Obama withdrawal and a financial hangover

Yesterday John McCain announced he was "suspending" his campaign to deal with the financial crisis in Washington. And CNN can't get enough.

For the past 24 hours, wherever McCain is, so goes the CNN camera crew. The republican presidential candidate's ridiculously strategic move to ditch the campaign trail has CNN's panties in a very twisted bunch. Whether the decision was meant to distract the media from Sarah Palin's Stepford wife-like personality, or to make McCain look like the leader and Obama the follower, or simply to bring drama to the presidential race, the gig is shoving Obama into the shadows. And it doesn't look like the gig will be up anytime soon.

While CNN is covering McCain as he prances around Washington giving speeches and comforting Republicans, Obama is staying above the fray, as our friendly CNN correspondent Candy Crowley said tonight. Crowley was left in the dust in Clearwater, Florida, when Obama picked up and scooted to Washington when called on by little Bush. Crowley is staying positive, though. She reassured CNN viewers that McCain is the one who looks like a dummy and Obama--who had the opportunity to take a shot at McCain's silliness didn't do it--is the one keeping his presidential cool.

It hurts though, that the minimal coverage of Obama tonight included a quick shot of Obama addressing the nation about the meetings, blurry shots of Obama in a group of Washington-ers, and Candy Crowley herself.

The Grade: B I don't blame CNN. With drama comes good ratings! But that doesn't mean I have to like it.

CNN Scores!

Maybe the stars aligned last night, or maybe I woke up at just the right time on this hazy Sunday, but I've never been happier with CNN. I turned on my TV and flipped to CNN to find an Obama advisor and McCain advisor in the middle of spewing out highlights of each candidate's economy plans. Finally, the issues! And details!

That's not all. I sat down at my laptop with my multi-grain Cheerios and went straight to www.cnn.com to get the dish on what I missed during twelve hours of slumber, only to find an article about Obama "hammering" McCain about Social Security. Aah, it's like a breath of fresh air. Plus, the article links directly to the CNN ElectionCenter where you can find the candidates' views on any issue.

The Grade: A+ CNN scores! Extra points for this quote that made me laugh: "Every man, woman and child in America needs to know it's going broke." Who said it? John McCain.

Performance, polls, and oh yeah, the issues

These days you can't turn on a news channel without hearing about how far Obama's sleeves were rolled up today or which candidate Sarah Palin's glasses designer is supporting (Obama!). It seems every election year news channels focus more on candidate performance than the issues. If we want to gain any sense of what the election is actually about (issues, duh), we often have to go to the candidates themselves, listening to speeches word for word and examining the "issues" page on their web sites.

The 24 hour news channel isn't innocent in the petty coverage department. This week Obama was in New Mexico and Florida on the campaign trail, talking about the economy as well as rallying the woman vote. CNN provided minimal details of Obama's speeches via sound byte (TV) and quotes (online). Although www.cnn.com/live has live streaming video of candidate speeches (and other less important stuff) that's pretty convenient.

Anyways, instead of outlining Obama's plans for satisfying women's needs such as improving the education system, stabilizing social security, and upholding the woman's right to choose, CNN found Obama's mention of Hillary Clinton and the old "18 million cracks in the glass ceiling" spiel one of the key points of his speech. That's newsworthy right? I mean we've only heard it about 500 times. In the past week.

Other than the brief web article about Obama's pitch to women, the politics page of the web site has this main headline: "Poll of polls: Obama has advantage in key state". See what I mean about performance coverage?

Seeing as how CNN has 24 hours of news to fill you'd think they'd suck every last minute detail (like the issues) out of each campaign and make it known. I guess they'd rather repeat Anderson Cooper 360 twice in four hours. Time and money, I suppose.

The Grade: C+ CNN tried to give it's viewers what they want, but the coverage wasn't all there. Give us the issues! We can handle it.