The King of Quotes
Waldman, Steven
THE KING OF QUOTES WHY THE PRESS IS ADDICTED TO NORMAN ORNSTEIN by Steven Waldman A day in the life of the King of Quotes begins as it should: in the make-up room. Mild-mannered Norman...
...If he chooses to continue to be a 'serious' political scientist then he'll have to do things 'serious' political scientists do!' Right now his media appearances make him the source of envy, Hess says, but in the long run, "if Norm wanted an appointment at an Ivy League school it would be difficult if he didn't refurbish his image by writing a book ." Ornstein does try to maintain his contacts in the professional community and is active in the American Political Science Association...
...if you can't state an opinion yourself, you can use a Norman Ornstein quote...
...If my instinct might tell me that it's 50-50 then I can use Norman Ornstein" to state it more definitively, says Jon Shure, a reporter with the Bergen Record of New Jersey...
...Then he became more deeply involved in the broadcast media and in hands-on legislating...
...And the 1986 budget is dead before drafting" He told Financial Times that "Congress and the President have handcuffed themselves to one another and jumped off the cliff without knowing whether they will land on a plump mattress or a bed of nails...
...THE KING OF QUOTES WHY THE PRESS IS ADDICTED TO NORMAN ORNSTEIN by Steven Waldman A day in the life of the King of Quotes begins as it should: in the make-up room...
...Professors from out of town would have to set aside a month to visit Washington, find an apartment, get a grant, and then struggle to get ten minutes with an impatient congressman...
...At AEI alone, Allen Schick explains the budget process, William Schneider talks about national politics, Michael Robinson discusses politics and the media, Michael Malbin talks about interest groups and lobbying, and Ben Wattenberg pontificates about the media...
...Congressional Comment ! " So she called him...
...The Steven Waldman is an editor of The Washington Monthly...
...The Christian Science Monitor quoted Ornstein about the direction Edwin Meese was likely to take at the Justice Department when he became attorney general...
...He is an astute observer of Congress and has an uncanny ability to take a very complicated subject and make it interesting and understandable," explains Peggy Robinson, senior political producer at "MacNeil/Lehrer...
...Reporters will often go to a conservative for one side of an issue and a liberal for the other, and then to Ornstein as the final authority...
...Craig Carter didn't have time to talk to enough members of Congress to make an independent judgment on the speaker's race...
...In some cases, he simply provides journalists It has gotten to the point that the "conventional wisdom, " that amorphous consensus of opinions held by respectable powers-that-be, is not so amorphous after all...
...In addition, though, there are journalists who rely on Norman Ornstein because they are intellectually insecure...
...You now have an open and fluid enough institution, especially given the media coverage, that the individual who sets himself out as a kind of rebel can get a lot of attention" In a piece for The Washington Times on Reagan, Ornstein gave a short summary of the theory of incrementalism: "We don't measure American politics by huge gains...
...You two make this so easy for me...
...Rogers (although he says that since they got a video camera of their own "they've become pretty blase") and he now earns about $80,000 a year, more than a quarter of that from speaking fees...
...I don't know why I do those," he says referring to interviews with smaller media outlets...
...That whetted my appetite for writing for newspapers...
...That was the conventional wisdom, too...
...Its beauty, say many reporters, lies in part in its simplicity...
...The titles given him, however, have often proven to be quite flexible...
...Ornstein gets his information by reading The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times every day, and the Almanac of American Politics periodically...
...Lobbying is as old as the Republic, if not older," Ornstein told People...
...He is certainly accorded royal status," says Tara Sonenshine, a "Nightline" producer...
...Before him there was a void . . . . He's been a very good entrepreneur...
...Over time he built up contacts and friendships among members and aides...
...The next year he served as committee staff director of the Senate Temporary Select Committee to Study the Senate Committee System...
...Most of his analysis is decidedly mainstream, and it is to his advantage that the American Enterprise Institute is considered ideologically in between the conservative Heritage Foundation and the liberal Brookings Institution...
...John Warner's serving on the board of directors of the Washington Redskins, Ornstein said it "doesn't sound advisable to me" that Warner should resign or abstam during a vote affecting sports franchises...
...Jim Jones to the Tulsa World, about Rep...
...While some journalists just call for the ten second sound bite, others will talk to Ornstein at great length on background, to test out hypotheses, learn some history, even get some reading recommended...
...with a way of circumventing the constraints of traditional reporting...
...There were things that I could do with one finger of my left hand that it would take others an enormous effort to do...
...But one cannot rise to become, in Garrison Nelson's phrase, "The King of Quotes" simply by being glib...
...I began to think, 'why can't I be doing writing with more appeal?' " Soon he was writing more book reviews and op-ed pieces...
...I had to try to fit sound bites into the script," he says...
...Soon after the completion of his dissertation, in which he studied the relationship between the size of Senate staffs and issue specialization, he was weighing teaching offers at two schools, the University of Minnesota and Catholic University in Washington...
...Besides, he seems to be having too much fun to stop what he's doing...
...It surprises me that we got as much done as we did," says Ornstein...
...Obviously, there is more here than meets the camera lens...
...The 1985 budget was dead before arrival...
...In much the same way that writing 750 word op-ed pieces made him sensitive to the constraints of print reporters, this experience taught him about the needs of TV and radio journalists...
...We use him as a one-person truth squad," says Peggy Robinson of "MacNeil/Lehrer...
...Ten minutes later, he's down the elevator and out in front of the building to do a stand-up interview...
...They will increasingly speak of popularizers in humorous ways...
...But he quite simply doesn't have time to write books...
...It's like breathing for you!' They're on, and after five minutes of chit-chat about the Senate elections, the segment is over...
...In the next hour he is interrupted by calls from the Chronicle Broadcasting network and WFAA, the ABC affiliate in Dallas...
...It looks like you're not doing your legwork ." Even when Ornstein's quotes don't really add anything to the piece, reporters feel they give the story more credibility...
...Sometimes I'd go in circles trying not to quote him, and then I'd get to writing and there would be that Norman Ornstein quote that just summed it up and I just had to use it" It is not readily apparent how this bright but seemingly unremarkable man became the main voice in the media expressing expert opinion and analysis about American politics and government...
...Many Washington journalists feel more comfortable with politics than government...
...The Grand Fork Farm and Home of North Dakota printed a story from Combined Commodity News Services with the headline, "Congress won't make severe farm cuts...
...A half hour later, a different crew is there for another...
...He has favorite and least favorite legislators but will rarely give a one-sided assessment...
...And hardly a week goes by without Ornstein defending the slow-moving government by pointing out that "the Founding Fathers designed the political system to prevent dramatic change!' But Ornstein expounds on not just the intricacies of congressional process but on just about any topic...
...These forces combined to create a tremendous need for someone who could act as a bridge between political journalists and political science—someone who could provide an element of depth, or at least create the illusion of depth, in journalism...
...He called me right back !' Ornstein contrasted Broyhill's political tactics with fellow-North Carolinian Jesse Helms and gave her a few pithy one-liners that she used...
...Albert Gore...
...Stephen Hess of Brookings says some other political scientists don't consider Ornstein a leading light in the profession...
...Norman Ornstein is a phenomenon...
...What grade would you give them...
...I have to work at it...
...The successful president is one who can make those changes look like significant victories, and shape them a little bit so that they move his way...
...While he is considered a well-polished TV commentator, he still conveys a slight nervousness...
...I realized there were very few political scientists interested in Congress based in Washington...
...He went on to graduate school in political science at the University of Michigan...
...When reporters think they know something but aren't sure or haven't found enough evidence to prove it, they can go to Ornstein...
...The traditional road of an aspiring political scientist was to teach at a Big Ten or Ivy League school...
...Fingering power Ornstein was born in Grand Rapids, Minnesota in 1948, but spent most of his childhood in Canada...
...He is important to AEI "from the point of view of the clout this organization has and the ability to educate the public," says Patrick Ford, vice president for development and public affairs...
...There's a real danger in coasting," he says...
...I think Norm is a good political scientist—a very perceptive person," he says...
...The result is that his quotes often are less glimmers of insight than statements of the obvious...
...Unofficially, he is the number-one professional analyst of Congress and, increasingly, of Washington in general...
...Ornstein's rise has come about mostly because of fundamental changes in political science, politics, and reporting...
...We wanted him bad and were willing to go to Bermuda to get him:' Los Angeles Times political reporters had been quoting him so often that editors out West last year tried to impose an Ornstein moratorium...
...But, as Shure says, "It doesn't look good to quote another reporter...
...It is often a straightforward, bold, declarative statement...
...asks a reporter from Westinghouse...
...they lose their solemnity" when they talk about Ornstein and company, Hess says...
...Finally, part of it— although he insists it's a small part—is that Ornstein simply enjoys being famous...
...By the same token I don't think he knows any more than any good political reporter," says John Barry of Dun's Business Month...
...He is articulate, but his prose doesn't ignite...
...He is known as one of the fastest phone call-returners in town and has a knack for sensing what the reporter is looking for and getting right to it...
...Campaign reporters tend to focus on the horse race without evaluating policies and issues...
...He has been labeled an "economist" in New York Times stories about tax reform, an expert on "congressional-White House relations" in a Boston Globe article on presidential leadership, and simply a "political pundit" in an American Banker article on the Senate elections...
...The AEI public affairs office's compilation of news clips, which is often used to demonstrate the activity of the think tank, is often dominated by Ornstein clips...
...They either did laborious studies of the government or abstract theoretical research that could have been done in Washington state as easily as in Washington D.C...
...An admirer of Ornstein's abilities and the role he plays in Washington, Hess warns that he may be quoting himself into a corner...
...Although a few TV producers point out that he is "cute," his is a rather ordinary cuteness...
...You can be sure that if we go into the 1986 elections and farmers believe the Republican party has turned its back on them, they will vote accordingly," he said in the Los Angeles Times...
...In the past year he was quoted more than 300 times by major print news organizations and at least as often by smaller newspapers—a level of visibility that would make many a U.S...
...Reporters speak of Ornstein quotes almost as if they were a narcotic...
...The fact that I got him made me feel like I was finally learning my way around," she says...
...I was embarrassed because I didn't know who he was...
...Editors started to ask for a what-does-it-all-mean paragraph along with who, what, where, and when...
...In 1981 he became the political editor of "The Lawmakers," a public TV show on Congress, and in 1983 became the series editor of "Congress: We the People," a 26-part telecourse that he credits with helping him learn how to deal with the broadcast media...
...having Norman Ornstein popping up on television or in reputable newspapers is financially prudent...
...Just last month, The Washington Monthly quoted Ornstein three times in a cover story on Sen...
...It has gotten to the point that the "conventional wisdom," that amorphous consensus of opinions held by respectable powers-thatbe, is not so amorphous after all...
...There is now a growing group of other people in town serving the same function as Ornstein, though without as much recognition...
...In part, the constraints of daily journalism necessitate reliance on an outside expert...
...That's part of it...
...His high-school yearbook said, "Our avid debater seems to think Canada should be the 51st state," and added, "Ambition: to prove his point" In 1964 he went to the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, starting out as a pre-med but switching to a social science major...
...I like to talk to him !' The best shortcut Unfortunately, Norman Ornstein is not merely a resource...
...he now has access to virtually any member of Congress...
...It was impossible for them to stay on top of current legislative trends...
...The result is that his quotes are often less glimmers of insight than statements of the obvious...
...I just wouldn't feel right about myself if I told ABC, CBS, and NBC to come and told the little stations no...
...It is what Norman Ornstein is thinking...
...Really, he's more NORMAN ORNSTEIN QUOTE PRODUCTION OVER TIME* 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 "Source: Nexus...
...There are a lot of other political scientists out there who have a staggering understanding of Congress, and there are plenty who are brighter than I am, but they're not around," he says...
...This attitude is crucial for maintaining his standing as a detached, and therefore credible, observer...
...The $3,000 he can command for a speech is a pittance compared to what George Will or Henry Kissinger take in, but quite a bit more than your average teacher of government...
...Ornstein has become so established as an expert that journalists will quote him on anything, even when it's beyond his area of expertise...
...Enter Norman Ornstein...
...Fleet Owner source Part of what Ornstein does for the press is apply the basics of history and political science to current events...
...He's quoted in publications ranging from Sport to Ladies Home Journal to The Wall Street Journal...
...His importance tells much about political journalism, how it has changed and what its limitations are...
...Journalists looking for an expert's view now have quite a few who will be perfectly willing and eager to return their calls and pronounce judgment...
...But Ornstein has never written a major academic work, which is a prerequisite to being taken seriously in the academic world...
...Norm carved out a whole new role," says Alan Ehrenhalt, political editor of Congressional Quarterly...
...In addition, Ornstein says he does not tailor his opinions to fit the point of the story...
...In an article in Sport magazine about Sen...
...He graduated from high school at age 14, from college at 18...
...congressional reporters too often concentrate on whether the bill will pass, not what it would do...
...Most academics are so fearful of being wrong that they pile on qualifications until the quotes lose their verbal stamina!' Ornstein's quotes are punchy...
...He is read and heard by more people than any other political scientist...
...to educate the public...
...recalls Moriarty...
...Indeed, it has gotten to the point that Ornstein has become such an institution in Washington that quoting him has become a sort of rite of passage for young reporters, the signal that they finally have become a genuine Washington insider...
...There are a lot of other political scientists out there who have a staggering understanding of Congress, and there are plenty who are brighter than I am, but they're not around, " he says...
...With each appearance on "MacNeil/Lehrer," each quotation in a newspaper and each article he published (more than 130 since 1972, including two in The Washington Monthly), his recognition grew...
...Ornstein says that reporters will often interview him at great length but then quote only his most inane comments...
...The first paragraph of a Fortune article by Craig C. Carter included the sentence: " IRep...
...AEI survives on financial contributions...
...Ornstein predicted radical tax reform wouldn't pass, and wasn't that the conventional wisdom...
...Ornstein gathers information from reporters, legislators and opinion makers, digests it and then, through his middle-of-the-road, processoriented prism, reflects it out in a fine beam of light onto "MacNeil/Lehrer...
...I was sitting in a laundromat near Capitol Hill waiting for my clothes to dry," he recalls...
...He has praised Republican Robert Dole and Democrat Mario Cuomo...
...Jo-Ann Moriarty, a reporter at States News Service, is one of the most recent to learn the importance of Norman Ornstein...
...If it doesn't represent the popular consensus before he says it, it may become so if he's quoted enough...
...I want to keep them guessing," he says...
...It is what Norman Ornstein is thinking...
...Norm has learned how to give the unconditional quote," says Garrison Nelson, a professor of political science at the University of Vermont and the Norman Ornstein of that state...
...All the more reason that Norman Ornstein is a star...
...But Norman Ornstein's day as one of the most quoted people in Washington is just beginning...
...I hold him in awe," he says, to their delight...
...Sometimes Ornstein tells reporters little more than they already know or than they could find out by talking to a colleague "I think very highly of Norman Ornstein...
...of a houndee, but then again he just doesn't know how to say no...
...A 'B...
...Reporters also call congressional experts Stephen Smith and Stephen Hess at Brookings, Roger Davidson at the Congressional Research Service, and Robert Peabody at Johns Hopkins, the veteran of the group...
...He was so willing to talk to me...
...Although Michigan's political science department is a center of the quantitative approach to political science, Ornstein infused his work with what is known in the discipline as "participant observation" He spent a year as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, working on Capitol Hill for Rep...
...Is Ornstein a media hound...
...They listen politely as he offers brief analyses of Senate elections, congressional performance, the summit, and tax reform, and urges responsible leadership to cure the deficit...
...It changes in the margins...
...Monday morning has finally ended for Norman J. Ornstein, political scientist...
...The source: Norman Ornstein, who "said last week that the 1985 farm bill would include reductions in price supports that are more than token but less than severe...
...When the Los Angeles Times last year profiled Texas Sen...
...An hour later he is off to the Brookings Institution to give a speech to visiting business executives...
...I did editing, I interviewed, I wrote scripts...
...She had been in town just six months and was working on a profile of Rep...
...He also predicted in 1980 that the Democrats would lose only four to five Senate seats (they lost 12) and that they would gain two to six seats in 1986 (they won 8...
...Congress was becoming a more open institution, more accommodating to study by outsiders...
...In the hour Ornstein has been gone, ten people have called, including reporters and producers from Westinghouse Television, The Christian Science Monitor, the Swedish Broadcasting Network, and Aviation Week...
...The punchy entrepreneur When isolated and dissected, the Ornstein quote does not seem particularly impressive...
...In every way—the centrism, the non-partisanship, the respectability, the quick reaction time—Ornstein answers a deep, anthropological need of the Washington press...
...polite attention shifts to excitement, with several people literally moving to the edge of their chairs, when Ornstein, a frequent guest on "Nightline," tells them what Ted Koppel is really like...
...Meanwhile, in part because of an increasing recognition that the public was getting its daytoday news from television, print reporters began practicing more interpretive journalism...
...A 1986 editorial in the Journal of Commerce quoted "economist" Norman Ornstein as saying an oil import fee is "the least compelling" tax that Congress was considering...
...But the opportunity existed to try a different kind of political science...
...In 1983, Ornstein, along with several other political scientists, resigned from the Catholic University faculty in protest over the treatment of a political scientist who they felt was denied tenure for political reasons and because she was a woman...
...Ornstein delights in showing around reporters, particularly newer ones, giving them his theories, and helping break them in...
...He provided commentary for PBS on Nelson Rockefeller's vice presidential confirmation hearings in 1974...
...When he is introduced on CBS "Morning News," his smile is sudden and tight, as if someone just asked him to say "cheese...
...Journalists have been known to go to great lengths to talk to Ornstein...
...by 24 his doctorate...
...Jim] Wright is way out in front in the race for Speaker,' says Norman Ornstein, a veteran Congress watcher at the American Enterprise Institute...
...8 a.m., ten minutes until air time...
...Donald Fraser of Minnesota...
...I felt like an idiot for not having known to call him...
...He gave Reagan an A- grade for his first year, but has sharply criticized Donald Regan...
...Like a narcotic Norman Ornstein is officially a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute...
...he is a prop, and sometimes a crutch, for political reporters...
...Then they would go home and write an academic paper that might be published a year later...
...Frankly, sometimes I end up using him because he distilled the point I've been trying to make all along," says The Washington Post's Helen Dewar...
...Ornstein is careful that he be seen as not just well-informed, but non-partisan...
...On an impulse I scribbled out a book review and sent it to The Washington Post's 'Book World The Post liked it so much that they published it on the front page of the Style section...
...Mild-mannered Norman Ornstein sits patiently and just a bit anxiously as a producer pats powder onto his cheeks and under his eyes...
...He's not here only to speak to the media, but then again that's an important role of a scholar here...
...Even when Ornstein's quotes don't really add anything to the piece, reporters feel they give the story more credibility...
...senator envious...
...Part of it is that there is still the teacher in him...
...The host, Charlie Rose, greets them from a TV monitor, noting thankfully how little he has to coach his two guests...
...The University of Minnesota position fell through, so he went to Catholic University...
...You get hooked," says Helen Dewar, Capitol Hill correspondent for The Washington Post and a longtime Ornstein addict...
...Back to his office at the American Enterprise Institute in downtown Washington...
...As soon as I got here it was clear I was going to be like a kid in a candy store," Ornstein recalls...
...James Broyhill...
...He can sit back and provide analysis, and, most important, he is a nonpartisan voice...
...He is," she concludes, "the master of the pithy quote...
...At noon he dashes down the hallway to a nearby conference room, where he does a sit-down interview assessing Congress's performance...
...Women come up to him in supermarkets, his kids get to see papa on the same station as Mr...
...On the dreary subject of budget policy, Ornstein told the American Banker, "The president's 1984 budget was deemed dead on arrival...
...I spent hours trying to get something I could use...
...He helps set the conventional wisdom," says John Barry...
...He gave his thoughts on abortion to Ladies Home Journal, on TV and politics to Video Review, and on the farm bill to the California-Arizona Farm Press...
...He had just finished reading a new book about former Harlem Rep...
...He has appeared about ten times on "Nightline" and 30 times on "The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour" in addition to frequent appearances on the CBS "Morning News," National Public Radio, and NBC's "Today Show...
...If I was going to buy a used car I'd call him...
...That decision turned out to be pivotal...
...Someone here said did you talk to Norm...
...Supermarket celebrity Ornstein's involvement with the press began rather inauspiciously in 1973...
...There's something very nice about that," he says...
...Nightline" has described him as a "congressional scholar" for a show about the Senate, "political scientist" for a show on the politics of presidential cancer, and a "tax policy expert" for a show on tax reform...
...something sexy like $600 toilet seats or drug-using terrorists who abuse children ." And on April 7, 1986, Ornstein's remark on efforts to trace Ferdinand Marcos's fortune— "This is going to be one of the biggest boons to American law firms we've seen in a long time " —was USA Today's "Quote of the Day?' Just as important, the quotes are there when you need them...
...Includes only citations by major news organizations, so figures underestimate total quote output...
...In a Wall Street Journal article on congressional oversight hearings, Ornstein said, "The watchdog phenomenon can have its political payoffs, especially if you can combine oversight with "Frankly, sometimes I end up using him because he distilled the point I've been trying to make all along," says The Washington Post's Helen Dewar...
...And certainly a New York Times reporter will not be allowed to state his or her opinion about who is going to win a race...
...Others in the profession respect him for providing a bridge between them and journalists...
...He doesn't speak the language of political science, but he understands it...
...Passersby stop and gaze at the celebrity...
...He also has control over his own schedule, can say whatever he wants to whomever he wants, and gets immediate responses to what he's written...
...I just trust his judgment," says Robert Shogan of the Los Angeles Times...
...In 1972, when Norman Ornstein came to town as an assistant professor at Catholic University, political scientists in Washington were not plugged into the day-to-day events in politics...
...By 19 he had a master's degree...
...He talked about Rep...
...Ornstein, through no choice of his own, was going to a little-known and littlerespected school...
...Ornstein is seen as being an authority...
...His father was a traveling salesman specializing in women's clothing, his mother was a housewife, and he was a child prodigy...
...In 1976 he began appearing on the "MacNeil Report," the forerunner of "MacNeil/Lehrer...
...He answers it so fully as to have created a stampede that must seem very odd to outsiders...
...They are afraid to make judgments on their own because they aren't able themselves to put daily events into context, and because they could be wrong...
...When I got here I realized I had a terrific opportunity," Ornstein says...
...He talked to Sport magazine about regulation of the NFL, to Aviation Week and Space Technology about Gramm-Rudmares effect on the defense budget, to Fleet Owner about labor policy, and to the New York Post about unstable presidents...
...He also milks the reporters who call him and tries to go to Capitol Hill twice a week...
...Carter admits he and everyone else in Washington knew Wright was ahead, but says the Ornstein quote "gave credibility to my own judgment...
...Everyone said, 'He's Mr...
...He is a process man in a town obsessed with the process...
...You'd have some person son who couldn't make eye contact and someone who couldn't answer a question in less than 72 sentences...
...There may come a time when Ornstein is quoted so often that newspapers will be too embarrassed to quote the same person every other publication uses...
...They tracked him down and set up a special satellite hook-up...
...Ornstein has, in fact, helped make expertise a growth industry in Washington...
...But so far, the more Ornstein gets quoted, the more of an authority he becomes...
...Ornstein on the other hand, could be patient, setting up interviews throughout the year...
...He walks onto the set of CBS "Morning News," on which he has a regular political discussion with Cokie Roberts of National Public Radio...
...Comment Ornstein's fame has given him a somewhat awkward position in the political science community...
...I don't want to be known as a professional nay-sayer...
...Almost by definition he is conventional wisdom ." Mr...
...The editors said there must be someone else in town you could quote," recalls Robert Shogan, national political correspondent at the Times and a regular Ornstein user...
...I just hadn't realized he was a big cheese...
...Phil Gramm, Ornstein explained why such a junior member could have an impact that he couldn't have had in the days of Sam Rayburn...
...The move to the American Enterprise Institute, whose corporate sponsors value highimpact, public affairs commentators, increased his visibility and allowed him to spend more time making himself known...
...it's better if, instead, it's Norman Ornstein who's wrong...
...Nightline" producers who were preparing a show on tax reform last May discovered to their horror that Ornstein was in Bermuda...
...Lynn Martin to The Washington Post, and about Tip O'Neill to the Fort Wayne NewsSentinel...
...Adam Clayton Powell...
...Indeed, Ornstein has typified and, in some ways, spurred a change in the field...
...When pressed he says he is a moderate Democrat, but only when pressed...
Vol. 18 • December 1986 • No. 11
