter asked a question.)

It's the day after an election and one that went badly for President Bush and his crowd, and that was a big story today; for awhile it looked even bigger than the hearings with the oil companies. (And am I the only one to find it just the tiniest bit convenient that gas prices were dropping in the days leading up the hearings, and have popped up again now that the exercise is over?) We probably would still be hearing politics were it not for in Jordan, which gave the cable news outlets a fresh reason for big red graphics and split screens.

But there's one thing the anti-Bush celebrators are getting wrong about the current climate. They spend too much time talking about approval ratings.

We hear a lot in the news about that particular barometer of politicians. You know, "40 percent of Americans think that President Bush would kick a dog if he thought no one was looking," versus "20 percent of Americans believe that any dog meeting President Bush would immediately lick his hand." And because President Bush's ratings have been low, there's been a lot of arguing about whether that affects other elections, and how his ratings stack up against other presidents. ("I happen to know," a Fox News pundit would surely declare, "that 55 percent of people thought Bill Clinton would not only kick a dog, he would then steal its bone and dish!")

But approval ratings don't mean anything. And I say that even though that my personal approval rating of President Bush requires negative numbers. The ratings don't mean anything, because they don't tell you what the other choice is.

If I don't like President Bush, but he runs against a guy I dislike even more, I am going to have to hold my nose and vote for Bush.

All right, it's unlikely that there was a Democrat bad enough to make me do that.

But let's say it's 2008 and the Republicans have gotten behind Bill Frist. Joe Undecided is looking at Frist's scandals, and the Terri Schiavo thing, and the fights in the Senate, and he thinks, this guy is bad.  But then he looks across the ballot and there's Sleepy, Doc or Dopey. Or there's someone who's not really terrible, but who has just been the target of so many attack ads that he wishes people thought he was Sleepy, Doc or Dopey. Who's Joe going to vote for?

So-called news experts will try to convince you that low approval ratings do matter. I heard one pundit today saying that the low approval ratings encourage people to run against you. But that's not a good thing, either. If all the hacks smell blood, then all the hacks run and attack each other in the primaries. The Last Hack Standing has then handed the opposition a stack of nasty quotes and ideas — from other Democrats.

Here's what you want if you're planning to be president. A year or two before the election, you want the guy on the other ticket to have huge approval ratings. Enormous. You want him to seem heroic, a winner, a champ. You want him to look so good that no one in his right mind would run against this guy. Because then the guys who are crazy enough to run might also turn out to be smart enough to win.

A wacky scenario? Remember the elder George Bush's approval ratings after the Gulf War? Remember that only nuts no one knew much about were willing to take him on? Remember that one of those nuts was named Clinton?

So come on, people. When those pollsters come around, tell them that W. is doing a terrific job. Say you love him. Get his approval rating up, and that of any other Republican who might want the White House. Then we can enjoy the confounded look on the experts' faces in three years — when they're trying to explain how someone with such high approval ratings got trounced.

I don't know if tonight's "West Wing" is meant to demonstrate the failure of politics, or just the failure of a television drama. Either way, it was disappointing.

I did get a rush of excitement just before it began, thinking this could be exciting TV. But it started so awkwardly, with a contrived throwing-out of debate rules which regular viewers should have presumed was part of the Vinick-Santos handshake in last week's episode. (If they spent the necessary time to hammer out those complicated rules, there wouldn't have been any time left for debate prep.) For a moment there, I thought I would rather vote for Ellen DeGeneres.

And not long into the debate itself, I was hoping someone at FactCheck.org has enough of a sense of humor to issue a factual analysis of these fictional candidates' policy stands. Because as they wallowed in talk about CAFTA, it felt like one of something left over from an Al Gore position paper — the sort of talk where you spent so much time proving you were the smarter guy, that you also came off as the most boring (or annoying guy).

Of course, that's where I thought the show was saying that politicians just can't help themselves, that they can be just as unenlightening in a no-holds-barred situation as they are in the formally structured "debates" that real-life politicians negotiate.

The complexities of the two candidates all but disappeared, with Vinick in particular reduced to Republican talking points when along the episodic trail he had seemed much more complicated. (The debate left Alan Alda sounding a lot like the presidential contender played by James Brolin earlier in the "West Wing's" run.) And I felt the same frustration I have felt at real debates when it seems that the guys aren't getting to the important stuff — that a big issue like the economy isn't really being addressed (I guess things are better in Westwingworld), and that some things have just been dropped. A week ago, both sides were on a collision course over abortion and attack ads; what happened to that topic?

There was also the frustration with the moderator, real-life newsman Forrest Sawyer, who seemed to let these guys off the hook — as real-life debate moderators have sometimes done. I would have cheered if only he had listened to Santos's bullet-regulating proposal and said, "Gee, it sounds as if you're making policy based on a Chris Rock monologue."

But I ended up feeling that this show was "The West Wing's" failure, not politics. Let politics take the rap for its own failings. Here we had a show that was once famous for taking big, complicated issues and turning them into human drama; in its big, November-sweeps dramatic gesture, it threw out humanity in favor of big, complicated noise.

Moreover, because it was live, it reminded us that in some ways politicians are better actors than people who get paid to act without holding elective office. No two presidential contenders, face to face on live TV, would hesitate and stumble as often as these guys did. Top pols are trained almost from birth that you always charge ahead. We see that all the time in the chatter on cable news; forget what point is being made, forget the challenge from the interviewer (if said challenge does occur), just keep charging. When I watched "West Wing," I didn't see much of that kind of charge, and so wasn't very charged up.

It has been a good day. Also a day when I yelled at a former vice president of the United States. Which wasn't that bad, either.

The good part of the day came early, with visits to the sets of "Deadwood," the lovely HBO western, and "Over There," an effective drama about the war in Iraq, due soon on FX. I expect to do some posts on those later.

The afternoon included a press conference with Tyra Banks, who will have a syndicated talk show this fall. Attendance was modest, though not the worst I've seen, and there was some information to be had.

Then Al Gore arrived. The former veep is now chairman of Current, a cable channel aimed at young adults, which launches Aug. 1. And, since he is actually known to people who have never dreamed of being empowered by Tyra Banks, he drew a much larger crowd than Banks had.

This is where the trouble began. Reporters showed up in force to toss questions at Gore. Gore showed up to promote his cable network. Interests collided.

Dressed in bulk-disguising black, Gore appeared only briefly during the first 20 minutes of the session while others from the network, including its young personalities, talked up various elements and showed tapes.

From anyone else, a 20-minute presentation would lead to teeth-grinding. (ESPN got grumbles with a similar filibuster earlier in this press tour.) With Gore in the wings, it was like sitting through jugglers and clowns before Elvis came onstage.

No, wait. Elvis was Gore's boss.

Anyway, the press conference finally started, and the questions rolled along, although Gore would occasionally pass them over to others in his under-40 posse, and the people distributing microphones in the room were a bit slow.

I sat for more minutes than I remember with my hand up, the blood rushing out of my arm, with no mike in sight. When one finally began to get near me, the mike handler suddenly stopped and made a cutting motion across her throat. The press conference was about to end, with Gore declaring that "I believe we have exhausted the time we have available."

I had not gotten in my question. Others were still waiting for answers, too. Because of that opening presentation, I figured Gore owed us 20 minutes.

"Excuse me, Mr. Gore," I yelled. (I still didn't have a microphone. Also, I was ticked.)"We sat through your presentation. Could we have some more time for questions?"

"Sure," Gore said. "Yeah."

That got me a microphone, too, although the melodrama was not quite over. After some more talk, someone said, "We have one last question … " It wasn't mine. "Wait a minute," I said.

And Gore came to the rescue. He agreed to take a question from another reporter, then one from "the person who specially asked to extend" the press conference.

In other words, me. I knew there was a reason I voted for this guy.

Finally my turn came. I asked my question — as well as a good one that a reporter sitting next to me had lobbied me to ask. The answers weren't all that great, but they were answers.

Of course, I was also sitting there thinking that I had yelled at a guy who used to be in the top ranks of government. Then I thought that, compared to some of the sharks covering his 2000 campaign, I was a minnow.

All right, a noisy minnow.