Presswatch / Braggarts and Burblers

...The professor knows it is crooked...

...The new Speaker of the House is being widely portrayed as at best a loose cannon...

...In fact, the press has not ignored those matters at all—the pot charge holds up, although the others do not—and Begala, who was unable to shut up, seemed even to embarrass the other panelists...

...White House aides in other administrations have also shoveled dirt on political opponents, but their rule was to not do it publicly...

...They realized they were behind the curve, and thatonly strong measures could save them...

...The following night NBC ran a "Reality Check" Lisa Myers reported that even if Gingrich had been right in mentioning the 25 percent figure, he had been way off when he said four or five years...

...The day after that it ran a column by Al Hunt, who wrote that Gingrich actually believes he has enemies in the press "out to get him...

...The economy was, too...

...This was a nice try, even if Lewis did go on to say that "the Reaganesque notion that lower taxes will produce higher revenues . . . proved to be a fantasy...

...Actually, the voters threw out only the Democrats who were in, and there is no two-year cycle of frustration, but inventing one was more pleasant than talking about Clinton...

...They spoke to reporters quietly, and then the reporters pretended they had dug up the dirt themselves...

...Revenues rose, of course, after Reagan cut taxes...

...at the same time, the ambiguity of the phrasing may have cloaked a sly allusion to Newt Gingrich...

...Other publications were simply nasty...

...Putnam's Sons...

...Apparently, it had less to do with the rejection of liberalism than you might think...

...It's the job of the parent to teach the child to control the anger and channel it in a positive way...

...I believe it is first of all a matter of economics...

...Morrow confirmed it with a neat little story: "A liberal icon teaching at Harvard whispered to me one day, `Affirmative action poisons the university for everyone...

...Hunt, a self-conscious Washington insider, must have talked to Paul Begala...

...Tim Russert asked, "Why are Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton members of the counterculture...

...The Times itself showed a sprightly imagination, or an outer-space influence, when, in a lead editorial, it attributed the Democratic debacle to George Mitchell and 50 The American Spectator February 1995 Tom Foley, and those of their colleagues who "placed loyalty to them above cooperation with the White House or public demands for Congressional and campaign finance reform...

...God only knows what the man might do next...

...N onetheless, there are still limits...

...Hunt also wrote, only one paragraph later, `There are numerous former top Gingrich associates eager to publicly discuss details about the congressman's past that they claim are at odds with his public pronouncements...

...N one of this, though, was terribly earnest...

...The new Speaker, according to Remnick, has no redeeming qualities at all...

...Getting used to Gingrich," Jennings said recently, and then viewers saw Gingrich explaining himself on orphanages...

...Gingrich previously had described the Clintons as "counterculture McGoverniks," which they are, although he probably ought to have used the more polite word "McGovernites...

...Voter anger, inchoate and half-baked (see Jennings), was frequently mentioned...

...Still, this was mild stuff...

...By November, though, a foreboding had set in...

...Jonathan Alter, one of Newsweek's liberal apologists, waited a few weeks, and then wrote a column denouncing big government...

...Clinton the man became an abstraction, explained away or ignored, while other reasons were sought for the voters' disaffection...

...Be-gala, perhaps the most feckless of Clinton's top aides, chided the press for ignoring the real Newt Gingrich: "a dead-beat dad" who smoked pot and led a "pro-obscenity campaign in college...

...Other attacks had more style: for example, a whole series of Times editorials under catchy titles—"Newt Gingrich, Authoritarian," "Good and Bad Gingrich," "Partying With Newt," and so on—that at least showed the Times was serious...

...smart columnists know that what once was inexpressible may now be expressed...

...All over the world," he said approvingly, "the state is under assault from individuals exercising their right to have more control over their own lives...

...For as Time reported, "though the Republicans can still be expected to score at least 25 seats, their chances for more are clouded...

...The "former top Gingrich associates" obviously had dirt to spill...

...Liberals lost, conservatives won...

...They also can jump on a bandwagon...

...Even the New Yorker has noted that the "Gingrich divorce papers must be in the hands of every reporter from here to Maui," placed there by what it euphemistically called "the Democratic Party apparatus...

...Apparently, the voters acted out of anger, caprice, or a desire to get even, and all the wrong people won...

...Senator Jesse Helms is out of control," the Times said sternly a few days later, and told Bob Dole to dump him as Foreign Relations Committee chairman...

...Jennings was likening the electorate to a tantrum-throwing brat...

...CI The American Spectator February 1995 51...

...This was not a remarkable statement...

...Braggarts and Burblers by John Corry 0 bviously, the media know something important happened in the election, and though there is no consensus on just what it was, there is a feeling it was an aberration...

...The GOP's Newt Gingrich has perfected the politics of anger...

...p ause now to consider the ongoing media analysis of why Republicans did so well, and Democrats so poorly...

...The Wall Street Journal could hardly contain itself The day after the election it had an uncomplimentary profile of Gingrich on page one...

...He seemed to have waffled on issues, and shown no core principles, but this was seen more as a matter of political indecisiveness than a character flaw...

...Mad As Hell," the headline shouted...

...You cannot teach in these circumstances.— Morrow did not say when the liberal icon had whispered this, or why he was passing it on to us now, although it seems likely he was responding to the election...

...But Begala's performance indicates that the old rule has been suspended, and that defaming Gingrich is more or less cost-free...

...When Jesse Helms replied to Fred Barnes's question on CNN's "Evans & Novak," about whether he thought Clinton was a capable commander-in-chief, "No, I do not, and neither do the people in the armed forces," he was surely closer to the national consensus than the prominent editorialists who make their livings by pondering these things...

...What was most striking about Begala's rant, though, was its openness...

...Gingrich said, as part of his answer, "I had a senior law-enforcement official tell me that, in his judgment, up to a quarter of the White House staff, when they first came in, had used drugs in the last four or five years...

...The students, both black and white, know it is crooked...

...The press may insist it is not holding Newt Gingrich to a higher standard than it does anyone else, but it starts with the loose cannon assumption and then follows up accordingly...

...Clinton's failings as a man—womanizer, draft-dodger, and Whitewater grifter—were never cited as reasons why voters might distrust or dislike him...

...Recall Gingrich's statement about White House aides and drugs, which he made in response to a question on NBC's "Meet the Press...

...So here is Jennings on radio, expressing a widespread view while explaining how we got into the grim fix we now are all supposed to have gotten into: Some thoughts on those angry voters...

...It seems that "the white male feels threatened," and so he voted the Democrats out...

...The Washington Post made it its lead page-one story, and even on Monday night both CBS and NBC still had it at the top of their broadcasts...

...The change came in the weeks before the election, and was roughly commensurate with Republican gains in the polls...

...Anthony Lewis of the New York Times bravely tied them together "What are the reasons for the extraordinary anger directed at Democratic incumbents right across the country...

...The nation can't be run by an angry twoyear-old...

...Meanwhile, the election did give some commentators second thoughts...

...The drug stories were bloodless attacks on Gingrich by what he off-handedly and routinely dismisses as the "elite media...

...It's clear that the anger controls the child and not the other way around...

...Ask parents of any two-year-old and they can tell you about those temper tantrums: the stamping feet, the rolling eyes, the screaming...

...What next...

...The thought was expressed in various ways, although perhaps most imaginatively by Peter Jennings...

...However, after the size of the Democratic defeat became clear, Ted Koppel asked Tony Coehlo, also on "Nightline," whether the vote might be part of the "cycle of frustration that has the American voter every two years throwing out whoever is in...

...The liberal essayist has often been charged with obscurantism, but this time he was clear: Affirmative action is a hoax and a delusion...

...Liberal columnists are absolved of base motives in advance, while conservative politicians stay suspect...

...Lance Morrow of Time was even bolder...

...Besides, another Republican congressman, Frank Wolf of Virginia, had said much the same thing last summer...

...Indeed, much of it would slop over to the New Yorker, which advertises itself as America's best magazine, and maybe "the best magazine ever...

...Gingrich has never been a media favorite and probably never will be, although when it seemed inconceivable that he might become Speaker he was at least patronized...

...The segment, at the end of the broadcast, where ABC usually does kicky little features, suggested that Gingrich, like Zhirinovsky, bears watching...

...Nonetheless, even at that late date the Speaker's position still seemed out of reach...

...When Meg Greenfield wrote in Newsweek that Clinton ought to "discipline his army of in-house braggarts and burblers," you were pretty sure of at least one of the people she had in mind...

...Much of the commentary on Gingrich has been exceedingly nasty, and it is clear the White House has been the source for some of it...

...It published an article by David Remnick, who once distinguished himself with the book Lenin's Tomb, but was unable to rise above spite when he wrote about Gingrich...

...The voters had a temper tantrum last week...

...Nonetheless, the news broadcasts that Sunday night were all full of Gingrich's supposedly shockingcharge, and so were the news shows Monday morning...

...Time ran a picture of Gingrich on its cover, mouth open and snarling, looking like a gauleiter...

...World News Tonight," Jennings's usual venue, even seems to be experimenting with an equivalent of the Zhirinovsky reports that the press once ran regularly on John Cony, a former New York Times media critic, is the author of My Times: Adventures in the News Trade (Grosset/G.P...

...He is mean-spirited and hypocritical, a huckster and con-man—"the libertine in prig's clothing, Elmer Gantry in Congress...

...The New Republic, however, went for a more sophisticated 'explanation, and splashed it all over its cover: "If President Clinton had pushed for welfare reform rather than health care reform in 1994, we would now be talking about a great Democratic realignment, rather than a great Republican realignment" Implicit in all the analysis was the notion that Clinton had damaged the Democrats, although exactly how he had done this was unclear...

...The "CBS Evening News" thought it over, and eventually reported that the election was, "for the most part, a white male revolution...

...His name won't be on the ballot tomorrow, but the election is about Bill Clinton," Cokie Roberts said on "Nightline...

...In early October, for example, Time published a balanced profile of Gingrich, jocularly noting that one day he might even be president...

...Network anchors must feign disinterest when they sit at their desks, but when they turn to radio commentary they say what is on their minds...

...the mad Russian loudmouth...

...Tom Brokaw said archly, while transforming Gingrich's assertion about what a law-enforcement officer had said into "Gingrich's claim that a quarter of the White House staff used drugs...

...C-Span showed "Covering Gingrich's Washington," a panel discussion at American University, where one of the participants was Paul Begala...

...Imagine a nation full of uncontrolled two-year-old rage...

...It was hard to know what to make of all this except that the New Yorker was terribly upset because all the wrong people had won, and one of them had the gall to become Speaker...

...In fact, they won 52 seats, and Newt Gingrich was about to become Speaker...