Is it over yet? By the time you read this — say, Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning, when the Planet gets distributed — America may well have elected a new president. Or reelected an old one. Or none of the above. But our print deadline's Tuesday at noon, so when we put this paper to bed mid-Election Day, we had no way of knowing what new electoral world our readers would find themselves in by the time they picked up their copies.
Hence, our cover. Instead of predicting the 2004 outcome, we recycled a 1948 rush to judgment: the Chicago Tribune's notorious headline mistakenly naming Republican challenger Thomas Dewey as the winner of the presidential race against Harry S. Truman.
Four years ago, there was very nearly a repeat performance. Several newspapers across the country ran the headline "Bush Wins," having gone to press before Gore retracted his concession. At first the premature declaration seemed like a gaffe right up there with the Dewey debacle. But no; despite hanging chads and dueling lawyers and that pesky popular vote, the "Bush Wins" headline proved prescient.
As for 2004, I'm willing to bet a winner was declared Tuesday. But I also suspect that pundits avoided any quick-draw prognostication — no hasty headlines this year. Unlike Dewey-Truman, there was never an underdog in the Bush-Kerry race, not the way Truman was an underdog. According to the Library of Congress, he had the support of only 15 percent of the nation's papers; Kerry snagged 160-plus major endorsements from newspapers and magazines, including switches in allegiance in a number of previously pro-Bush publications.
Did all that ink do him any good? Conventional wisdom says nobody pays any attention to newspaper endorsements, but tell that to the editorial board of the Tampa Tribune, whose decision not to endorse either candidate triggered a fusillade of outrage from readers. The passion of those letters! How dare the newspaper fail to live up to its apparently unsullied record of marching lockstep with the Republican party line! To this newcomer, the most breathtaking thing about the editorial was how apologetic it was: We have failed to be predictable, dear reader. Please, please forgive us.
Whomever the media endorsed, we seemed to agree on one thing: This election was going to be close. There was such unanimity on this point that now, as I sit here on Election Eve, the certainty seems suspect.
This was the year, after all, when things happened that were never supposed to happen. Four hurricanes hit us in a single season. The Red Sox won the Series. Maybe the 2004 headlines that will go down in "Dewey Beats Truman"-esque infamy are the ones that swore Bush and Kerry were tied in a dead heat.
But no matter who the next president is, there's one outcome we can all be certain of, one we can celebrate regardless of party affiliation. After a season full of waiting — waiting for the final out, waiting for the final storm, waiting for the final debate — we don't have to wait anymore for the end of the goddamned TV attack ads!
The wolves will slink back into the woods. The Swift Boat boys will sail off into the sunset. Mel and Betty will invite Sami over for tea, and maybe, if we're very patient, Katherine Harris will stop smirking and head back to Stepford.
Some things are worth waiting for.
That was certainly true this weekend. I spent a good part of Saturday waiting to vote — four hours, to be exact, at the College Hill Library. And despite my aching feet, I wouldn't have traded a minute.
Maybe, by the time you read this, all of us early voters will look like chumps. We'll find out we wasted hours and hours, when if we'd only waited till Tuesday — when both polling places and machines increased in number — we would have enjoyed clear sailing, a quick in-and-out and no crowds to speak of.
But it didn't seem to me, from talking to neighbors in line and looking around at the crowd, that anyone waiting in line felt like a chump. We felt like citizens, like members of a community. Voter apathy suddenly seemed a quaint notion, a casualty of the 2000 election. Voter commitment, even sacrifice, had become the norm — yet another surprise in this continually surprising year.
I had to wonder, though. If this many of us were voting early, what would that mean for the efficacy of Election Day exit polls? Would our early votes be taken into account when the pundits started running the numbers? Or would Election Night 2004 be another mess of muddled predictions?
Only the headlines will tell.
Change is good.That goes for the White House, where I'm hoping for a change in the very near future, and it's good for a newspaper, too. Let me belatedly introduce you to the newly expanded cast of characters at the Weekly Planet.
Readers have already met staff writer Max Linsky, who's filed stories on Kerouac, the Kerry-van and a benighted maiden voyage on a cruise ship. A Wesleyan grad who spent a year after college writing for publications in South Africa, he's one of two journalists the Planet hired from this past summer's Poynter Institute fellowship program for young writers. Laura Fries is the other; she joins us as staff writer/food editor, having done similar double duty at the weekly San Antonio Current. She'll be editing our current food critics in Tampa and Sarasota and writing her own weekly food column, as well as contributing news and feature stories throughout the book.
And this week marks the debut of our new political columnist, Wayne Garcia, aka "Political Whore." A reporter-turned-political consultant-turned-reporter, he knows where all the bodies are buried in Tampa Bay politics. He even helped bury a few of them himself. Now that he's left the dark side to return to journalism, Planet readers will reap the benefits.
This article appears in Nov 3-9, 2004.