Eminentoes/Sam Missile
Barnes, Fred
EMINENTOES SAM MISSILE by Fred Barnes O nce upon a time I thought I had Sam Donaldson nailed. I've known him for years, going back to the time he covered Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign in...
...He says he voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964 and has voted for Republican and Democratic candidates alike since then...
...It isn't the proper job of reporters to do any more than this...
...I know because I heard the ruckus when he fell over backwards in his chair...
...In truth, Sam is a perfect example of the predominant type of reporter in Washington...
...The job of the press, it seems to me, is to accurately report the arguments of both sides and to try to keep them reasonably honest," Powell says...
...Since Presidents don't willingly confess their faults, Sam says it's his job to stress them...
...The 1984 Reagan campaign didn't, in his view, since the President wouldn't answer enough "tough" questions...
...Sam, a militant non-smoker, approached Reagan one day and asked if people puffed smoke in his face in the Cabinet Room...
...It was "a thrilling moment" when the House Judiciary Committee adopted an impeachment article against Nixon, he recalls...
...I figured I could set the perfect trap...
...Then, Sam declared, you'll want to stop people from blowing smoke on me in the press room...
...He talks favorably about the "adversarial" relationship between press and President...
...I waved it in front of the TV camera...
...Like so many other reporters, he assumes his views are smack at the center and don't affect his coverage in any event...
...And I don't for amoment blame Sam for shouting questions...
...Sam describes himself as something of a centrist, largely apolitical, and certainly no partisan...
...During a Carter trip to Mexico in 1979, I was in an early morning press pool with Sam when the President went to a fancy palace for a meeting...
...President...
...Anyway, I'd never dealt with him on television, live, until the evening before President Reagan's press conference last March...
...Yes, he was obstreperous then, maybe even more than now because he was still struggling to the top rung of TV journalism...
...It's hard running a country with a press corps like that...
...Even out of doors, you hear him...
...Reagan rose to the occasion...
...If I'd nailed him, he surely didn't act nailed...
...Lots of la conservatives consider him an anti-Reagan zealot because the questions he asks Reagan are impolite, mean, or insulting...
...In his book, every word of which he appears to have written himself, Sam is highly critical of "a sort of Gresham's law of the airways, soft news driving out hard...
...By 1966 or 1967, he says, he was "already convinced we were fighting the wrong war" in Vietnam...
...Even though reporters made certain the public understood the nature of the Reagan campaign, that didn't help smoke the candidate himself out of hiding and into the public debate," Sam moans...
...Wrong on both counts...
...Unlike me, the President once managed to nail him...
...Fred Barnes is a senior editor of the New Republic...
...How can you criticize planted questions and then plant them yourself...
...Sam has perfected the question that is shouted to a President over noise and other distractions...
...In his view, a White House reporter should stick with the President wherever he goes, listening to every word of every speech, watching every fleeting walk between Air Force One and limousine, and tossing a question the President's way at every opportunity...
...You can always carry around one of those little portable fans to blow it away, like Larry Hagman," the President said...
...Worse, later that night, I called a few people who might have seen the show...
...Nonplused, 'Hold On, Mr...
...After a bit, Sam and other reporters will stop yelling...
...30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1987...
...Sam, I concluded from this, was planting questions, or at least his publisher was and he was a coconspirator...
...Sam says Carter's record on foreign policy is "quite good...
...Besides, many of his questions are good...
...When his opinions pop up in Hold On, Mr...
...First, his concept of a reporter's role in this world is inflated and wrong...
...Jody Powell, in his book The Other Side of the Story, points out what's wrong with the attitude of the press in Washington: it frequently takes on the role of the opposition party...
...Wish I'd thought of it...
...Second, he's not quite the unbiased reporter he (honestly) thinks he is...
...You should have seen the look on Carter's face...
...And worst of all, when I asked specifically about the episode, one of them said, "Oh, Sam had a pretty good answer...
...It was a list of suggested questions that might be popped to Sam, questions about his White House coverage, his journalistic reputation, his wife, and so on...
...President, or something like that—to Carter...
...Good question...
...But the real reason I don't fault Sam for shouting questions is that Presidents often answer them...
...Ask Jimmy Carter what factor played the biggest part in destroying his presidency and driving him from office in 1980...
...Sam and othersthink it's their job to try to knock down whatever rationale a President offers for a policy...
...But Sam wasn't much nicer to Carter, and I don't remember any conservatives complaining then...
...At still another, he praises a veteran White House reporter for "taking dead aim" at Presidents...
...That morning, Sam bellowed some question —how's your plumbing today, Mr...
...Then, I brandished the document from his publisher...
...Sam also thinks reporters should make political campaigns conform to a particular mode...
...Maybe I'm being old-fashioned...
...I don't remember exactly what his answer was, but the point is he just kept talking...
...He has a blind spot...
...Sam has the usual knee-jerk thoughts on Richard Nixon...
...Sam, eager to push his new book,' had agreed to appear on "Crossfire," the nightly political show on Cable News Network...
...they usually turn out to be liberal...
...Rust me...
...Of course, Sam doesn't see any tilt at all...
...And so on...
...Sam didn't miss a beat...
...As we chatted, not one of them mentioned how I'd gotten Sam...
...Sam, in fact, is in one sense an old-fashioned reporter...
...It's not by accident that Sam Donaldson, the senior White House correspondent for ABC News, is the most well-known journalist in Washington (columnist Robert Novak is a close second...
...Sam is very clever and very loud...
...On this, Sam isn't...
...He likes the SALT II treaty with the Soviets, calling it "a step forward in imposing limits on the arms race...
...My plan was to catch him in an act of high hypocrisy...
...He is not an ideological person, but he usually operates off the liberal agenda...
...The best he can say about the Reagan presidency before the Iran arms scandal broke is that "the country as a whole wasn't doing badly on the surface...
...President...
...Good line...
...He's right...
...Sam was at the same restaurant...
...He likes hard news, not squishy features or mood pieces that often get on the network news shows now...
...Like any Washington journalist, Sam was certain to be against the practice, attributed to White House staffs from time to time, of planting softball questions with reporters for their boss...
...If he's in the same room with you, you'll hear him...
...Nothing seems to have caused him to reconsider that opinion, not the boat people, not the Cambodian holocaust, not the clear evidence that the American press misreported the pivotal military engagement of the war, the Tet offensive...
...Reporters ought not be shills for Presidents, but this adversarial business has gotten out of hand...
...I agree you shouldn't plant questions...
...Sam and many of his colleagues act toward a President the way that partisans of the out-ofpower party act toward the prime minister in a parliamentary system...
...Our job is to challenge the president, challenge him to explain policy, justify decisions, reveal intentions for the future, and comment on a host of matters about which his views are of general concern," he writes...
...I'm a reporter trying to find out who did THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1987 29 botch what, where, when, why, and how and what's on the front burner for possible botching tomorrow...
...Sadly, I concluded that Sam had slipped my trap, and had done so rather effortlessly...
...Perhaps he learned the trait from Reagan, who knows how to handle Sam...
...He'll tell you the press...
...It is most decidedly not the job of reporters to make the arguments for either side...
...Once while covering the Carter campaign in 1976, I went to dinner with some reporters in Cleveland...
...I've known him for years, going back to the time he covered Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign in 1976...
...Sam was in the midst of a book tour, and I'd come across an interesting document that his publisher was sending around to radio and TV interviewers...
...I was one of the hosts, and my job was to make things hot for Donaldson...
...Random House, $17.95...
...he wasn't...
...Sam comes pretty close to admitting as much...
...Sam's book supplies ample evidence of the kind of political tilt—neither unswerving nor deeply rooted but by and large liberal—that typifies the Washington press corps and shapes coverage...
...No way, Reagan said...
...The night before, Carter had remarked as part of a formal toast about having suffered from Montezuma's Revenge the last time he'd come to Mexico...
...My problem with Sam is twofold...
...Sam has resisted the notion that he should skip presidential events and work on long analytical pieces instead of spot news...
...There was no stunned look on his face...
...C am is a very good reporter...
...They are also shallow, and he is extraordinarily unreflective about them...
...I got off to a good start when he dutifully denounced planted questions at presidential press conferences, noting that to his knowledge the practice didn't happen much...
...If Ronald Reagan doesn't want Sam to ask him questions at "photo opportunities" or when he's walking to his helicopter on the South Lawn, then he ought to stop answering them...
...Fine...
...At another point, Sam describes himself as a "district attorney...
...Well, Sam, what about it...
...Sam may be a blowhard, but he is reasonably self-effacing...
...But so long as the press accurately characterized the Reagan campaign and reported what the President said or didn't say, what more needed to be done...
Vol. 20 • June 1987 • No. 6
