Presswatch/Henchmen
Barnes, Fred
HENCHMEN Not long ago, the host of one of those television shows on which Washington reporters gab turned to his brethren and expressed amaze, ment at President Reagan's ability to retain...
...tossed the shirts into the wash while we were asleep, and the bright colors bled...
...The latest anointee: Senator Bob Dole, the Republican who brought America a tax increase in the midst of a crushing recession...
...Their capacity for outrage has been effectively neutralized by the adroit dipsydoodle of the White House staff...
...Whatever the past, the hardworking Dole does in fact evoke a new image," Rowen wrote...
...But even~in this growing-andchanging-ands-feeling era, all is not lost...
...But oddly enough, Democratic strategists agree (in public at least) with the GOP crowd, which is predicting a loss, at most, of 10 or 15 House seats and a few governorships...
...So much praise has come Dole's way not only for seeing the virtues of cutting back the horrendous federal budget deficit, but for'putting through some tax reforms that for years had been high on Democratic tax-reformers' lists, that he is just a bit embarrassed...
...His popularity gone, Carter was savaged by the press...
...The Marines thus have a marked tendency to reflect Bedford StuyveTHE &MERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1982 23...
...There was, though, a slight difference: They played soldiers...
...For unlike our great modern Rationalists, these potential Marines implicitly accept the failure of reality to live up to the ideal--without becoming cynical about the ideal...
...he asked...
...Dole's chagrin may have been intensified by Rowen's valentine...
...As Aristotle further noted, the ideal is just that: a balance seldom'struck in an imperfect world...
...HENCHMEN Not long ago, the host of one of those television shows on which Washington reporters gab turned to his brethren and expressed amaze, ment at President Reagan's ability to retain popularity in the teeth of economic woe...
...The tigers of the Fourth Estate, flattered and flim-flammed by the president's media managers, are not really reporting what they daily Fred Barnes is National Political Reporter for the Baltimore Sun...
...According to Plato, this class was charged with carrying out the policies of the rulers, as well as defending the Republic from external attack...
...Glory, however, was shortlived...
...Tough stuff, and t h e r e ' s more...
...Dole, said Newsweek, "emerged as a skillful and courageous leader willing to take on his party's natural allies and able to work with Democrats to fashion a package both sides could support...
...Think I'm making this up...
...Mother surreptitiously THESAURUS AT PLAY r i l e LAST WORD IN WORD GAMES William McGurn, assistant managing "editor of The American Spectator, was born at Camp Pendleton but never served there...
...Even after months of uncritical press treatment of Reagan, though, Republicans will not.escape repudiation in the November election, he argued...
...Well, perhaps I've exaggerated a bit f o r effect, but not much...
...On top of that, ,the Republicans may slide through the mid-term election largely unscathed, losing only a dozen ox so House seats a n d , a handful of governorships...
...observe about Ronald Reagan," Greider wrote...
...Not only were our prized sweatshirts reduced to pink caricatures of their former selves, but the.male members of the family were also saddled with pink underwear for the next six months...
...It was his snarling, slashing, unfair, ideological gutfighter's campaign style as Gerald Ford's running mate in 1976 that caused the GOP to lose the White House...
...A one-term president in a bankrupt White House...
...After all, the country is in the pits economically and yet Reagan isn't detested...
...To believe that requires one to believe that Reagan's charm has repealed the laws of gravity...
...The Marines' Hymn M any years ago, when little boys could still play soldier without arousing the suspicions of child psychologists, my two brothers and I would spend countless afternoons conducting mock wars in our backyard -battlefields...
...Courage, naturally, was the especial virtue of this class_9 In trying to develop and foster this manly virtue, the military establishment has been attacked for breeding unfeeling and inhuman warmongers...
...Each virtue, as Aristotle noted, has its corresponding vices at two extremes, and the ,~varrior virtue of courage is a delicate balance between cowardice at one end and recklessness at the other...
...Why, and with exquisite irony, the lion of the moment is none other than yesterday's fall guy, Bob Dole of Kansas...
...With Reagan's policies plainly not working, "why is t h e press so reluctant to add up the pieces and candidly describe the sum of confusion...
...The other boys in the neighborhood, many of whose fathers had served in World War II or Korea, would come over to play with us...
...Greider may be on to something here...
...And no one had an answer beyond the old canards about The Great Communicator and the inexplicable patience of the American voter...
...For a solid week we wore these sweatshirts as uniforms, proudly, defiantly, fearlessly, rolling down dirt mountains and storming monkeybar fortresses...
...There are people wtto say that the Marine ideal, like our old crimson sweatshirts, has faded, that the Corps is an anachronism--an argument almost as old as the Marines -themselves_9 Much of this criticism reflects the larger post-Vietnam denigration of the military vocation, the ideal of the soldier class...
...And reporters thought they were doing their job just right...
...That was mild stuff compared with 22 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1982 the Washington Post which declared Dole persona grata...
...Aren't we giving him a free ride...
...by William McGurn even have a high-school diploma_9 A fair number are dead-end kids who, given the option of boot camp or prison, have chosen the former and found some pride and self-respect in the dress blues of the Corps...
...Almost defiantly, Marine Corps recruiting stations report increases ~n volunteers each time John Wayne's The Sands o f lwo Jima is rerun on television...
...For many of these recruits, the Marine Corps tradition is likely the only one to which they'll ever attach themselves...
...SEMPER FIDELIS _9 l f the Army and the Navy, Ever gaze on Heaven's scene, They will find the streets are guarded by The United States Marines...
...His popularity is a living, pulsating insult to the press, tangible evidence that r e p o r t e r s aren't doing their job quite well en0ugh(After Nixon, Ford, and Carter, aren't.all Presidents supposed to be, brought to their knees...
...When that happens, Greider contended, the press will be ready'to pounce on a crippled President, recognizing that his "mandate of 1980 has been rescinded by the voters...
...the host asked...
...we played Marines...
...the Marines were not just another branch of the service, they were t h e b e s t , the essence of the soldierly ideal...
...With passage of the big tax increase bill that bears his name, an act that goes against all the election-year instincts of the political animals of Washington and runs against the strongest ideological currents of his own party, Dole fully emerges as a major national leader, and one being praised for his moderation and fairness and bipartisan statesmanship," Johnson wrote...
...Even then, we knew...
...Reagan is getting away with murder and maybe we're responsible...
...To reporters at breakfast, he talked with candor about the need for 'fairness and equity' in the tax system...
...In a front-page piece, columnist Haynes Johnson asked, "Who is this wave-maker, this instantly recognizable figure the fickle ptpulace of Washington treats as the latest emerging political star...
...He says a loss of 40 GOP seats is likely...
...When the press perceives that Reagan is no longer 'on top' with the people, then it will go after him with snarling satisfaction...
...I quote Greider at length because he has crystallized an attitude toward coverage of Reagan that is held by many reporters...
...If anything goes wrong, if the little economic boom of late summer falters, look out...
...Not so long ago, Dole wore the goat horns, historic in cast and heavy in weight...
...To many in the Washington press corps, fhere is nothing so offensive as a President who has the effrontery to stay popular...
...Listen to the way William Greider, Tom Bethell's favorite good writer, put it in a ROlling Stone piece entitled "Reagan's Twilight Zone...
...On November 10, the...
...You can't argue with Greider on this...
...Sure, "the conventional wisdom holds that the party of Ronald Reagan won't do too badly in the fall congressional elections . . . . The widely shared judgment is that the president's 'pool of patience' will sustain him and the GOP's pool of campaign dollars will do the rest...
...The answer is partly institutional, a perennial quality of the Washington press corps...
...I f they were, America would be told that Reagan is an amiable buml~ler, a limited man, good on TV but not up to the job...
...Day by day, the news still reports all the sorry developments, but Reagan's flaws and untruths have sunk to the eighteenth paragraph...
...Now, all is forgiven...
...But there is reason to believe the Democrats are playing the expectations game, lowballing their projection to make the actual gain look all the more impressive when, it comes...
...The oldest fighting force in the country, indeed almost a year older than the United States itself, the Marine Corps has had a stormy history, with their fiercest adversaries often found, not on the fields of battle, but in the legislative chambers and committee rooms of government...
...Both seem to be operating on a best-case scenario for Reagan and the Republicans...
...Whatever liberal biases afflict it, a deeper bias guides its by F r e d Barnes behavior toward self-interest: it doesn't want to be wrong and get crossways between popular opinion and the incumbent president . . . . Many reporters got burned in 1980 by underestimating Ronald Reagan, and this makes them doubly cautious about writing him off now, all contrary evidence notwithstanding...
...The Republicans may just be acting bullish because the White House likes it that way...
...Just ask Jimmy Carter what happened when his presidency took On a one-term odor...
...Privately, he said, many reporters regard the old guy as a nincompoop or worse...
...What's happened to the "'adversary relationship...
...Two weeks l a t e r , Hobart Rowen, the Post's economics columnist, reported that Dole was a tad red-faced about all the praise...
...Reporters, it seems, are drugged by the repetition of Reagan doubletalk," he claimed...
...By then, some pundits may indeed have rendered a favorable verdict...
...United States Marine Corps celebrates its 207th birthday, dating back to its founding by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia's Tun Tavern...
...The press, he averred, is failing, pusillanimously, and to Reagan's benefit...
...Aren't we neglecting to connect Reagan and the GOP inextricably,to the economic mess...
...We were thus under: standably ecstatic when one evening Dad brought home three bright crimson sweatshirts, each emblazoned with the Marine Corps globe, eagle, and fouled anchor over the chest...
...As the most visiblemand successful--incarnation ofthis ideal, the Marine Corps has borne more than its share of the criticism...
...He was tagged with being the architect of Republican defeat...
...To begin a fascinating odyssey into that wonderful world of words, send 50 ~ in stamps for brochure to LOGOPHILIA UNLIMITED, Box 11344-A, Palo Alto CA 94306...
...He is, the pundits already are saying, a potential president_9 This appeared four days after the tax hike had been passed...
...It's for those who read and hke to understand what they read and for those who wish to add precision and eloquence to their speech and writings...
...In his euphemistic way, the TV host was touching on a notion that crops up often among Washington reporters...
...There will always be levelers in any democratic society, and such attacks prove little more than that "there is an ideal to tear down, whether it be of an elite university or of an elite fighting force...
...Greider insisted that the press knows better about Reagan...
...So i s n ' t the press letting Reagan off the hook...
...How does he get away with it...
...9 _9 _9 N6thing quite matches a Washington anointing, the quasi-official recognition of some poor soul who has seen his way clear to act the way the press thinks is appropriate...
...Edward Tufte, the Yale political scientist who has a credible model for predicting con, gressional elections, may be right...
...Moreover, there are a number of pertinent--and accurate --insights stuffed throughout the Greider article...
...Yet this elite force doubtless is among America's most egalitarian of institutions in terms of the people it accepts: Many Marine recruits do not it's sophisticated...
...As children of a former Marne officer, we had been raised in the lore of that fighting branch...
...Get that?Dole, once an untrustworthy conservative hitman, is now talking "with candor...
...It goes like this...
Vol. 15 • November 1982 • No. 11
