Not Business-As-Usual For An Angry Electorate

GOP Split Over the Debt ... However the debt-ceiling standoff is ultimately resolved, the trench warfare between House Republicans and the Democratic president has shown the country that the GOP is caught between its antigovernment fervor and the need to keep the lights on. – Newsweek

Dominant Social Theme: The Republicans are always too radical for their own good.

Free-Market Analysis: This is a perfect Newsweek article by new editor Tina Brown – pitch perfect. The trouble is that the pitch is from decade ago. The sociopolitial and economic conversation has moved on, but it seems Tina Brown and Newsweek are stuck in the 1990s.

The writer of the article is the well-known Howard Kurtz. Kurtz has had a varied and high profile career as a media reporter. He has hosted CNN's Reliable Sources program, and is currently Washington bureau chief for The Daily Beast and Newsweek. He's been labeled the country's "most influential media reporter."

But Kurtz, too, is stuck in the past. This has more to do with the Internet than with a specific economic or social issue. Let's take a look. Once we analyze it, we can understand it better. Bill Clinton was the first Internet president, and he nearly lost his job when Matt Drudge broke the story about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

The reason Drudge reported on the story was because Newsweek, armed with the same information, wouldn't write the article. The Drudge story set off a furor that hasn't stopped to this day. That was the moment that the US mainstream media ceased to be effective gatekeepers.

No longer would TIME Magazine send reporters around the world paired up with CIA agents to make sure that the reporting suited US interests. The CIA's Project Mockingbird still enmeshes the largest mainstream publications in its grip, but the Internet is far less controllable than print media, simply because any single individual with a compelling story can attract an audience. There are too many scribes and not enough handlers.

Soon it was George W. Bush's turn. He was fairly leery when it came to the press. After 9/11 his administration took to managing the news closely. It didn't matter though. Bit by bit, piece by piece, Internet "citizen journos" – the ones sitting in the basement in their pajamas – took his administration apart.
The 9/11 coverup, the faux-compassionate conservatism, the failing, murderous wars and big government approach to the economy – all were duly noted and reported on day-by-day, not by big mainstream publications, but on the Internet on a variety of websites and blogs.

Bush left office with a popularity rating in the high teens or low 20s. Even now he mostly restricts his speech making to military bases and highly partisan conservative gatherings. The larger electorate – both Republican and Democratic – had had enough.

Riding a wave of revulsion, Barack Obama was swept into office promising hope and change. A little more than two years later, Obama's presidency is already in tatters. His approval ratings are supposedly in the low 40s but in reality they are probably lower than that based on the absolutely vicious vituperation on the Internet surrounding any mention of his name.

Obama is the third Internet president, and with each cycle, the disaffected electorate – understanding the dysfunction of the larger political cycle – has grown more impatient with business as usual. The Tea Party movement should be seen in this context. It is a post-Internet development, born out of people's anger at the failure of the system and their ability, finally, to perceive just how dysfunctional it really is.

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