The 2008 presidential campaign may well be decided by the way the news media cover the candidates over the next few months. The ability and willingness of the political media and pundit class to affix narratives to each candidate that shape subsequent news coverage -- and voter attitudes -- has been repeatedly discussed here and elsewhere.

GOP media lemming alert: Is big-eared Barack Hussein Obama this year's John Francois Kerry?

The 2008 presidential campaign may well be decided by the way the news media cover the candidates over the next few months. The ability and willingness of the political media and pundit class to affix narratives to each candidate that shape subsequent news coverage -- and voter attitudes -- has been repeatedly discussed here and elsewhere.

These narratives tend to have a few things in common:

• The narratives about progressives tend to be negative -- Al Gore was a liar and a wimp, Howard Dean was crazy, John Kerry was a flip-flopping wimp, etc.).
• The narratives about conservatives tend to be positive (John McCain is a straight-talking maverick, Rudy Giuliani is “America's Mayor,” etc.)
• The narratives about progressives (our focus today) are often based in large part on the media's endless repetition of snarky comments, stories, and anecdotes about purported personal qualities.
• Progressives and journalists often blame the victims of these narratives, chalking them up to inept candidates and campaign staff. No matter how many different progressives get unfairly defined by the media as soft and dishonest and ineffectual, too many people refuse to hold journalists accountable.

The bad news is that this week brought confirmation -- as if any were necessary -- that the problem wasn't with Gore, Kerry, Dean, and the Clintons: that any and every progressive is going to face the same relentless and petty caricatures at the hands of a news media that, however unwittingly, promote right-wing talking points and themes at every turn.

In late November, Republican strategist Ed Rogers began pointedly referring to “Barack Hussein Obama,” using the senator and potential Democratic presidential candidate's middle name.

Soon, the utterly meaningless -- but eminently mockable -- fact that Obama's middle name is “Hussein” was everywhere. NBC's Mike Viqueira announced “a man named Barack Obama, whose middle name, incidentally, is Hussein, running for president.” On the December 5 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume, Carl Cameron told viewers: “Though he's written two books about himself already, most people know very little about Barack Hussein Obama Junior's uncommonly privileged life.” (In case you're wondering: No, “John Sidney McCain” does not appear in any Fox News stories available on Nexis.)

Suddenly, Obama's middle name has come up again and again: on Fox, on MSNBC, in newspapers, all prompted by a Republican strategist using it to take a jab at the senator.

Well, not quite. That's the popular version -- and that's how the popular version of these things tends to go: the “mainstream” media repeat these things after they are initiated by Republican operatives or right-wing media. But, just as it was The New York Times and The Washington Post that made up a fake quote from Al Gore about Love Canal, then used the fake quote to accuse him of dishonesty, the Barack Hussein Obama story didn't begin with Ed Rogers.

Rogers referred to “Barack Hussein Obama” during the November 28 edition of MSNBC's Hardball. But just the day before, MSNBC's Tucker Carlson referred to Bill Press as “a true member of the Barack Hussein Obama fan club.”

But it didn't begin there, either. The first mention of the name as a political matter that we can find in the Nexis database comes from MSNBC's Chris Matthews. On the November 7 edition of Hardball -- three full weeks before Rogers' comment -- Matthews said: “You know, it's interesting that Barack Obama's middle name is Hussein. That will be interesting down the road, won't it?” Media Matters noted Matthews' comments the next day.

Did Matthews come up with that on his own, or did he hear it on one of the right-wing radio shows he favors? Or did he read it on a far-right website, or have it whispered in his ear by a Republican operative? We don't know. But we do know that attributing the suggestion that Obama's middle name may have negative political consequences to Rogers lets Matthews off the hook for his role in popularizing the notion. Maybe that's why Matthews himself does it.

On December 13, once the tactic had gained attention -- and some criticism -- Matthews teased an interview with Rogers by describing the strategist as “the one who just loves Barack Obama's middle name Hussein." Here's how the interview began:

MATTHEWS: Ed, you made some news here the other night. Let's take a look at a tape of what you said.

ROGERS: Oh, come on.

MATTHEWS: No, no -- of what you said in my absence. When the cat's away, the mouse will play.

ROGERS: Where were you? Where were you?

MATTHEWS: Let's take a look at what you said.

ROGERS [video clip]: Held me down as somebody that underestimates Barack Hussein Obama, please.

MATTHEWS: Well, you know, in an American life, the only time we start using three names for a person is when they're an assassin -- you know, John Henry --

ROGERS: There's some truth to that.

MATTHEWS: -- Lee Harvey Oswald. Why did you invoke the middle name of Barack Obama out of nowhere? What are you up to, sir?

ROGERS: Mostly teasing him as a lightweight and somebody that's just not ready. ... But I hope he runs. I want him to run. There's more --

MATTHEWS: Well, Hussein is his middle name. Do you believe that invoking that name, that it will hurt him?

ROGERS: OK, I'm not going to tease him again about his middle name, at least not tonight.

According to Matthews, Rogers “made some news” by invoking Obama's middle name. According to Matthews, Rogers had taken advantage of Matthews' absence to take the cheap shot. According to Matthews, there was no innocent reason for using Obama's middle name: "[T]he only time we start using three names for a person is when they're an assassin," he declared. “What are you up to, sir?” Matthews demanded.

But Matthews himself had raised the “issue” of Obama's middle name three full weeks before Rogers. What, then, was Matthews up to?

And what was CNN's Jeff Greenfield up to this week, when he treated viewers to this absurdity?

GREENFIELD:[I]n the case of Obama, he may be walking around with a sartorial time bomb. Ask yourself: Is there any other major public figure who dresses the way he does? Why, yes. It is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, unlike most of his predecessors, seems to have skipped through enough copies of GQ to find the jacket-and-no-tie look agreeable. And maybe that's not the comparison a possible presidential contender really wants to evoke.

And, of course, Greenfield didn't miss the opportunity to invoke Obama's middle name:

Now, it is one thing to have a last name that sounds like Osama and a middle name, Hussein, that is probably less than helpful. But an outfit that reminds people of a charter member of the Axis of Evil? Why, this could leave his presidential hopes hanging by a thread. Or is that threads?

After Greenfield's comments drew the wrath of progressives, he claimed he had simply been kidding -- and lashed out at his critics, blaming the “hair-trigger instincts” of bloggers and “partisans” who “routinely assume the worst about their adversaries” and complaining about “a tendency to find malice aforethought.” Greenfield suggested that those unruly progressive bloggers should have taken a lesson from “the habits of the Mainstream Media.”

Greenfield's lecture didn't go over very well, and for good reason. As Bob Somerby pointed out, the “mainstream media” has peddled silly -- and damaging -- garbage like this for years. Indeed, Greenfield's own piece came in the midst of widespread invocation of Obama's middle name, as we have discussed. There was no reason to assume Greenfield was kidding -- and, even if he was, there's no reason to assume that his “joke” doesn't perpetuate a bogus negative storyline about Obama. (And the bogus storylines are piling up; we haven't even gotten to the right-wing blogosphere following the lead of Rush Limbaugh in misrepresenting a joking exchange between Obama and Times columnist Maureen Dowd over her reference to his “ears [that] stick out.”)

Most of all, Greenfield simply isn't in a position to lecture anyone else about the “habits” of journalism. Not until he apologizes for his role in doctoring a video clip of Hillary Clinton to portray her as a liar. Perhaps not even then.

Greenfield may not like it, but that criticism he took from progressives is the good news of the week. There is a growing -- though still insufficient -- recognition among progressives of how these snarky, silly, ridiculous storylines the media peddle about progressives skew public opinion and damage the country -- and a willingness to do something about it.

That wasn't the case in the 2004 presidential campaign. A look back at how thoroughly two similar incidents came to define John Kerry and John Edwards is useful in preparing for what is to come.

On April 22, 2003, The New York Times published an article by Adam Nagourney outlining President Bush's re-election strategy. Coming in at 1,742 words, the article read like an officially sanctioned narrative spoon-fed by Bush aides. Indeed, it was littered with attributions to “Republicans close to the White House” and “Mr. Bush's advisers” and “an adviser to Mr. Bush” and “officials close to the White House” -- 30 attributions to Republican sources in all. The only attribution to any source that wasn't a Republican was Nagourney's statement that “White House officials, as well as Democrats, said they expected the Democratic opponent to become clear by the first or second week of March 2004.”

Coming from an administration famous for not leaking -- and containing only a perfunctory two-sentence, 92-word reference to the Bush strategy's potential “risks” (attributed to, of course, “Mr. Bush's advisers”) -- it is nearly impossible to see the article as anything but stenography.

Still, one could easily argue that such an article provided Times readers with a valuable insight into how Bush's team planned to run their campaign -- or, at least, into how they said they would run the campaign. One-sided, to be sure, but not entirely without merit.

Until the end, that is, when the Times article transformed from one-sided stenography into something quite a bit worse: an ugly and unfair assault on prospective Democratic candidates, dressed up as journalism. The final 269 words outline the GOP's plans to “discredit” Bush's “possible challengers,” including John Kerry and John Edwards. One typical passage read:

In assessing Mr. Bush's potential opponents, Mr. Bush's advisers said Mr. Kerry could be presented as ideologically and culturally out of step, both because of his liberal positions on some issues as well as his Boston lineage and what some Bush advisers described as his haughty air.

Marc Racicot, the Republican national chairman, said recently that Mr. Kerry “is going to have a hard time translating out of New England.” Another Bush adviser said of Mr. Kerry, “He looks French.”

In a span of three sentences, Nagourney repeated Bush aides' attacks on Kerry as “ideologically and culturally out of step,” their gratuitous reference to “his Boston lineage,” his “haughty air,” and their mockery of his physical appearance. Nagourney included no response from Kerry or his allies, or anyone else for that matter. Worst of all, he granted his sources anonymity for the purpose not only of attacking their opponents -- a dubious enough practice -- but for schoolyard name-calling.

In what universe is that reasonable journalistic practice? The New York Times itself explains the inappropriate nature of such practice in its "Principles for Granting Anonymity":

We do not grant anonymity to people who use it as cover for a personal or partisan attack. If pejorative opinions are worth reporting and cannot be specifically attributed, they may be paraphrased or described after thorough discussion between writer and editor. The vivid language of direct quotation confers an unfair advantage on a speaker or writer who hides behind the newspaper, and turns of phrase are valueless to a reader who cannot assess the source.

Anonymity should not be invoked for a trivial comment, or to make an unremarkable comment appear portentous.

But Nagourney not only granted his Republican source anonymity for the purpose of sneering that Kerry “looks French,” he placed the quote immediately after a reference to Republican National Chairman Marc Racicot, who actually is of French descent!

In a sane world, Nagourney would have left his anonymous source's sophomoric name-calling out of his story. Or perhaps he would have noted the absurdist hypocrisy of Racicot's party attacking an opponent for looking French.

But we do not have the benefit of a sane news media, and the anonymous Republican's “looks French” jibe quickly took off, and helped form the caricature of Kerry as an aloof and ineffectual elitist that doomed him to electoral failure a year and a half later.

Though “he looks French” probably isn't most people's idea of an Oscar Wildean witticism, but to the D.C. pundit class, it was too clever to resist repeating. MSNBC host Joe Scarborough intoned, “I think that adviser just may be right. Kerry looks kind of French to me." CNN's Tucker Carlson agreed: “How French does he look? ... If you look at the screen I think it makes the point. He does look French." And that was just the next day.

In the coming months, MSNBC's Chris Matthews wondered if comic Darrell Hammond could impersonate Kerry -- and suggested, "He looks too French for you to do him." On another occasion, Matthews seemed to experience a moment of clarity, noting, “They said he now -- he looks French, that was the first shot they took at him, which may sound stupid" before concluding that “it might work in the middle of the country.”

But if it did “work” -- and there's every reason to believe it did -- it's because it worked on Matthews and his elite D.C. pundit pals. Matthews may have thought it sounded stupid, but he repeated it over and over again. Not that he was alone: There was Joe Klein on the Chris Matthews show wondering “do you think President Bush's nickname for Kerry is going to be Frenchie?" On CNN -- more than a year after the Times article --Judy Woodruff's Inside Politics devoted an entire segment to the question of how Kerry was “handling the issue” of his “French connections.” On NBC's Today show, Katie Couric asked Tim Russert about “John Kerry's French connection,” noting that “the Republican National Committee has pointed out that Kerry's first cousin is French.” Back on CNN, host Aaron Brown announced “My favorite line of the night came from White House correspondent John King. John was quoting a senior White House official who said of John Kerry, 'He looks French.'”

Again: this was a year after the Times article first appeared. But the Washington press corps just couldn't get enough; “looks French” was repeated by reporters and pundits all the way through Election Day.

Kerry's purported French appearance wasn't the only GOP narrative to make its debut in that April 2003 New York Times article. And, like “looks French,” “Breck Girl” shaped the media's portrayal of Edwards -- and, thus, the voters' attitudes toward him. Nagourney himself used it again just a few months later, writing in the Times that “John Edwards ... may seem a little too young and slight to be Leader of the Free World; in White House circles, he is mockingly known as the 'Breck Girl.' ” In July 2003, his Times colleague Sheryl Gay Stolberg did him one better, penning a “Week in Review” piece entitled “Cute, Sure, but Is He Electable?” So persistent was the GOP-driven narrative that when Edwards formally launched his campaign in September 2003, his aides passed out miniature bottles of shampoo in an effort to diffuse the attack with humor.

It didn't work. In December 2003, CBS' Lesley Stahl interviewed Edwards on 60 Minutes; she began the interview with statements and questions like these:

“How old are you?”

“Most people think that you're about 35.”

“You look very young.”

“You look great. You look great.”

“His campaign is actually running commercials in black and white, designed to make him look older.”

“Don't you think people want experience?”

And she ended it with more:

“Sometimes nicknames can do real damage to politicians: 'Tricky Dick' Nixon, 'Slick Willie' Clinton. Now there's an Edwards nickname floating around. What do you say when the White House, someone in the White House says, 'Oh, he's nothing more than the Breck Girl'?”

In between -- in what it seems fair to interpret as a sign that the media's obsession with the “Breck Girl” nonsense led them to underestimate Edwards -- Stahl flatly announced “Edwards can't beat Dean in Iowa or New Hampshire, but he does have a good chance a week later, on February 3rd, in the South Carolina primary.”

Edwards, of course, went on to beat Dean in Iowa -- with a resounding 32 percent to Dean's 18 percent. But not before Howard Fineman took to CNBC to dismiss him as “too beautiful for his own good,” seeming to argue that his appearance was the reason why “he hasn't gotten any traction.”

In July 2004, when Kerry selected Edwards to be the Democratic vice presidential nominee, The Dallas Morning News ran a feature headlined “25 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT EDWARDS.” And among the 25 things the Morning News thought voters needed to know about the man who could be vice president? “Politicos dubbed him the 'Breck girl' during the Democratic primaries.”

As the recent spate of news reports highlighting Obama's middle name, big ears, and preference to wear shirts without ties demonstrates, the elite political media are fully prepared to approach another presidential campaign by focusing on petty and absurd “looks French”-style caricatures rather than on substance and fact. Fortunately, as the reaction to Greenfield's report shows, progressives may be ready to do something about it this time.

Jamison Foser is Executive Vice President at Media Matters for America.