politics

Reporters Smell Fresh Narrative, Pounce

How "Veterans Run for Congress as Democrats" became the go-to narrative for the political press.
February 20, 2006

As we’ve noted before, political reporters in election years, desperate to make sense of events that are not yet ordered, invariably resort to The Narrative — a storyline that seeks to frame the facts in a larger context.

At any given time, the campaign press’s favored narrative of the moment gives reporters a framework into which they can stuff any new development that comes along. Sometimes that’s actually useful to readers and viewers. (Other times — not so much. See campaign, presidential, 2004.)

Well, 2006 is an election year too, and already we can detect the rustle of reporters converging on what conventional wisdom tells them is the hot storyline of the campaign.

That story is this: In congressional districts across the country, veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are running for Congress — as Democrats!

As far as we know, the emerging narrative first poked its head from the cocoon in the form of Joshua Green’s article in the February Atlantic Monthly. In his piece, Green asserted that “at least 14” Iraq and Afghanistan vets so far have declared as Democratic candidates for the midterm congressional elections.

Perversely, the fresh narrative was given added impetus last week with the first reversal in the storyline, when ex-marine Paul Hackett decided to listen to his Democratic party bosses and drop out (he says he was “forced out”) of the Senate race in Ohio. (A veteran of the war in Iraq, Hackett came tantalizingly close to winning a Congressional election in Ohio last year, only to lose a squeaker to his Republican rival.)

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The New York Times weighed in Sunday with a general, somewhat bland look at the phenomena, which nonetheless amped the numbers up ferociously. The Times counted not just veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but those from the Balkan war, the first Gulf war and even Vietnam. By that measure, it said, “nearly 100 candidates in all,” are running this year. But how many are Democrats? The paper only tells us that “more than 50 Democratic veterans [are] running in Congressional races.”

The Washington Post‘s take on the subject was more focused, zeroing on Tammy Duckworth, a Black Hawk pilot who lost both legs in Iraq who is a candidate in Illinois. The Post also told us that “among about a dozen veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan running for federal office this year, at last count all but one of them [are] Democrats.”

The Boston Globe also dedicated a few paragraphs to the issue in a story Monday morning, writing that “more than 50 military veterans are running in congressional races as Democrats,” and the Guardian in the UK also published an article on Duckworth Monday, tying her in to the story of vets running as Democrats. By the Guardian‘s count, “There are 10 veterans of the ‘war on terror’ in Iraq and Afghanistan up for election in November’s congressional elections, and all but one of them is running as a Democrat … [and] there are another two dozen veterans of earlier wars running for Congress as Democrats.”

So there you have it: Veterans Run as Democrats, the go-to story of February to date, and one we bet gets picked up more and more as time goes on. Only problem is, no one seems able to agree how many there are actually running. The counts by the Times and the Post puts it around 50, which jibes with “Band of Brothers 2006,” a group of vets running for Congress this year as Democrats, which lists 50 candidates on its roster. But how many of those served in Iraq or Afghanistan? We don’t know. “Ten”? “About a dozen”? “At least 14”? Hey, reporters have never been big on numeracy.

As if to prove how deeply this story has already penetrated the skulls of the Washington pundit class, on February 13, Chris Matthews hosted an inane discussion with three Iraq veterans running for Congress, two Republican and one Democrat (reversing the demographics of the nascent development, as is his wont).

But therein emerged one thing that might turn this trend on its head; if the simplistic, wooden responses by the three veterans to Matthews’ questions are any indication of what’s to come, we could be in for a lot of unprepared and inarticulate candidates going down in flames very early. (At which point the computer monitors of political reporters all across the country start blinking, “Abort! Abort! Abort!” and the search for a new narrative begins.)

Now, we’re not saying this isn’t a story. Any time a dozen or more veterans come home from a bloody and inconclusive war being waged by a Republican administration and decide to run for office as Democrats, that’s news.

We’re just alerting you to what’s shaping up to be the Washington press corps’ favorite narrative device of the spring — and possibly the summer and fall.

Until it isn’t.

Paul McLeary is a former CJR staff writer. Since 2008, he has covered the Pentagon for Foreign Policy, Defense News, Breaking Defense, and other outlets. He is currently a defense reporter for Politico.