Roger Ailes, President of Fox News, May Decide the Election Result

At times in the past, electoral victory in America was determined by genius strategy, crisis, unemployment, war and even saying a few good sentences — sometimes even one was enough. America is a country where the electorate’s sympathies are almost equally divided. Forty-seven percent will support Democrats and 47 percent, Republicans. There are usually not more than 6 percent who will change their minds. Everything depends upon who will win them over and whether all the “tough electorate” will vote.

One Million People Will Decide

In 2012 — in a country with over 312 million citizens — fewer than one million people may determine who will become the next president. They are the voters from six states: Virginia, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, New Mexico and Colorado. In all the others, the election result is practically sealed. The candidate who gains the votes from these states will become head of the only superpower in the world.

By no means is everything in Barack Obama’s and Mitt Romney’s hands. Of course, they themselves are the biggest threats to each other. Subsequent blunders committed by the Republican nominee can incriminate his campaign long before Nov. 6.

Campaign Teams, Politicians but Also …

Apart from these two people, however, there’s one man who has more influence on American politics — and, consequently, a considerable part of the world — than we normally think. The person in question is Roger Ailes, the president of Fox News. The world knows Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp. and the owner of Fox, much better. But it is exactly Ailes who decides what the station will be like.

CNN may be the most famous station on our planet. It’s watched practically everywhere — apart from North Korea and Cuba. Its influence in America itself, however, is much less. Seven to nine of the ten most-watched feature programs in the U.S. almost always belong to Fox. The station’s earnings reach nearly $1 billion a year. There are times during the day when its shares on the market are bigger than the three giants: CBS, NBC and ABC.

One Man Creates the Channel

Nothing that Ailes wouldn’t like and nothing that he hasn’t agreed to appear on Fox News. The thing is that, in the last half century, a lot wouldn’t have happened at all without him. In order to understand Fox News, one must understand the man who leads it. After his defeat in the 1960 election, Richard Nixon could have gone into political retirement. The fact that a politician who was an absolute political dunce nearly eight years later became president is owed to Ailes. Ailes was one of Nixon’s main media advisors and convinced the future president that if he didn’t “learn television,” he would never get to the White House.

The “Topic” Is Most Important

Nowadays, Ronald Reagan may be a legend, but when he ran for president in 1980, it was easy to attack a governor who not so long ago roamed prairies in not very ambitious western films. It was Ailes who thought up the entire “Morning in America” campaign. Ailes always repeated to politicians whom he worked for that elections aren’t won thanks to details but “topics.” In 1980, the nation of the biggest optimists in the world was plunged into depression: gasoline was horrendously expensive, American diplomats were still held hostage in Tehran, Khomeini ignored subsequent threats from Washington and the Russians seemed to triumph on all fronts. Even Carter admitted that the country plunged into something like melancholy.

Just as Obama never stopped talking to people about change 28 years later, Reagan then convinced people that America was rising to a new and beautiful day. Reagan was like a mirror in which his countrymen wanted to see themselves, and they simply liked what they saw. The idea for the campaign was Ailes’, among others. It was brilliant and, most of all, effective. Four years later, Reagan was one of the oldest politicians fighting to win re-election in U.S. history — he was 73. Ailes knew that age could be the biggest problem.

Grey Eminence

Success always has many fathers, but usually it’s Ailes who is identified as the author of the sentences that eliminated “the question of the candidate’s age.” During the debate, Reagan said two sentences that changed the course of events: “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” He said it so freely and so gracefully that attacks on him wouldn’t be sensible anymore. The Democratic candidate Walter Mondale and, most of all, the voters understood it. Reagan won in 49 states! This was not the end. Ailes also helped George Bush Sr. to win. In television appearances, he seemed even worse than Nixon at one time.

Before he took up politics, Ailes was a television producer; he came back to television when he realized that politics bored him. But thanks to Fox News, he probably could never be a more influential man. Ailes was convinced that the great television stations, and later also 24-hour news channels — CNN and MSNBC — largely support the Democrats. Those who have left Fox report that CBS is called the “Communist Broadcasting System” in internal meetings.

You Watch and You Know

In his opinion, the media was too gentle on Bill Clinton’s presidency, so he said that 15,000 journalists in the country behaved as if they had been his press secretaries. He knew perfectly that if those stations were closer to Democrats’ sympathies, 47 percent of voters could still be waiting for “their own television.” He simply gave it to them. It “simply” could be done by a person who knew a lot about television. What’s interesting is that, even now, when Fox is decidedly way ahead of CNN in terms of audience ratings, it still has nearly three times fewer workers and considerably fewer offices in America and in the world. But Ailes knew that this was not his strength. He wanted the viewers to hear what they themselves thought.

“Our Boys”

He wanted sharp comments and clear division of the world. Even somebody who doesn’t have the faintest idea about American politics will have no doubt about whom he or she should vote for after five minutes of watching Fox News. Legends about the almighty Vice President Dick Cheney circulated in Washington: he warned his assistants that if he happened to enter a hotel room and see a station on TV other than Fox News, then they could look for a new job. Condoleezza Rice used to say “our wonderful boys from Fox.”

The Columbia Space Shuttle disaster was one of the last events in which the power of CNN was so clear. Only this station could broadcast live from the event. Everyone was forced to use its signal and present its logo, when nothing is more painful than giving exposure to the competition’s symbol. In order to emphasize its dominance even more, CNN broadcast its correspondent Miles O’Brien live, so he showed up for a while on all stations, including Fox News. But that was 2003. Since then, it is Fox News that has gotten bigger and bigger.

What Station Will a Voter Turn On?

Ailes took half of the country. Whereas those who will vote for Obama can choose between CBS, NBC, ABC and CNN, the Republicans will always turn on Fox News. Its chairman is probably right that one doesn’t have to spend money on offices apart from the headquarters. The Internet has changed everything. At one time, in order to broadcast material from a news event, satellite vans were required, which were always horrendously expensive. One needed its own office there or an OB [outside broadcasting] van. Now, only Internet access is necessary. Most likely both CNN and Fox News are more afraid, not of each other but, actually, of the Internet.

In 2004, only 13 percent of voters followed the campaign race on the Internet, while four years later it was already 24 percent. The influence of television on the voters’ views will continue to decrease. And this would be good news for Obama and Democrats because they rule on the Web. The presidential campaign team tweets on average of 29 times a day, while Romney’s team tweets just once. However, if at one time Ronald Reagan, and now Mitt Romney, had his “morning in America,” it will happen again, largely thanks to Ailes. Actually, it seems that politics didn’t bore him so much.