As Robert Wright notes in his Atlantic article, The Coming Romney Comeback Narrative, the media doesn’t much like a static political narrative. It is the unfortunate byproduct of the horse race reporting they are fond of and the need to capture eyeballs. Wright posits multiple paths that the media narrative may go after tomorrow’s debate (although it is worth it to read his entire article), but jump in the comments to make your own prediction of the new drama the media will be working on after tomorrow’s Presidential Debate.
The essential property of the new narrative is that it inject new drama into the race, which means it has to be in some sense pro-Romney. This can in turn mean finding previously unappreciated assets in Romney or his campaign, previously undetected vulnerabilities in the Obama campaign, etc. The big question is whether the new narrative then becomes self-fulfilling, altering the focus of coverage in a way that actually increases Romney’s chances of a victory. And that depends on the narrative’s exact ingredients. Here are some candidate memes (see below for a quick list, but the article has more explanation):
- Romney has a previously undiscovered sense of humor!
- Sudden and unexpected foreign policy switcheroo!
- Suddenly it’s Obama who seems off balance and gaffe-prone!
- Romney surprisingly good in presidential debates!
So what do you think? What is going to be the narrative that your liberal media will be pushing once they leave the spin room?