FRIDAY, JULY 8, 2011
All good things must come to an end/At the same time, history continues: Today, our second non-annual fund-raising drives comes to its official end. We’ll be thanking those who have contributed, though you can still join in the fun! Go ahead! Just click here!
We’re plowing ahead on chapter 6 over at How He Got There. This chapter deals with the giant flap about Love Canal—perhaps the most consequential episode of Campaign 2000.
Sad story! By the fall of 1999, the press corps’ favorite theme—Al Gore is a liar, just like Bill Clinton!—was dying on the vine, basically due to lack of examples. This theme got its start in March of that year, driven by three alleged examples (click here). But one example was so bogus that even the press corps was forced to drop it. By November, this meant that the corps was down to just two alleged lies.
The corps was clinging to two alleged lies—but by the famous Rule of Three, the children needed one more. And along came Connolly and Seelye! On November 30, they misquoted Gore about Love Canal—and yes, it was a flat misquotation. Earth tones quickly faded away. The theme about lying came back with a vengeance. It hardened, then turned into stone.
Al Gore is a liar, just like Bill Clinton! From this point on, this theme never quit. Most strikingly, it was put to use in September 2000, when Gore was pulling away in the polls—and then again in October 2000, after Bush and Gore’s first debate.
Quite plainly, this theme sent Bush to the White House. Shouldn’t the public know?
Future generations should know this history, the history “liberal leaders” have agreed not to tell. We’ll be recording this history, in full detail, over at our companion site. For today, here’s a short opening chunk from the still-unfinished chapter 6. In this passage, we describe a swoon which coincided with an ugly war.
From chapter 6, How He Got There:
LATE IN NOVEMBER, AS THE FIRST SNOWFLAKES FELL, John McCain moved ahead of George Bush in New Hampshire’s Republican polling.
A series of headlines describe McCain’s rapid advance in the state which would hold the nation’s first primary.
NEW HAMPSHIRE: MCCAIN TWO POINTS UP, the Hotline reported on November 29, citing a new Time/CNN poll.
McCain had gone ahead in the state for the very first time. On December 9, another headline extended his margin. NEW HAMPSHIRE: MCCAIN UP 7, a new Hotline banner said.
One day later, another new poll: NEW HAMPSHIRE: MCCAIN UP 15.
In a truly stunning reversal, McCain was pulling away in New Hampshire. In mid-September, Bush had been leading McCain in the state by a walloping 31 points.
No one doubted a basic point about McCain’s advance. His remarkable rise had been aided, in part, by remarkably friendly press coverage. By late November, no one denied that a swoon for McCain had taken hold in the national press. That very term was in wide use, sporting a capital S.
For the record, the press corps’ swoon for John McCain had begun in the campaign’s prehistory. The love affair received its name from the Weekly Standard’s Andrew Ferguson; this occurred in July 1998, midway through the brutal year of President Clinton’s impeachment. “It is widely acknowledged that [McCain] wants to run for president in 2000,” Ferguson wrote at that time, “and already national political reporters are lost in love.” McCain “gets the best press coverage of any politician in the country,” the conservative writer continued. “The McCain Swoon is now so conspicuous that NBC News, the Washington Post and other news outlets have assigned reporters to do favorable stories explaining why the stories about John McCain are so favorable.”
Twenty-nine months before the election, “The Swoon” had been given its name.
Plainly, Ferguson was right on one score. By the summer of 1998, reporters were writing glowing reports explaining McCain’s glowing coverage. On June 8, to cite one example, Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post had examined the potential candidate’s relationship with the establishment press. Kurtz expressed a striking judgment: “The plain truth is that a growing number of journalists want John McCain to run for president.”
It was hard to dispute this assessment. Kurtz quoted a number of major press figures expressing their unvarnished admiration for the Arizona Republican. Liberal columnist Al Hunt had called McCain “the most courageous and one of the most admirable men I’ve ever known in American politics.” Mark Shields, another liberal columnist, had praised McCain for his “against-the-grain leadership coupled with his riveting personal history.” And a Mike Wallace statement was simply astounding, coming from an iconic symbol of a supposedly skeptical press corps. “I’m thinking I may quit my job if he gets the nomination,” Wallace had said, implying that he would work for McCain in a general election.
In Esquire, Charles Pierce had already offered a mordant assessment of the press corps’ general attitude. “If John McCain doesn’t run,” he had written, “the mandarins of the chattering class may throw [an] ensemble hissy fit.”
Pierce’s piece had appeared in May 1998. Its headline: “John McCain Walks on Water.”
What explained this hard early swoon? Over time, a string of profiles agreed on the basics. First, McCain had what journalists called “The Story”–his personal history in Vietnam, where he endured more than five years as a POW. Beyond that, reporters agreed that McCain had The Issue; campaign finance reform, his trademark, was a press corps favorite. Pundits agreed on another point; in their view, “The Story” proved that McCain had character, one of the press corps’ basic requirements for the coming post-Clinton era. And they agreed that he scored major points as a “maverick.” Because his trademark issues tended to put him at odds with his own party’s leadership, McCain had become “the conservative that liberals love to love,” Ferguson wrote in his 1998 profile.
One year later, in the fall of 1999, McCain was still quite low in the national polls. But profiles and columns reflecting The Swoon were appearing all over the press.
Gushing portraits came from all quarters. More strikingly, major journalists routinely acknowledged that they and their colleagues were caught in a swoon. “So far, McCain has gotten terrific press,” Roger Simon wrote in U.S. News in late September. “The praise has been so lavish, it has been dubbed the ‘McCain Swoon.’ ”
Two weeks later, Geneva Overholser said the same thing in the Washington Post. She cited the hopeful’s “adoring press. The McCain Swoon, it's called.”
Jonathan Alter said it in Newsweek: “It's swoon season on John McCain's bus, the Straight Talk Express.”
Kurtz authored a mocking headline in the Post: “Stop Me Before I Swoon.” In his piece, written in mid-October, he quoted several writers describing the way they themselves had now joined the swoon. “Journalists go weak in the knees around the guy,” Jacob Weisberg had written in Slate. “When I set out to spend a few days with McCain last week, I promised my editor that I wouldn't join in this collective swoon. That proved impossible.”
By late November, the swooning was general over the press corps. No one seemed embarrassed to say so, even though the love affair seemed to violate normal standards of journalistic deportment. But a very different pattern emerged as this press corps continued its war against Gore, a building war which was completing its seventh and ugliest month. Journalists widely acknowledged—if asked—that Gore was getting horrendous coverage. But in this case, no one was willing to state the obvious: The press was at war with Al Gore.
It was OK to cop to The Swoon. Not so with this undeclared war.
Indeed, no one even seemed able to say why the coverage of Gore was so brutal. This awkward group silence became rather clear on CNN late in November…
Before too long, we’ll post the full chapter. (Most work is done on all future chapters.) At any rate, on November 30, Love Canal hit—and a punishing theme turned to stone. No one in the mainstream press could explain that episode either.
Needless to say, your liberal leaders stared off into air. None of the liberal journals complained. The children behaved like good boys and girls. Are you happy with how that turned out?
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