Presswatch / Colin Show
Corry, John
C Olin Powell is a good guy; there is no doubt about that. He is virtuous but not prim, manly but not insensitive, dignified but not stuffy, and so on. He transcends race, rises above partisan...
...In a way, this has to do with semantics...
...Tom Brokaw introduced it by saying, "Colin Powell, beyond the hype...
...Colin Powell is a fine man, and there are many reasons to admire him, but much of the media enthusiasm for him now appears suspect...
...There was nothing in the story below the headline that indicated the country was seeking a leader, but the assumption that the country is crying out for leadership is now so widespread in the press that headlines like that are routine...
...But the man of the hour did not do much talking, or give many clues to his thinking...
...In the second part of "In Depth," however, Brokaw and Tim Russert confided to one another...
...And as Charles Krautharnmer pointed out in an inspired essay in Time, "It is the mushy middle that muddles and obstructs and dilutes...
...Actually, it has not taken Clinton seriously for some time, although it has learned to live with him, and might have continued to do so except for the November '94 election...
...Granted that polls may be used to prove anything you want them to prove...
...NBC, opting for a weightier approach, divided its Powell story into two parts, and gave the whole a title, "In Depth: Man of the Hour...
...Krauthammer also noted that liberals have become "acutely aware how unsalable is the agenda and incompetent the politics of their own party...
...The conservatives were characterized as extremists, and the press became infatuated by the political center...
...It seems to be a way of excluding Gingrich, Dole, Armey, Gramm, and Buchanan...
...But unfortunately for Time, someone already had slipped a copy of Powell's book to Newsweek...
...Americans are almost always disenchanted by politicians, and ideas about a third party turn up often...
...Powell told correspondent David Martin that he would get upset if he saw his daughter on the cover of a supermarket tabloid...
...The radical middle wants to balance the budget, restore civility to public life, and hear some sensible ideas about what to do about government...
...Powell was the only one who could deliver the party from a Gingrich, Dole, Armey, Gramm, or Buchanan...
...Arguments broke out...
...Random House, Powell's publisher, coordinated his appearances, and dictated his schedule...
...it needs to be privatized and voucherized...
...Clearly, he believed, they could not...
...There still does not seem to be much reason for the Republicans to start rushing to the center, or toward what Newsweek now calls "the radical middle...
...Can any of the other candidates," Russert asked, "move the Republican Party back to the center...
...But no one paid much attention to Evans, and perhaps a rough justice was served...
...Or, as the story said, "The two parties finished roughly even on concern for the needs and problems of ordinary people—a strong showing for the Republicans on long-established Democratic turf...
...But one man's middle, or center, or even radical middle, is another man's mush...
...Deep in the Times story about the voters' disenchantment, meanwhile, were some findings from the poll...
...Depending on which news story you read, the first printing was 500,000, 800,000, or 1 million copies...
...It doesn't merely split the difference between Democrats and Republicans...
...As the headline on a page-one story in the Times said this summer, "Poll Shows Disenchantment With Politicians and Politics...
...Someone double-crossed someone else, however, and both networks ran their interviews three nights early...
...The first issue of George, a magazine about politics, published an article by Madonna...
...0 The American Spectator November 1995 63...
...Therefore, it now embraces an amorphous middle...
...Nonetheless, when Klein listed items on the agenda, they did sound familiar...
...What is he really thinking about America's future—and his own...
...He followed this with an hour on "Larry King Live," a three-part conversation with Katie Kouric on "Today," and a late-night visit to Jay Leno...
...T his radical middle, according to Newsweek's Joe Klein, is something new...
...Barbara Walters thought he would run, and that he would do it as a Republican...
...So much for the radical middle, then...
...The story, by R.W...
...Sam Donaldson said a Powell presidency would be "good for the country," and that he hoped he would run...
...The Democratic Party was unraveling, and liberal commentators and columnists had nowhere else to go...
...It also needs to slim, shred, or otherwise curtail its social-service bureaucracy...
...And if Powell ran as an independent and won, Brokaw added, he would be unable to deal with a Republican Colin Show by John Corry 62 The American Spectator November 1995 Congress...
...Powell Explains Who He Is...
...Grant also that they have been more frivolous lately than usual...
...Newsweek said it was mad as hell, and wanted change, but the radical middle seems driven by conventional conservatism despite itself...
...Powell was on a BBC special with David Frost...
...Meanwhile, Powell went off on his four-week book tour, wading ashore in some twenty-five cities, while accompanied by a security detail...
...He may be preferable to a conservative Republican, but he has been shrinking, not growing, in office, and the press does not take him seriously...
...Grant all that, but media enthusiasm for, and excitement over, Powell still seemed enormous...
...In fact, the country was getting a new set of leaders—Republican governors in New York and New Jersey, Republican mayors in Los Angeles and New York City, and Republican legislators in many state houses, among them—but apparently they were not the right leaders...
...T he centerpiece of all this, of course, was Powell's memoir, An American Journey...
...That excludes, of course, a Gingrich, Dole, Armey, Gramm, or Buchanan...
...If she were president, "Howard Stern would get kicked out of the country, and Roman Polanski would be allowed back in...
...In 1980, Jimmy Carter was widely viewed as inept, much like Bill Clinton now...
...Russert said Powell would prefer to run as an independent, but that he could not raise enough money to do it...
...Powell also appeared on the NBC and CBS evening news broadcasts, and was interviewed by Parade, People, and the New Yorker magazines...
...First question: "Will you run for President...
...Part of their game was to talk about the harshness of conservative rhetoric—although most of the harshness was coming from liberals—and the mean-spiritedness of conservative proposals...
...An alternative must be found...
...He got 6.6 percent of the vote...
...The press has a hard time acknowledging conservatism, and sometimes calls it by other names...
...The conservative Ronald Reagan was not considered an acceptable alternative, and columnists and editorial writers took John Anderson's third-party candidacy seriously...
...Probably that was true...
...Answer: "I still haven't come to that decision point in my life...
...Another part of the game was to insist that the country was fed up with old-style politics, and yearned for a new set of leaders...
...But grant now that what the media give, they can, and will, take away...
...In apparent high dudgeon then, Harold Evans, the Random House publisher, said that "they [Newsweek] have just about broken every journalistic ethic you can think of...
...Tom Brokaw was not so sure, although he seemed to think that if Powell ran as a Republican, it would only be because an independent candidacy was impractical...
...it has a distinct, coherent political agenda...
...Time magazine paid $300,000 for first serial rights, and for the privilege of conducting the "first onthe-record interview" with Powell about his possible run for the presidency...
...It disdains the voice of what it thinks of as "the Other," although it will try to co-opt it when possible...
...My plan right now is to keep my options open through the book tour...
...As Newsweek itself said, government needs to be replaced...
...It turned out that voters saw the Republicans as more likely than the Democrats to reduce the deficit, ensure the general prosperity, curtail crime,and reform the welfare system...
...Apple, Jr., began: "Profoundly disenchanted by politics and politicians, Americans are simultaneously attracted to, and leery of, the idea of a third party...
...Enter then Gingrich, Dole, Armey, Gramm, and Buchanan, and also the members of the Christian Coalition...
...Meanwhile, everyone agreed that Powell represented "the center," a place, the New York Times said, where "the vast, sensible majority of the American people" dwell...
...Evans's wife, Tina Brown, the editor of the New Yorker, had been responsible for signing up Roseanne, and surely someone had to be punished for that...
...He transcends race, rises above partisan politics, and is the repository of all our best hopes for the future...
...Therefore, if Powell ran, he would be forced to do it as a Republican, and although this might be distasteful for him, it would be a blessing for everyone else...
...And all this, mind you, was before his book tour even started...
...The New Yorker asked boorish, foul-mouthed Roseanne to serve as co-editor for a special section on women...
...The media competition over Powell was fierce...
...S omething had to be done...
...Putnam's Sons...
...NBC and CBS were granted interviews, with the understanding they would be shown on a Monday...
...The week before Time ran the excerpts and the interview, Newsweek had a cover story on Powell, along with a summary and critical analysis of the book...
...CBS put its interview at the top of the program...
...In its arrogance, it also insists on telling us what's good for us...
...A six-column headline in the Times at the start of the tour reflected the media view: "With the Country Seeking a Leader, Gen...
...Except for Peter Jennings, say, and a few other die-hards,almost everyone has given up on Bill Clinton...
...After he was interviewed by Barbara Walters, John Corry, a former New York Times media critic, is the author of My Times: Adventures in the News Trade (Grosset/G.P...
Vol. 28 • November 1995 • No. 11
