From Easy Rider to Dirty Harry

...The distortions of costly state primaries and fly-by-night national campaigning are the best argument for national primaries and the abolition of the electoral college...

...No sooner does one candidate make his thirty-second point than we are informed how the public responded and, shortly after, how the public responded to the response...

...The whole campaign could be shorter if the positive possibilities of television were put to use and the candidates given exposure in a compact and dignified way...

...The American audience views the media in order to see through the media...

...Why hadn't he run sharper commercials...

...Given the nature of air and print space as a Culture Notes commodity, the above is a naive question...

...Who's forcing them...

...They leaving office...

...The attack is going to be doubly politician—I have talked to says that for at least four effective if it impugns the opponent's red-blooded years Reagan has not known or controlled what is American masculinity...

...When a newspaper or television station doesn't cover an event with reverence, it is vulnerable, just like a liberal candidate, to accusations of "running down America...

...Through much the same mechanism, close questioning of Oliver North is upstaged by North's scripted lies and fantasies—and George Bush can get his show across without submitting to real questions...

...Media are forced to cover whatever power says is news, and cannot usually force power to answer questions...

...It was not revealed, for instance, that the candidates were able to chose their own questioners, nor that the Bush campaign vetoed en masse every reporter who traveled with Bush...

...By the time you read this, the press and television WINTER • 1989 • 111 Culture Notes will be saturating the country with sentimental respectable...

...why did he stand with his bat on his shoulder and let that ridiculous question about his wife's being raped and murdered float by unanswered...

...Most of them would be terrified by Harold Meyerson's concept of "fair taxes" —they feel they have to pretend "no taxes...

...focused through the media on how the opponent Never mind that every Washington reporter—or defends himself...

...This is not to say the public is entirely taken in...

...As Todd Gitlin has said, "They just don't want to hear it...

...They surely won't submit to uncontrolled scrutiny unless some protocol is laid down by Congress...

...Yes, they do keep trying to shout questions to President Reagan above the helicopter blades...

...The reason for this is the paradox of the media: The coverage of the campaign is not criticism, not commentary...

...But in fact, neither congressmen nor broadcasters want to lose popularity, as measured by votes or viewer ratings...

...But the dilemma remains One can . bring the bad news and risk getting killed or fudge it and risk coming across as a gutless bookkeeping wimp...

...That is the meaning of Republicans evoking FDR and JFK —not that Republicans pretend to share their beliefs—who remembers political beliefs...

...Not now, at least...

...News and World Report quotes Dukakis explaining, "What it means is that I'm tough...

...The public knows that campaign television is a show, and even children know a commercial is only a commercial...

...What was reported was how the reporting of the debates would determine the results—and to make this news come true, the networks immediately followed the debates with "expert" opinions—not just from partisan "spin-doctors," but from their own analysts and pollsters—as to who had made the better impression...

...What's more, they make their own news...

...Even as the public he "brought America back" —into what?, why knows such stuff is vicious, its attention will be "morning in America...

...The great obstacle to Democratic leadership in America is a time-honored image battled back and forth between the public and the media—who can say which started it?—the frontier idea that life is a win-or-lose contest where justice prevails because it is ruthless...

...Their own seriousness is bound up in accounts of the tributes attendant upon Reagan's the seriousness of what they so gravely report...

...Americans know, even if vaguely, that what they see is not the whole truth, but they live—like Reagan himself—in a world where reality is blurred by celluloid images, and the process of testing and sorting yields to the choice of which movie to applaud...

...Even if further evidence arises on would far rather say the jolly emperor's clothes are early deals with Iran, even if Reagan pardons North dirty than cover the emperor as a man who wears no and Poindexter (or will Bush do that for him...

...In the daily coverage, sound bites could be refused unless candidates were made available for open questioning— just as, say, the prime minister of Britain must defend her policies in Parliament...

...So when the newspeople criticize the campaign, it is like a cameraman suddenly appearing on screen to criticize a movie he is being forced to shoot...

...The U.S...

...The media are willing told the New York Times we have passed from the enough to let Reagan's former staffers write their era of "Easy Rider" to the era of "Dirty Harry...

...Cher has a winning act...

...What is clear from will grant Reagan that he really is "the Gipper," that the election is that nastiness pays...

...He could probably be beaten— just as Reagan himself could have been the first time—with some humor and grit...

...One of my vivid memories is of Sam Donaldson of ABC and Lesley Stahl of CBS on a postmortem program telling how they did many reports on the inaccuracies of Bush's commercials...

...The Democrats have failed absolutely to demonstrate the drawbacks of Reaganomics—much of which they themselves voted into existence...

...Commercials, finally, don't count as much as how the candidate presents himself...

...One control would be the hundreds of millions of dollars of public funding— why should this money be spent to fly the candidates around staging events for three months, not counting the primary season...

...It's useless to pretend that they "get to know America"—what they do is meet with local fund raisers to cut deals and get their faces on local television making promises on regional issues they know little about, promises that may be at variance with their long-run positions...

...Such criticism, in fact, was repeated every day in the press or on television—sooner and more frequently than the eventual analysis of Bush's made-up charges...

...The Democrats have not been able adequately to explain the dangers of the deficit...

...Even in Didion's description, the easiest thing to remember is not the fatuity of the happening but the image of Dukakis...

...Once Dukakis fell behind, one could see every day how he was calculating in vain to improve his act—and in private those of us who knew we had to vote for him were even more expert in pointing out his strategical failures...

...By then it had been told by "experts" — and seen for itself and heard the polls reporting its reaction—that Bush had won and Dukakis lost the battle of the tough image...

...What the networks found, in fact, was what the Irangate investigation found: The American people didn't want to be bothered...

...But the public can't do more than give out ratings, any more than the reporters can...

...The point is that all this coverage, including the pointed questions asked by the unctuous Ted Koppel and his poll-obsessed stand-in, Jeff Greenfield, are directed to the ballgame aspect of the race...

...These reforms might in turn minimize gimmickry, lying, and image-mongering...

...Taken literally, Didion's vignette invites a common criticism of Dukakis: Why didn't he respond more quickly to Bush's lies, define some concept of prudent and patriotic liberalism...

...To fail at this rhetorical program is, as we have seen, to look like a buffoon, but it will almost certainly be tried again, because to speak out more directly is to invite the Republicans to call out the dark and ignorant forces from the backwoods of American jingo vigilantism...

...Polls are false news...

...By the time the public did see such analysis — say, of the revolving door/furloughed murderers commercial—it didn't change its collective mind...

...Otherwise the networks would not send their national crews around the country to set up cameras at the candidates' chosen angles and broadcast the idiotic sound bites they disapprove of...

...Yet even a shorter, more rational campaign might not ameliorate the Democrats' problems with dramatizing a liberal point of view through the media...

...Day after day, Dukakis played catch, and one more television analyst, one more columnist, gave a version of what he was trying to accomplish...

...But do they tell us every time that since May of '88, when he said he would report back to the American people on Irangate, Reagan has never held another open Washington press conference...

...No one seemed to care, they complained...

...In desperation I sent commercials through Dukakis's clogged-up channels making fun of Quayle (Sam Cooke's voice singing "Don't know much about history/Don't know much geography"), but they met the same fate as my suggestion in 1984 — that the Mondale people simply replay that news clip of Nancy whispering to Ronnie what to say:- and Ronnie dutifully repeating to reporters he would look into it...

...Another thing the media could do is to try to lay out preset rules for debates...

...112 • DISSENT...

...The myth of the free enterprise, down home, might-makesright American hero is all around us every day, and it would take a wrenching of history to create another role for the public man to play...

...books...

...This is why the introduction of Cher's perfume, "Uninhibited," is accepted at face value...

...Just as that shouldn't have inhibited the congressional investigators, it shouldn't stop the networks from full and persistent reporting on Iran and other questions of substance...

...But if there were no exceptions, all the triumphs of the American free press—the Pentagon Papers, the best of the reports from Vietnam, the exposure of Watergate—could never have occurred...

...The challenge as the Democrats currently perceive it—the attempt that did in Dukakis—is to speak of fairness without spelling it out, to speak of cutbacks without telling the truth about America's decline...

...Every reporter and every television crew participant knows the action is a set-up, yet every one of them will feel compelled to cover it, to analyze it...

...It knew Dukakis was acting and gave him a low rating on his act...

...The main thing going for the next Democratic candidate is exactly what was going for him this time: the Republican is certain to be a mealy mouthed hypocrite...

...As a member of the media, Didion had the same problems in relation to the candidates that movie reviewers do to movies...

...No one believes the show— but in the theater, there is nowhere else to look...

...What is graceless is when the newscasters complain—as part, of course, of their coverage...

...No matter what they say, the commentators can rarely penetrate the shifting surface of the product's image No reporter, no television footage—and to a large extent, not even the candidates themselves— could focus the campaign on the reality of the large problems that confront the country or in what fashion either man would set about dealing with them...

...Any analysis of the questions asked (often loaded or banal), or of the accuracy of the replies, could be left for later...

...It's almost irrelevant to say that life in America isn't really like a television commercial, and its leaders cannot be Lone Rangers...

...One debate could be set aside for the candidates to go mano a mano...

...Or that large areas of foreign policy have been run through secret deals with thugs and adventurers...

...Soon enough Dukakis did fail, and in failing, became the loser he was said to be, like Mondale and Carter before him...

...George Bush, meanwhile, tried to keep his voice from screeching and his wavery mouth in place as he continued his transparent but dogged performance as the vigilante lawman who has shot a dirty murderer without reading him his rights...

...Could the people who admire red-whiteandblue number-one fingers at the Olympics accept the notion that America's been sold into a second-class future for the profit of the rich...

...Perhaps the networks and papers could do more of what they started to do as the campaign wore on: devise their own forums, where candidates are invited to give positions or be questioned...

...Our even-handed commentators But never mind speculation...

...Nor can they think of cutting middle-class entitlements or government pensions or bureaucracy without fear of losing constituencies...

...The debates are the ultimate charades, because the networks do not report the negotiations that precede them...

...Candidates have rights, too...

...Nor was it reported exactly why the League of Women Voters pulled out of the second presidential debate...

...It's no accident that Bush going on in government...

...And even as they complain, the late-night analysts, with their cultivated toughness and objectivity keep on validating the sound bites by inquiring of their endless array of hacks and pseudo-experts what they think of the latest polls and tactics...

...They would have to limit themselves—observe a protocol of coverage—a hard discipline for competitors to follow...

...the effects of Reaganomics on prisons, courts, and mental institutions, the realities of who supported what military programs at what probable cost and effectiveness...

...What few reporters did was to construct for Dukakis what a substantive response to Bush might be: the evidence, say, against the death penalty...

...But who could deny the networks their First Amendment rights...

...David Broder in the Washington Post reports the ball-tossing straight on as good-humored exercise...

...And dealings with assorted dictators don't count...

...image-mongering culture that makes a reality of its The big-time media people must be, above all, own that is all but inescapable...

...Reagan taking credit for measures he had staunchly opposed, whereupon White House assistants mockingly thanked her for rerunning their favorite visuals...

...Joan Didion, in a needle-sharp piece in the New York Review of Books, describes Michael Dukakis outside his campaign plane on a broiling day, playing catch with a baseball...

...Their increased numbers in Congress conceal the fact that many of their strongest spokesmen— and best presidential possibilities—have been defeated in the Reagan era, leaving behind too many who are intimidated by Reagan's "We're number one" approach to public opinion...

...The most flagrant examples are the exit polls: Insofar as they (imprecisely) give the news that a 110 • DISSENT candidate has won, they affect the votes — and the results, and the news—yet to come...

...treacle will flow...

...They have at present no national leader capable of speaking about fairness without appearing extreme to a majority of the viewing public...

...After all, this is the way Dukakis wants to show himself...

...But when it comes to including Reagan's Neither film has much to do with what America ever blissful ignorance as part of their regular reporting, was really like, but they—like the fabricated man they have their own reasons for showing themselves who so confidently cites them—are part of the as sports and playing Reagan's game...

...Maybe not unless and until big economic misfortunes hit...

...The lesson most Democrats learned from Dukakis is a lesson of style, not substance: namely, that one can get by with saying less if one immediately goes to the attack...

...We were outraged that there was no dramatic exposé of Bush's sappy fakery...

...the coverage is the campaign...

...Stahl even did a program on...

...the clothes at all...

...Like Reagan, FDR and JFK were winners, which means, in the current culture, that they established Clint Eastwoodian WINTER • 1989 • 109 Culture Notes masculinity, as in "Make my day," "Read my lips," tough on crime, commies, and liberal sissies...

...They can be misleadingly inaccurate, and by the time they appear, they are no longer true...