Strange Bedfellows
Rosenstiel, Tom
0 f all the mysteries left behind by the 1992 presidential race, one in particular continues to vex me: Why did George Bush give up on the tax-cutting economic plan that he trumpeted in the early...
...Okay, it had a lumbering name, the Agenda for Economic Renewal, but that was about the only thing wrong with it...
...Too true...
...W hat's fresh about Rosenstiel's book is the point of view...
...The invisible anointment of Clinton in the media preprimary [took place] entirely in print," Rosenstiel insists...
...The press said, wrongly, that the 1992 GOP convention veered to the right...
...Bush also summarized it crisply in a five-minute TV commercial later that night...
...And he's willing to go against the grain on many political subjects...
...Then, in a matter of days, the plan, the ad, and Bush's chances of winning re-election vanished...
...Yes, it was...
...The ad alarmed the Clinton campaign...
...The structure of the Agenda series—indeed the grammar of journalism about public policy in general—also created a natural advantage for Clinton...
...The plan led the network news shows the evening it was announced...
...Advantage Clinton...
...According to Rosenstiel: It didn't matter that Clinton's serious speeches weren't being covered as campaign events...
...He defends media skepticism about rosy gross domestic product figures released a week before election day...
...Tom Rosenstiel, the wise and iconoclastic media reporter for the Los Angeles Times, has the answer in this trenchant, breezy book about TV coverage of the Bush-Clinton-Perot race...
...The press, TV included, claimed the economy was in the pits...
...0 f all the mysteries left behind by the 1992 presidential race, one in particular continues to vex me: Why did George Bush give up on the tax-cutting economic plan that he trumpeted in the early days of the fall campaign...
...What happened...
...But liberal bias wasn't a controlling factor, he argues...
...Sure, there's some liberal bias, and he lists a number of prominent journalists who tilted heavily in Clinton's favor...
...But he didn't...
...And Bush was not...
...Clinton was good at it," says Rosenstiel...
...But Rosenstiel has set a very high standard...
...Focus groups assembled by Clinton's pollsters found it the most effective Bush commercial of the campaign...
...They have a big role in the "invisible primary," i.e., the period before the first real contest in Iowa or New Hampshire, when a frontrunner is anointed...
...This was the result of either bias, faulty economic understanding, or sheer dunderheadedness...
...And the race was all but over—in mid-September...
...It was part of the media's year-long distortion of what was happening in the real economy, namely rapidimprovement...
...TV executives thought coverage in 1988 had been terrible—partly because it aided Bush, but partly because the daily grind of campaign rhetoric makes for boring television—and they wanted 1992 to be different...
...Rosenstiel makes a passing reference to coverage of the economy in 1992,, saying the press "mostly reflected the prevailing economic view...
...All of the pieces concerned domestic policy, Clinton's strength...
...It was a great plan, Kemp-like in its emphasis on tax cuts and its bias against government intervention...
...His policy positions were being covered in the Agenda pieces on ABC, and usually at greater length and [with a] less attack-oriented approach...
...Conventions are important, but media spin can powerfully affect how the public perceives them...
...It sure was...
...Bush himself was easily distracted from single-minded Fred Barnes is a senior editor at the New Republic...
...But another problem was the press: TV honchos had decided that stump speeches—what the candidates actually said each day—were now inconsequential and should rarely be covered...
...focus on it...
...The press would have come around...
...He rebuts the theory that newspaper and magazine reporters ("printheads" in TV journalists' jargon) have become dinosaurs in presidential races...
...Baker, who'd been dodging the press for weeks, refused to go on a Sunday talk show to plug the plan...
...That episode neatly encapsulates the campaign...
...Rosenstiel also defends national party conventions against "the prevailing view that conventions have become unimportant because they no longer really nominate candidates...
...To put Rosenstiel's point anotherway, Bush was the biggest contributor to his own defeat, but the press sure helped...
...I have one more quibble...
...They are largely unfiltered by the press, he says...
...For example, he challenges the notion that television has fundamentally changed American politics...
...In these early stages of presidential campaigns, the network nightly news programs are largely irrelevant...
...Then there was the increased importance of what Rosenstiel calls "the popular culture media," including gawk shows like "Oprah" and "Donahue...
...I should have guessed: one cause was the fecklessness of Bush campaign officials—especially White House chief of staff James Baker and Bush-Quayle chairman Bob Teeter...
...On this one, I part company a bit with Rosenstiel...
...Clinton always had more policy proposals on the table than Bush—a function of his progovernment rather than promarketplace approach...
...The networks' move away from daily stunts suited Clinton's cautious campaign plan by easing the pressure on him to do something new and bold each day," Rosenstiel writes...
...All Bush had to do was to make his economic plan a priority, to flog it night after night, and demonstrate to reporters and the public alike that he believed in it," Rosenstiel argues...
...That's not all...
...Some still do...
...Within a week, Bush quietly surrendered, and the Agenda for Economic Renewal slipped into the memory hole...
...Bush couldn't match it...
...Bush operatives found in their focus groups that voters weren't initially receptive to hearing about any Bush economic scheme...
...And why not...
...R osenstiel has a subtle understanding of the media's role...
...The public believed that...
...That's an understatement...
...Bush could have stuck to his campaign strategy, spotlighted the plan relentlessly, and pressured TV to cover it...
...For all the press's many sins in 1992, skeptical reporting of the GDP figures a week before the election wasn't one of them...
...However turned off the voters were to Bush—and however difficult the press's new approach made his task—the President could never have convinced Americans that his Agenda was meaningful if he was so ambivalent about selling it," writes Rosenstiel...
...Bush's follow-up speeches on his plan were ignored by the networks...
...On the contrary, "conventions have become the most important events in modern campaigns...
...Only the style has changed, he suggests...
...All are sins...
...Of course, I haven't read the others yet, because they're not out...
...My suspicion is that Rosenstiel's will be the hot book on last year's campaign...
...Clinton adopted a strategy, devised by media consultant Mandy Grunwald, of appearing on these shows...
...Parties and candidates have a chance to offer their vision, "not chopped up into bits by the media or leavened through the theatrical confrontational format of debates...
...The emphasis on voters rather than candidates, in turn, kept reinforcing how unhappy people were...
...While he treats the campaign chronologically, he comes at it from a new angle: behind the scenes as coverage is plotted and carried out by the TV networks...
...I'd say Clinton's best performance of the campaign was his appearance on MTV, a town hall meeting of heavy metal junkies...
...What worked against Bush was the way television covered the campaign...
...At ABC, the most popular network for news, policy issues were treated not as daily stories, but as items on an occasional "World News Tonight" feature called "American Agenda...
Vol. 26 • August 1993 • No. 8
