PR as in President, by Vic Gold
Kannon, Baron Von
BOOKS IN REVIEW - "PR as in President, by Vic Gold" especially geese, raccoons, and dogs—as well as the antics of people, especially himself. Most pieces are genuinely amusing, and one—"Death of a Pig"—manages to move towards larger questions and...
...He did, with the now-famous speech in which Reagan advocated a $90 billion re-duction in federal expenditures...
...More important, Jimmy's good old boys were so proud of their success at getting Jimmy the nomination, they just had to brag to the press...
...an account of White's struggles with his Model T Ford —are perfectly wrought essays that are destined to find their place in anthologies of American writing...
...I shall not do this for the simple reason that I share our editor's belief that most politicians are buffoons and most journalists jackasses...
...While my recollection of the discussion is understandably fuzzy (I was eleven at the time), I do remember the major indictment against John Kennedy: He didn't even write his own speeches...
...Though this tradition, which currently nourishes the fine American essayist, Edward Hoagland, lacks the kind of astute observation of human conduct that we find in the best English and Continental essayists, it has its own energies and attractions...
...POLITICKS is the irreverent, new, tabloid-size biweekly magazine reporting...
...tinguished from paid advertising exposure, so that the campaign had to be built around media events...
...More than that: the news media, under pressure of their own accelerated needs...would be active participants in the games the flacks would play...
...At this point a reviewer might be expected to criticize candidates and media alike for their emphasis on style over sub-stance, to bemoan this deplorable condition, and to suggest solutions to it...
...After reading PR as in President, one wonders why Gold did not spend more time on the issues—though come to think of it, what were the issues of 1976...
...ONE DOLLAR BIWEEKLY OLITICKS & OTHER HUMAN INTERESTS INSIDE: JERRY BROWN AND VERNON JORDAN NOSE-TO-NOSE WITH JIMMY CARTER Ronald Aeagan hears a Panamanian spit in our canal...
...Burke's separation from his father from age six to eleven thus looms as the critical experience in Burke's youth...
...Burke the conservative is thus replaced by Burke "the ambivalent radical...
...He admits that "Burke remembered his stay with his mother's family with great fondness," and later, in referring to his earlier speculation on Burke's childhood, he acknowledges that there is not a shred of evidence suggesting that the boy found the separation from his father "traumatic...
...At the same time, one read occasional complaints in the press that the candidates had failed to come up with ahy new ideas...
...Thus humiliated, Ford would step down, and Reagan would begin preparations for the general election...
...Jasper County, Indiana, was -staunchly Republican then, not to mention Protestant, so it wasn't surprising that most of the men supported Richard Nixon...
...As a result, he lost his momentum and the all-important early primaries...
...Whether or not the proposal had merit, its timing forced Reagan into debates with emotionally hostile voters fearful that local hospitals would be boarded up...
...In short, Professor Kramnick's analysis of Burke the thinker and Burke the politician is based on a "psychosexual hypothesis" which is based on "no solid evidence...
...Colorado 50321 Please send me a Free Issue of POLITICKS and bill me as a Charter Subset'iber for m vear 122 issues) at $12 — a saving of' $6 off the reg-ula r subscription price, $10 'almost 5(V...
...There is no evidence indicating that Burke conceived ofan "active/bourgeois/masculine principle" or a "passive / aristocratic / feminine principle...
...He 34 The American Spectator February 1978...
...According to Professor Kramnick, these "years of youthful separation" from his father were "traumatic," and, as a consequence, the boy had "problems in the area of sexual object choice...
...They are the Republic's salvation...
...Governor Reagan had a similar staff problem...
...But for the reader with an interest in the follies to which contemporary academics are particularly prone, it is a gold mine—a veritable treasure house of trendy gibberish...
...Kramnick explains: Successful resolution of the oedipal conflict requires an identification with the father...
...For instance, Don Penny, a top Ford flack, was quoted in the Washington Post as saying, "The trouble with the President is that half the time he sounds like a Florsheim shoe salesman...
...It was just when such identification should have occurred that Burke's father was absent...
...The reporters obliged by spelling their names right, and the good old boys continued to announce their campaign plans to the world...
...Yet the garden White cultivates—however charming and urbane—is finally a small one, a garden that leaves out too much...
...Thus when Burke, in his early twenties, underwent "an 'identity crisis' and a 'moratorium' [corresponding] perfectly with the Eriksonian paradigm," his experiPaul A. Rahe is assistant professor of history at Cornell University...
...Box 2M21 Boulder...
...On the other hand, one shouldn't be too quick to cast blame on the media...
...This does not bother Professor Kramnick: He is not one to let the facts get in the way of the "organizing and interpretive construct of [his] own creation" which, he admits, he has "imposed from without on [Burke's) life history...
...Candidates, on the one hand, obviously are eager to generate as much favorable media coverage as possible, and if the media choose to cover such things as "Peanut Brigades" and snowball fights in Miami (snowballs courtesy of the Commander-in-Chief), then Jimmy's and Jerry's flacks are eager to oblige...
...If for any reason" you don't like it just mark "cancel" across the bill-with no further obligation...
...As a result, Burke's personal crisis was "never completely resolved [and his] basic ambivalence persisted throughout his life...
...POLITICKS with the "K" stands fbr political engagement...
...The "construct" responsible for the violence Professor Kramnick does to the evidence is the product of an injudicious mixing of a debased Marxism (deprived of its claim to scientific accuracy) and a debased Freudianism (shorn of its recognition that self-restraint is a prerequisite for civilization...
...Name Address City State Zip FREE ISSUE 41AS The American Spectator February 1978 33 Throughout 1976 candidates criticized the media for their lopsided focus on campaign strategy rather than issues...
...He does claim that his argument is "well within the pale of interpretive insight" and that his "speculations are usually based on extensive textual documentation...
...The antagonism between what Burke conceived of as the active/bourgeois/masculine principle and the passive/aristocratic/feminine principle," writes Professor Kramnick, informed Burkean theory as well as Burkean practice...
...What is less clear is who is at fault...
...Both this piece and "Farewell, My Lovely...
...and analyzing our political culture, tak- ing a fresh look at the people, issues and ideas important for the future...
...IT t hv newsstandprice...
...What's more, the satiric drawings fea- tured as an integral part of POLITICKS have spawned a new era of political art...
...BOOK REVIEW PR as in President Vic Gold / Doubleday / $8.50 Baron Von Kannon One Saturday morning in October 1960, I was listening to a group of farmers discuss politics in the back room of Cotton Jones' grocery store...
...The most enlightening revelation concerning the flacks and their games comes through Gold's description of the public-relations experts...
...The fear of the father's angry rebuke of the young boy for his incestuous designs on the mother is resolved in this identification...
...And White is a writer distinctly in the American grain—a solitarysoul intent on celebrating, in his own humorous way, the mysterious interconnectedness of things...
...You may be a Democrat or Republican, Socialist or Independent, but if' you care enough about public affairs to partici- P lend 'our voice, write letters, take action, or possibly give money to bring about change -- then PDX IIC ()ICI Other Human Interests is for you...
...POLITICKS & Other Human interests Subscript ion Depart mew PO...
...off the regular subscription price, $10 (almost 50eir ) off the newsstand price...
...Not simply because Gerald Ford...operated the most public relations-oriented Presidency in history...not simply because post-Watergate federal election spending laws placed a premium on pure flackery, as disBaron Von Kannon is publisher of The American Spectator...
...Only in "The Years of Wonder," a mini,autobiography in which White describes a peculiar rite of passage he underwent as a feckless young man, do we get the kind of generalizing power that we expect from the best essayists...
...Governor Carter's flacks seem to have had more respect for their candidate, but were even more vain and self-serving than Ford's or Reagan's...
...Gold writes, "The idealistic researcher-speechwriter, for his own peace of mind, needs to pin his candidate down...
...The complexities of Burke's social thought," Professor Kramnick tells us, were "reflective of deep confusion over personal identity...
...For in this piece White takes a close look at the strange amalgam of ideas that tossed around in his head at the time—ideas, he implies, that are often in the heads of young men in their twenties...
...DOyou feel passionately enough about the issues of the day to get involved...
...Jerry Rafshoon, Carter's man in charge of advertisements, went so far as to boast on national television how he flimflammed the voters of Pennsylvania...
...And fo- cused, above all, on helping you connect with others who shareyour concerns...
...it also stands for a magazine of style, wit, and sophistication...
...This was reflected in the presence of both his good friend Will and his wife Jane in the Burke household, and in Burke's oscillating admiration for the masculine "bourgeois principle" of assertiveness and ambition and the feminine "aristocratic principle" of self-deprecation and deference which characterized both his political thought and his public behavior...
...Burke did use what Professor Kramnick considers stereotypical masculine and stereotypical feminine adjectives, but even Professor Kramnick has to acknowledge that it is "by no means certain that this patterning of words had conscious gender association for Burke, or, for that matter, particular linkage to social or class character...
...We hear in his work not only the voice of Thoreau, to whom he pays his respects, but also the voices of Whitman, Williams, and Roethke...
...ence was complicated by "unresolved oedipal issues...
...At least three pages listing a wide range ofopportunities forparticipation in the political process...
...The same can be said for Professor Kramnick's interpretation of Burke's writings and speeches...
...No less than three key aides—Peter Bourne, Hamilton Jordan, and Charles Kirbo—claimed to be the one man responsible for persuading Carter to run...
...BOOK REVIEW The Rage of Edmund Burke: Portrait of an Ambivalent Conservative Isaac Kramnick / Basic Books / $12.95 Paul A. Rahe For the layman eager to learn about Edmund Burke's political thought and career, Isaac Kramnick's biography will be useless...
...Only one pops to mind, the Panama Canal dispute, and the candidate closest to popular sentiment on that one failed to receive his party's nomination...
...Neither is capable of dealing with serious issues, and when they try the rest of us pay dearly...
...We miss in White's work what we find in the best essayists—the tension between the world of ideas and the world of ordinary life, a sense of the myriad waysin which the mind—and I don't mean only the intellectual's mind—makes sense of experience...
...Candidates who ignore fluffery—as Gene McCarthy doesn't learn every four years—end up with small bills from their clipping services and very few votes...
...Further, when campaigns are obvious circuses the natural skepticism of the American public is reinforced...
...Most pieces are genuinely amusing, and one—"Death of a Pig"—manages to move towards larger questions and deeper feelings...
...In his latest book, Vic Gold (himself a former Washington PR man, or "Retired Flack") supplies a highly entertaining account of political image-building in the 1976 presidential campaign...
...Even more astonishing than his bizarre hypothesis is Professor Kramnick's argument...
...Bring on the superficial reporting...
...Instead, then, of being too hard on White for what he does not have to offer, we should recognize his successes in this vein—a handful of essays that have, as White puts it, "the odor of durability clinging to them...
...Such skepticism causes people to dismiss what they read in the newspapers as balderdash, and to doubt the ability of the government to do anything right...
...Ford's campaign specialists, according to Gold, continually generated publicity that reinforced "the widespread view that he is an affable oaf who needs help to thread his way through a sentence...
...Speech-writers, along with pollsters, advance men, advertising copywriters, media specialists (print), media specialists (electronic), and other assorted image-makers have come out of the closet...
...Oh yes, there was also Jimmy's commitment to a government of love and competence...
...at the beginning of the very television commercials which had been criticized...
...A major hitch developed, however, when one of Reagan's flacks became prematurely concerned that President Reagan would not be sufficiently conservative...
...Behind the public creed lurked nagging issues of private need...
...Professor Kramnick finds "the real Burke" produced by this imaginative construct to be "infinitely more fascinating" than the traditional Burke...
...Otherwise you'll be a Charter Subscriber for one year (22 issues) at $12—a saving of $6...
...But as Conor Cruise O'Brien has demonstrated, what you find are "little scraps of Burke embedded in great wedges of Kramnick prose, purporting to paraphrase Burke, and in fact just plain distorting him to suit the Kramnick thesis...
...Be impulsive...
...The satisfaction of reaching an elite readership with thoughtful articles doesn't pay the bills...
...In each issueyou will find a unique directory of ways and means to make waves whereveryou...
...Fill in the coupon now and well send you the next issue free...
...For the first time I realized that there actually exist people who are more vain, more petty, even more peculiar than politicians...
...Despite these periodic laments, it is clear that 1976 was the year that style defeated substance in the political arena...
...32 The American Spectator February 1978 At last there's a magazine for people who make waves...
...Their importance is underscored by the fact that the seriousness of a nascent campaign is often judged not by the candidate's positions on major issues, but by his success at recruiting top-rate public-relations experts...
...Gold offers example after example of public-relations experts who spent their time promoting themselves at the expense of their candidates...
...By his own admission, Rafshoon responded to the charge that Carter was vague on the issues by merely adding the line "Jimmy Carter on the issue of...
...Gold contends that "from the beginning, this was to be the most public relations-oriented Presidential campaign in history...
...fin- any reason, write "cancel across the bill and return it —no further obligation...
...Today, of course, few politicians write anything, and everyone knows it...
...POLITICKS is the citizen's compan- ion...
...So bring on the flacks...
...This may explain why Kramnick concludes his chapter on Burke's "identity crisis" with the admission: "there is no solid evidence that can be produced here which would positively sustain the interpretation of Burke's sexual and psychic life offered in this book...
...Young Ned was a sickly child, afflicted with a lung disease that forced him to spend the years between his sixth and eleventh birthdays away from his father's damp Dublin home and with his mother's family in the Irish countryside...
...The Years of Wonder" is also very much an American tale of adventure on a new frontier—what was then the strange new world of Alaska...
...Reagan's strategy, one will recall, was to score early and decisive victories against Ford in New Hampshire and Florida...
...if you decide not to subscrilw...
...The most popular—and profitable—publications seem to be those of the Rupert Murdoch variety, and publishers who traffic in serious analysis of the issues generally face rising deficits...
Vol. 11 • February 1978 • No. 4
