Presswatch/Standard Practices

...Remember the economic recovery that Mr...

...could bring Moscow back to the bargaining table by hanging tough...

...The usual tack was to say that both sides yielded substantially...

...It said: "Thus Ellen Benjamin, Yuppie, became Ellen Thomas, Activist...

...has reopened the issue of strategic defenses," he wrote...

...It was the announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative [the proper name of Star Wars] research programme that brought the Russians back to the negotiating table," the magazine wrote...

...Not on your life...

...Don't panic...

...Another voice of Star Wars sanity was the Economist, the British newsweekly...

...And sure enough, they've agreed to come back to the talks, having caved in on all their preconditions and demands...

...The strategy of missile defense has already replaced that of mutually assured destruction, which relies on offsetting clusters of offensive missiles, Wanniski wrote in his monthly newsletter...

...Granted, the Yuppies Newsweek came up with were not the common run...

...You may be getting the impression that this woman has gone around the bend, and that certainly was my reaction...

...One was Charles Krauthammer of the New Republic...

...I mean, could anybody like these people...

...The conventional wisdom in Washington journalism holds that while Star Wars may have helped get the arms talks going again, it now threatens to prevent a treaty from being reached or, worse, might even provoke the Soviets into deploying more and more big, land-based, offensive missiles...

...It was, er, other things...

...Many are entrepreneurial...

...Reagan said his tax cuts would generate...

...The Soviets...

...He was ridiculed when he proposed in March 1983 to accelerate research into this anti-missile scheme...

...The programme is also the best way of keeping them there, and getting them to accept lower levels of missile armament than they have so far been willing to contemplate...

...Anyway, Strobe Talbott of Time-the guy whose book on arms control, Deadly Gambits, won such lavish praise from Walter Mondale during the second presidential debate last October-said both no treaty and more Soviet missiles aimed at us may be the legacy of Star Wars...

...Nor does Leslie Gelb of Fred Barnes is National Political Reporter for the Baltimore Sun...

...They'll be back...

...This second possibility is totally beyond the imagination of most of the press...

...This has happened before in the press...

...Liberals don't like yuppies because they supposedly have no social conscience, no zeal for things like tax increases and anti-Reagan protest marches...

...Well, obviously my recollection is faulty...

...Achieving any agreement will be especially hard now that the U.S...

...Time said that "the Soviets left no doubt that killing Star Wars remains their prime objective...

...You may have to be adept at serpentine logic to keep up...

...In spite of this, Time wrote sneeringly of "American hardliners [who] contended that the agreement [for new talks] vindicated their belief that the U.S...

...It is leverage whether Star Wars is treated as a bargaining chip or as the new reality in arms that shifts the emphasis to strategic defense...

...But Doder makes no mention of this...

...And it made this point in one sentence...

...Assistant Defense Secretary Richard] Perle noted the Soviets' silence on removal of US...

...Maybe they'll wise up and realize there's another way out-negotiate real reductions in nuclear arms, including reductions in their land-based arsenal...

...Robert Kaiser of the Washington Post echoed Talbott...

...That just wasn't what prompted the Soviets to abandon all their demands and toddle back to Geneva...

...So it must have been some other American President in the early 1980s who took this unflinching, patient, and hard-line approach...

...A defensive component gives a President leeway in agreeing on offensive builddowns," he said...

...Dusko Doder, the Moscow correspondent for-the Washington Post, wrote that the Soviets concluded their own hard-line position against American missiles in Europe wasn't working...

...The Soviets...

...the New York Times, who suggested that the fresh round of negotiations reflects little more than a desire by the Americans and Soviets for renewed detente...

...You know, present a few egregious examples of something as if they are representative...

...these folks were truly obnoxious-bloodless, greedy, self-indulgent, vain, status-conscious, irreligious, apolitical...

...Who said they wanted to negotiate on Star Wars but nothing else...

...How else could they counter a new American system that could destroy a portion of Soviet rockets in flight...

...In the long run, then, defense is 'stabilizing,' rendering any buildup for an offensive first strike hopelessly expensive and complicated...

...Far from being a threat to arms control, Star Wars, by offering a unilateral American alternative [to deploying more missiles], is an inducement," he wrote...

...Some journalists went to considerable lengths to make the case that the hard-line approach wasn't responsible for the new negotiations...

...But it was up to the old practice of caricature journalism in its cover story at the end of 1984 about Yuppies...

...The Soviets are all the less likely to cut back their offensive forces if the U.S...

...Should they be faulted for this...

...Gelb didn't get around to mentioning the impact of Star Wars until the twenty-second paragraph of his story...

...You might think there's a reverse side to this, namely that the hard-line Soviet opposition to the missiles didn't work because Reagan's unswerving insistence on deploying them did...

...As I recall, he said they'd come around once it dawned on them that he wasn't fooling about upgrading America's arsenal, even to the point of turning to futuristic Star Wars antimissile technology...

...Actually, as Doder wrote, "it is the Soviets who seem to have made more concessions...

...Who agreed to terms for the new talks that they had rejected out of hand last summer...

...Voila, a recovery came and the media gave the credit to the Federal Reserve's policy of easing up on the money supply (which played a part, I admit...

...Which is what a lot of political reporters did when covering Hart's campaign last year...

...And now that Star Wars worked at least in pushing the Soviets back to the bargaining table, the decision to pursue Star Wars has miraculously been disassociated from Reagan...

...missiles from Western Europe and crowed, somewhat ungraciously, 'We accepted their capitulation graciously.'" Added Time...

...But are most 25-to-35 year olds like that...

...Yet you'd have thought Star Wars dropped into the Administration's lap out of the blue and was somehow not an arrow that Reagan quite intentionally had stuffed into his quiver...

...Star Wars "would inevitably compel the Soviets to build more offensive weapons...

...As luck would have it, a few lonely voices in journalism have recognized this...

...In the case of arms control, consider for a moment the matter of Star Wars...

...Thus whenever the media takes a swipe at yuppies, nearly everyone agrees with the criticism...

...Star Wars as a reasonably effective shield against nuclear attack...

...Not only Reagan himself but also his policy gets no credit...

...The Soviets...

...And so on...

...My favorite bit of yuppie-bashing came in a Washington Post article about a 37-year-old woman who gave up her job as an administrative assistant in Washington to become an antiwar street person...

...One final thing...

...Nearly every piece of analysis noted that Star Wars was an inducement to the Soviets to return to the talks, though some analyses didn't make too fine a point of this...

...It was Reagan who pursued that tack, according to the press version...

...I remember being summoned by another reporter before one of the primaries to attend a Hart rally and see all the yuppies...

...The idea, it seemed, both frightened the Russians and impelled them to return to the bargaining table," he wrote...

...For, in all the press accounts of how the Soviets found their way back to the negotiating table, Reagan gets practically no credit at all...

...That states it just about perfectly, I'd say...

...But the gist of the article was that she had turned to a life of impoverished nobility...

...I do...

...That overstates the case...

...Who had vowed to keep away from the talks until the Pershing II and cruise missiles were taken out of Europe...

...And wasn't he unconcerned when the Soviets bolted the arms talks in 1983 in pique over his deployment of Pershing II and cruise missiles in Europe...

...Not the media caricature of yuppies, but the real people involved...

...These people might have lacked ideological commitment, but they sure were more attractive than a crowd at an anti-Chile rally or a Helen Caldicott speech...

...This is leverage...

...Many are mildly interested in politics, but think there's more to life than speculating about who's-going-to-run and who's-going-to-win...

...What's wrong with Newsweek may be in the vanguard of an ideological realignment to the right of the national media, having recently hired lapsed liberal Morton Kondracke away from the New Republic to be its Washington bureau chief...

...Jude Wanniski is one of the few dissenters on this point...

...But this time the blame-him-don't-praise-him game soars to a higher level...

...Yuppie-bashing has simply become a media sport...

...is bent on trying to render 'impotent and obsolete' the ones they are allowed to keep...

...But the way the press writes about yuppies, they are good for only one thing, being sneered at...

...PRESSWATCH STANDARD PRACTICES by Fred Barnes Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Ronald Reagan the guy who tried the hard-line approach in negotiating on nuclear arms reductions with the Soviets...

...A loony idea, can't work, blue smoke and mirrors-that was the press consensus at the time...

...Not in my experience...

...There's still another twist in this Star Wars business...

...I know quite a few who are deeply religious, born-again Christians even...

...Time contended both sides opted for more talks because of "a tacit understanding that the nuclear superpowers should at least put aside polemics while searching for a compromise...

...Might not Star Wars push them in this direction...

...Now, I confess to a certain lack of surprise over the media's failure to give Reagan any credit...

...Don't fret...

...She keeps a vigil at the White House and sleeps in alleys with husband William Thomas, a peacenik who attracted her to the street life...

...Sorry, fella, if it works you couldn't be responsible...

...But no...

...Didn't he say that the way to get the Russians to negotiate seriously about balanced arms cuts was not to propose fresh concessions but to strengthen American forces dramatically...

...I'll say...

...Naturally, we went to sneer at the well-dressed Hart enthusiasts sipping wine and cheering for Gary...

...Is that so bad...

...Poor Reagan...

...Not a chance...

...Au contraire...

...That's standard practice...

...They would build more rockets and more decoys, too...

...Is this getting too complicated for you...

...The whole concept is vague enough-for you nerds who have been sleeping for the last few years, yuppies are young urban professionals-that everyone despises them...

...The ones I know are pretty nice...

...that...

...What eludes these folks is the notion that maybe the Soviets don't want to go to the enormous expense of checkmating Star Wars by aiming more missiles at America...

...Conservatives don't like yuppies because they were identified in 1984 with Gary Hart's presidential campaign...

...Their politics were a lot less kooky, too...

...Christians don't like yuppies because they are agnostics...

...It has already coaxed Gromyko to Geneva and Gorbachev to declare that his side is willing to negotiate radical reductions in offensive arms-once Star Wars is dealt with, of course...

...She eats out of garbage cans and was even quoted as saying that leftovers from Hardee's are best...

...ergo, they changed tactics, hoping that new talks might be useful in splitting the United States and its European allies, an old Soviet goal...