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The Reporters: US mid-terms

All entries by this reporter: Nick Miles

Early voters


A crisp autumn day on the east coast of America, and as the sun came up a trickle of voters began to go to the polls.

Some of the earliest voters were candidates themselves. Clearly they're aware that it's never too late for a photo opportunity that could motivate their supporters to go to the polls.

Most of the seats are safe of course, they're either in strongly Republican or Democratic territory but the television networks are camped out en mass in the key states: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri, Virginia and Tennessee. There's intense scrutiny of these races both to try to assess the voter turnout and keep an eye on the electronic voting machines that have caused so much concern amongst many voters.

Thankfully the one thing missing now are the campaign ads. This has been the most expensive mid-term election in history and many people we've been speaking to were heartily sick of the carping adverts from both political parties. They're now consigned to 2008. Everyone now is watching and waiting for what Election 2006 has in store.

Staying the course?


At what point does a change in tactics constitute a de facto change of strategy? How does a "goal" differ from a "strategy" or mere "tactics"?

bush_ap203.jpgIf the stakes weren't so high these questions might all seem a bit pedantic, mere semantics for military training school lectures. But the questions relate to the future course of American military involvement in Iraq, and with the mid-term elections fast approaching there has been an acceleration in the rhetoric coming out of the president's camp.

The spokesman, Tony Snow, has been trying to explain to the Washington press pack how you can change tactics without that having an impact on the US strategy in Iraq. But time and again the press corps has been left confused about what practical changes there will be on the ground.

The rhetorical shift from the president is more stark. For the past year, in the face of bad news from Iraq, he has insisted that America must "stay the course" rather than pull some troops out - a policy favoured by some congressmen which the president has disparagingly called "cut and run".

But now it seems the White House is not going to "stay the course". In a recent primetime television interview, President Bush denied that "stay the course" had ever been his policy. "If what you're doing is not working, change," he said.

All this of course is an attempt to make Washington appear flexible. One commentator said that the White House has realised that it can no longer "shore up a rhetorical Maginot Line that was swept aside long ago".

It's all rather perplexing and it makes many of us who've been following the twists and turns of US policy in Iraq feel as if we've woken from a long dream. There's been a Stalinesque purge of the phrase "stay the course". It has been airbrushed from the official history.

Foley fallout


Politics is anything but predictable. Just a couple of weeks ago, the issue that most pundits and hacks thought would dominate the upcoming elections was .

foley203ap.jpgThen came Foleygate, the Foley Affair, call it what you will - the lewd e-mails and messages sent by now ex-congressman James Foley to teenage boys. It is haunting Republicans. The is digging into which senior Republicans knew about it and what action they took, or failed to take.

Everybody it seems - but mostly politicians and journalists, of course - is trying to work out what impact this could have when voters go to the polls in November. Well, over the last few days the have come out since the scandal broke.

Republicans shouldn't read them before going to bed.

Take a poll by the Opinion Research Corporation. It asked voters whether the Foley matter has made them less likely to vote for Republican candidates for Congress this year. Almost a third said it had.

A Gallup poll revealed that more than half the people it questioned thought senior Republicans had sat on information about the Foley emails for political purposes.

Of course it's one thing to take the moral high ground when you're asked a direct question by a pollster. In the privacy of the polling booth, voters may take a more pragmatic line. Never forget that more than 90% of incumbents get re-elected and most people vote on local issues. We're all watching the polls but know they've got to be treated with a healthy degree of scepticism.

Caught on the Net


The mid-terms are a political battle that are being waged as much over the internet as in the mainstream media.
This year the internet site , where millions of video clips are posted and viewed every day, has become the site of choice for disseminating embarrassing information about Congressional candidates.

monkey203.jpgTake, the Republican senator from Virginia, , who's up for re-election. He recently slipped up in front of a Democratic party activist of Indian American descent who was videoing his speeches. Mr Allen addressed him directly and called him "macaca" which is a type of monkey and also a racial slur. The video found its way from YouTube to the national television networks. Senator Allen' s lead has shrunk considerably.

YouTube is an equal opportunity vehicle for embarrassment, it's not been kind to George Allen's opponent, either. Anybody wanting to see Mr Webb's views on women in the military dredged up from almost thirty years ago ( he said and that "being at a naval academy was a horny woman's dream") can do so on the site.

YouTube and the plethora of new political blogs here mean there's a dizzying array of political content on the Web.
, from George Washington University, a long-time watcher of the interplay between politics and the internet told me that campaigners are finding it increasingly difficult to manage bad news. "Anybody who thinks blogs aren't influential is out of touch with reality" she said.

About Nick Miles


I joined the 大象传媒 in 1992, after studying modern languages at Manchester University.

My 大象传媒 career started as a reporter for Radio Five Live, before working as a 大象传媒 'stringer' in Peru in 1997, covering the hostage crisis at the Japanese ambassador's residence.

I then worked as a producer at the 大象传媒 World Service for three years, before moving to Mexico as the 大象传媒 Latin America correspondent in 2001. During that two-year posting, I covered the ongoing political turmoil in Venezuela, including the attempted coup against President Hugo Chavez and the two-month long national oil workers strike. I also reported on the political transition in Haiti that marked the end of President Aristide's time in office.

I moved to Washington in June of this year, after two years spent in South Africa covering stories in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Kenya.

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