Where were you when Congress’s first 100 hours ended? During the 2006 campaign, Speaker Nancy Pelosi touted her package of six popular issues ad nauseam, promising they would go through within the first 100 hours of the 110th Congress. This agenda constituted the closest thing the Dems had to a cohesive plan for reform, and with each of these reforms enjoying overwhelming support in the polls and the left half of the House adding 32 chairs, one would imagine that the American public would be glued to C-SPAN 2 to witness their historic passing. However, the deadline passed without so much as a whisper, perhaps because nobody knew for sure what the first 100 hours constituted. Chris Wilson of U.S. News and World Report devised four means of calculating the 100 hours, depending on whether the count referred to regular human hours, hours in session, or factoring certain breaks and pauses. Speaker Pelosi, using whatever system she settled upon, declared that by the time the last measure had passed, 6:20 PM on January 18, only 42 hours and 15 minutes had elapsed. In any case, it was clear how little the “first 100 hours” promise actually meant, considering even top political analysts had to figure out what time period this constituted ex post facto.

But the 100 hours themselves were basically irrelevant to the issue. What matters is that Democrats promised to get through a popular agenda quickly and did so, right? Well, not so much, at least judging by the attention the issues received. HR’s 1-6 were buried in political media coverage under numerous stories on what was apparently already primary season for 2008. Indeed, stories covering the Democrats’ Congressional agenda essentially came to a grinding halt following the October election. Each of the reforms faces obstacles, especially in the more balanced Senate. However, coverage of the issues consisted almost solely of the obligatory acknowledgment that the agenda did pass in what was (by most measures) well under 100 hours. These reforms were not as important to citizens, the news media, and quite possibly to politicians as their use in the ’06 election cycle. Quite aptly, the group was dubbed “Six for ’06,” referring to their time as an electoral tool rather than the year in which they would pass through Congress or, even more unthinkably, whenever they would take effect.

The issue of so-called “horserace coverage” of elections—the dominance of stories concerned with who will win an election and why, rather than the substance of actual issues—has existed for decades. The effect has been the focus of extensive commentary by academics, media reform advocates, and even news outlets themselves. Political communication expert Richard Perloff characterizes news media as “focus[ing] on the candidates’ strategy, on who is ahead in the polls, on the battle plan of the campaign, and on the political factors that underlie candidates’ articulation of policy proposals.” The problem that arises here is the lack of actual substance available to voters through their main source of political information. Trying to place blame is a classic chicken-egg dilemma: either horserace coverage is so prevalent because it is all that Americans pay attention to, or these stories are all they have access to because news outlets don’t offer anything else. Regardless of the source, the situation fosters a less knowledgeable public that is less prepared to elect its leaders and ambivalent to coverage outside the electoral arena.

However, this year has marked an early onslaught of coverage for the 2008 race. Seemingly as soon as it was official that the Democrats’ won back both houses of Congress, and before a number of races had been settled, the press was musing about when top candidates would form exploratory committees and how long thereafter they would wait to officially announce candidacy.

Stories on major issues have been fraught with campaign overtones. Immediate commentary on President Bush’s recent troop surge included at least brief analysis of how the policy affected top candidates. As the days progressed, lengthy examinations of the surge’s impact on Senators John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama became rampant in the media. Take, for example, the recent New York Times Op-Ed by Bob Herbert. Herbert daringly begins by ridiculing the ongoing horserace coverage of 2008 and even makes strong statements about the War in Iraq: “We need to stop pretending that there is something sane about continued U.S. involvement in this ruinous war. We keep sending troops into the combat zone and they keep sinking ever deeper into the ancient Middle East sand.” Nevertheless, Herbert’s ultimate analysis veers toward the conventional, as he concludes by examining the impact of the issue on Barack Obama’s candidacy: “Senator Obama's capacity for leadership will be tested in large part by whether he can get the country to rally around his crucial point—that all further progress on important issues here at home depends on whether we can find the will to extricate ourselves from Iraq.” Even strong, unabashedly opinionated pieces on serious issues necessarily include these quick remarks on candidate stances and chances. With the avalanche of election coverage coming uncharacteristically early this cycle, the American media essentially jumped from one election period directly into the next. The result is the loss of the inter-election phase that once provided a brief respite from horserace stories, the only period in which substantive stories were the meat of domestic political coverage.

The problem of horserace stories affects policy itself, as well. While politicians looking forward to running for a higher office have always been compelled to impress voters from an early stage, election reports add pressure to remain in the limelight. In the wake of the troop surge announcement, top Democratic candidates knew that if they did not take leadership roles in the opposition, the media would disparage their role in the party. Thus, Senator Obama appeared on national television shortly following President Bush’s announcement, while Senator Clinton proposed a bill to cap troop levels that stalled just as quickly as the similar bill proposed by rival candidate Senator Dodd. Horserace coverage essentially forces the hands of candidates by insisting that they take action on every major issue, forcing them into action in areas in which they might have little expertise or experience. Furthermore, in proposing new policies candidates must consider not what voters want but what the media believe voters want. The difference is subtle, but today candidates realize that their policies themselves will not receive as much coverage as how their policies affect their chances of winning. Thus, positive news reports are a product of proposals that appeal as “winners” to the media rather than proposals that actually appeal to voters. While this may seem a semantic difference, it essentially shifts the constituency of a candidate to the media rather than the voters. Candidates must please reporters rather than citizens.

Election coverage both forces candidates to act and handcuffs their actions to those deemed acceptable by the media. The early start of this coverage is only a bad thing for America, increasing apathy of citizens to real issues and making sure that candidates don’t actually address the issues anyway. It is understandable that the ’08 election season began early: with two wide-open primaries, an unpopular president leading an unpopular war, and Congress recently changing hands, the election is a perfect storm in terms of competitiveness and potential for brutality. It will be, admittedly, a fun and exciting race to follow. Unfortunately for the American public, the fun has started early.