The Nation's Pulse/Why Liberals Hate Politics
Barnes, Fred
THE NATION'S PULSE WHY LIBERALS HATE POLITICS T hree years after the 1988 presiden- I tial campaign, Willie Horton is still driving liberals nuts—except now they are ready to do something about...
...Dionne recoils at George Bush's harping on Horton: "The tragedy of our politics is that the concerns aroused by a Willie Horton should be unifying rather than divisive" (italics Dionne's...
...It is a striking fact that the man who told us so much about his views on prison furlough policy has not said one word on the subject since he's been in the presidency...
...By then the damage was done...
...Ask any voter about these crises and the answer will be: Oh, yes, I'm concerned...
...That axiom is out for 1992...
...rr he solution, according to the liberals,, is to have the press, not the candidates, decide what issues should be discussed...
...Why is this such a tragedy...
...He's transfixed by the fact that Horton is black...
...In 1988, Bruce Babbitt, knowing he was wildly popular with reporters but no one else, joked that the press should decide the winner of the Democratic presidential nomination...
...Dionne sees Horton as a problem in social underdevelopment...
...It was one thing to lose to Ronald Reagan, who offered up (at least in 1980) programs they could denounce while presenting their own...
...That's because Massachusetts was the only state in which a Willie Horton, a murderer with no prospect of parole, could get a weekend pass...
...He ostensibly faults both conservatives and liberals, but you can guess who gets most of the blame: Since the late 1980s, American politics has been held hostage to conservatism's impasse [between libertarians and traditionalists] and liberalism's past failures...
...So Dukakis's decision not to respond wasn't tactical at all—he simply didn't have a leg to stand on...
...Geneva Overholser, the editor of the Des Moines Register, writes in Nieman Reports that "American political discourse today is a disgrace...
...Broder sees "a rather bleak political landscape...
...Broder wants "a serious, conscientious reporting effort to determine what the voters' concerns are—and then letting that agenda drive our coverage...
...The second part of Bush's term is just beginning...
...Tough...
...Kiss goodbye to any coverage for those...
...Then it was "explained as an incident that could have happened in a number of states, not just the one where Michael Dukakis was governor...
...Until 1988, Massachusetts was the only state that let convicts with no chance of parole out for the weekend, and Dukakis had fought attempts by the state legislature to restrict the furlough program...
...You get an inkling of the issues Dionne wants on the table in 1992...
...He didn't come back voluntarily...
...So what...
...THE NATION'S PULSE WHY LIBERALS HATE POLITICS T hree years after the 1988 presiden- I tial campaign, Willie Horton is still driving liberals nuts—except now they are ready to do something about it...
...Broder is the leading voice in advocating this radical departure in political coverage...
...That's hardly the only test of the worth of an issue...
...Politicians can't be relied on to talk up these issues, says Herbers, since they "base their policy opinions on what the polls tell them rather than using their own insights to stake out an independent stance and persuade the public to follow them...
...I've probably left a few out, but that's already more crises than even Nixon faced...
...My guess is that most reporters agree with him...
...While letting the Horton issue linger, Herbers says, the press gave up on a truly important issue, Bush's role in Iran-contra: There was little effort to uncover new information that Bush would have had to respond to...
...There may be issues that journalists feel to be important but that have not emerged sufficiently for the majority of people to have formed firm or enlightened opinions about them...
...Writing in Nieman Reports, John Herbers, formerly of the New York Times and now a columnist for Governing magazine, complains that news organizations let the Horton issue "fester like a dead fish for days or weeks...
...Dionne is a canny political analyst, a liberal who's normally fair to conservatives, and his book offers a thorough, readable account of the course of conservatism and liberalism over the past thirty years...
...It's up to the candidate to decide what is said and done, because after all, it is the candidate whose name is on the ballot...
...Black schools are bad, life in black neighborhoods needs improvement, job opportunities and training for young blacks ought to be better...
...If you're doubtful, I refer you to Why Americans Hate Politics' by E. J. Dionne, Jr...
...But what if a candidate thinks some of these aren't significant problems or at least don't require a federal solution...
...Fred Barnes is a senior editor of the New Republic ploitation of -Horton as a crime issue in the presidential race is the symbol of everything that's wrong in American politics...
...Now this joke has become serious, at least in selecting which issues get played up and which don't...
...The final straw was the 1988 race...
...Liberals are well placed to step in, he believes, since they "are not tied to the highly ideological approach to regulation, taxation, government spending, and income distribution that characterizes so much of contemporary conservatism...
...Horton robbed a gas station, shot the attendant to death, and stuffed his body in a trash barrel...
...If we simply substitute the press's agenda for the politicians' agenda, we'll have accomplished nothing...
...He is eager to make sure the 1988 model isn't repeated in presidential campaigns...
...Herbers says reporters and editors, while consulting polls, should decide on their own which issues matter: They should make their decisions primarily out of their own knowledge and instincts...
...They want to set the agenda, but anyone who reads a newspaper or watches TV knows the trouble with this—the press agenda is the liberal agenda...
...Horton was more than just an effective issue...
...And aren't most Americans unified about keeping murderers in jail...
...On the flag issue, Dukakis had vetoed a bill requiring schoolteachers to recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag every day...
...If journalists do not fill that role no one will...
...Dionne characterizes our politics as "trivial and stupid...
...Clearly, people are worried about schools...
...The condition of the black poor is a national crisis that needs attention," he says...
...And the press corps would become a giant version of National Public Radio...
...He hadn't sought to work out a compromise whereby teachers could opt not to recite the Pledge in cases of conscience...
...22.95...
...Herbers, Broder, Dionne, and others have come to the conclusion that American politics stinks...
...And what if he wants to talk about values or conservative issues the press has deemed insignificant...
...In truth, we did have answers...
...This bears no relation to the actual 1988 campaign, but never mind: many of America's political reporters have been saying the same thing for three years...
...That's very honest of Herbers...
...According to Dionne, "Voter impatience with George Bush's presidency grew in the second part of his term because the president displayed manifest indifference to domestic policy...
...Broder says he's "not advocating an effort by the press to determine the political agenda...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1991 25...
...Herbers writes of "the flawed system of elections...
...That's not the unity Dionne has in mind...
...This sounds nice, but my guess is it would stress problems—real or imagined—that lend themselves to programmatic solutions...
...When the candidates talk seriously about subjects we know are of concern to voters—be it health cam, or housing, or education, or jobs or transportation—we would have to take the space to report their views and give the story the prominence the voters' concerns with it merit...
...But the moment he takes up Horton's role in the campaign, he loses control of his faculties...
...In a speech last February at the University of California/Riverside, he mentioned what he expects to hear from voters: We would hear about health care...
...Reporters would hear exactly what they expected—and wanted—to hear...
...It slips his mind who Horton really is: a killer convicted of an extraordinarily grisly murder...
...The future had gone undebated...
...Most Americans are thoroughly disenchanted with the electoral process...
...They're concerned about crime and drugs and the environment...
...He admits this will take reporters "into territory none of us has been in before...
...His method is to discredit 1988, then substitute a campaign agenda for 1992 and later that is more suited to liberals...
...The trouble, argues Dionne, is that "our national discussion of race is so polarized that we do nothing at all—and the problem gets worse...
...When it is over, we will have a new President, but will have no answers about anything except the American electorate's willingness to accept the politics of the lowest common denominator...
...An axiom of political reporting, he says, "is that the campaign and its contents are the property of the candidates...
...Voters naturally would say: Sure, government ought to do something about these crises...
...D tonne is a soldier in the counterat- tack against the 1988 race in particular and conservative values campaigns in general...
...I'm not accusing Broder of bad faith...
...Pressing their agenda through programs had given them a run of roughly half a century in power...
...But, like any reporter, he brings a set of political prejudices to the campaign...
...They would probably like to hear candidates talk about—how do we get affordable housing...
...Most of the issues Americans really cared about had gone largely undiscussed...
...Dionne insists America is beset with "a meaner, narrower kind of politics...
...It was done, all right...
...Germond and Witcover just didn't like them...
...The result has been immobility in government, an increasing harshness in politics, and a lack of substance in electoral campaigns...
...What's new is that liberals are fed up, especially with presidential campaigns...
...Michael Oreskes of the New 24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1991 York Times wrote last year that "domestic politics has become so shallow, mean, and even meaningless that it is failing to produce the ideas and leadership needed to guide the United States in a rapidly changing world...
...For Dionne, Bush's ex'Simon and Schuster, 430 pp...
...You know the list: the urban crisis, the drug crisis, the education crisis, the environmental crisis, the banking crisis, the housing crisis, the health care crisis...
...Liberals don't like those issues and they don't like the results (they lose...
...The 1988 campaign was different...
...Amazing, huh...
...It had been a brutish, backward-looking, divisive campaign...
...The reason is it had no substantive relevance to the job of being President of the United States...
...Translation: New government programs are not being passed, and conservatives are zinging liberals on values issues...
...Dionne's book should have been titled "Why Liberals Hate Politics...
...He was a symbol of Michael Dukakis's attitude toward crime: soft on criminals, indifferent to victims...
...The Gulf War, quotas, and Willie Horton need not apply...
...He and other liberals are so obsessed by the success of Bush's tactics that they want to change the very conduct of presidential campaigns...
...In their last column before the election, Jack W. Germond and Jules Witcover declared: by Fred Barnes The 1988 campaign has been as empty as it has been long...
...Instead, he went to Maryland, where he busted into a couples house and raped the wife at gunpoint...
...David Broder of the Washington Post said last February that the Bush campaign fed the public disbelief in the legitimacy of the whole electoral process...
...Americans, after all, have always been wary of politics, skeptical of politicians...
...Imprisoned for life without parole, Horton was granted a weekend furlough from a Massachusetts slammer...
...It is time for news organizations individually to decide which issues of the many floated in every campaign are the most important and make them an integral part of campaign coverage," Herbers says...
...Our politics was still trapped in the past, and the voters hated what they saw...
...The moral values of the black underclass must also be changed...
...It appeared that the press was part of official Washington's disinclination to push the matter because few had any stomach for attacking a popular President with only a few months left to serve...
...Bush emphasized values, not programs, attacking Dukakis on the American flag, defense, and crime...
...Because America's values on the flag, defense, and crime are quite conservative...
...Reporters would go into "crisis" mode, listing everything in America they think is a problem and asking voters whether government should do something about it...
...This leaves Dionne apoplectic about 1988: The 1988 campaign left Americans with ashes in their mouths over the state of their political process...
...of the Washington Post...
...When Bush cited Dukalds's record as governor of Massachusetts to tie him to liberal values, Dukakis was paralyzed—he had no rebuttal...
...Liberals love to debate programs...
Vol. 24 • August 1991 • No. 8
