Back When the Lying Began
FERGUSON, ANDREW
Back When the Lying Began by Andrew Ferguson LAST WEEK I TOOK A TRIP BACK IN TIME—way, way back, to the distant days when James Carville seemed a refreshing, colorful rustic instead of a...
...Scummy...
...Georgette Mosbacher...
...You never answer the question...
...Back When the Lying Began by Andrew Ferguson LAST WEEK I TOOK A TRIP BACK IN TIME—way, way back, to the distant days when James Carville seemed a refreshing, colorful rustic instead of a sputtering psychotic...
...And when we do see him he is doing what he does best: smiling, shaking his head in puzzlement or disgust, and—ceaselessly, endlessly—denying everything...
...I want you to ask the president to call the Pentagon and find out who leaked this...
...The conventional view after 1992 was that the Clintonites had finally beaten the GOP at its own game—that George and James and the rest were simply better at the cynical techniques of political manipulation invented by Republicans...
...You'll be embarrassed in front of the national press corps...
...The Clintonites weren't "the best...
...Here's the question," Carville hollers at reporters...
...But the Clinton style embraces more than the man himself...
...When it was released in 1993 it was a mild hit, as documentaries go, but it's hard to find in video stores now...
...A good question, perhaps, except that Bill Clinton would never ask it today, now that Pentagon leaks involve Linda Tripp's top-secret security clearance...
...Carville hadn't yet heard about Richard Mellon Scaife, apparently...
...Some questions lose their relevance...
...That would be old Ed "Fresh Ideas" Muskie...
...Pacing in his jean jacket behind his desk, Stephan-opoulos beats the story back...
...We are not going to lose...
...Nobody will believe you...
...The campaign might have tried to explain the letter...
...CBS enthusiastically tries to verify the tip...
...And so it goes...
...A producer keeps the Clinton campaign informed of the Bush team's reaction and even offers to fax over a copy of the script for the broadcast...
...Any time anybody comes up here with fresh ideas, they take 'em out...
...And lack of scruple can often take you further than mere ingenuity...
...They were just the most shameless...
...Clinton hollers, too...
...Then Clinton's famous "political viability" letter about the draft makes its way into the press...
...The American people care about jobs and education," he scolds Sam Donaldson...
...But then—tragedy...
...he tells reporters...
...Clinton himself is only glimpsed in The War Room...
...Tell it, James...
...One War Room scene more than any other carries dim, premonitory rumbles of trouble in the distance...
...Jerry Brown confronts Clinton during a debate— some wild allegation about a failed Arkansas land deal...
...As his eyes dart around, George's exasperation is palpable: It's like you-all think Clinton's going to get elected and start nailing the interns or something...
...Our first extended look at Carville comes as he gives a pep talk to New Hampshire volunteers, who appear briefly disconcerted by reports of Clinton's skirt-chasing and draft-dodging...
...You oughta be ashamed jumpin' on my wife," Clinton snarls in mock offense, to which Brown replies: "You're always trying to attack, Governor...
...He is going to be president...
...The story turns out not to be true...
...Listen," Carville tells the troops, "it's gonna come out that Roger Ailes is behind this stuff...
...George Stephanopoulos appears on This Week with David Brinkley to answer questions about the governor's womanizing...
...The charges are false," he says, with the studied ambiguity we now know so well...
...Did someone say scummy...
...This is why in 1998 we have a White House that is less an instrument of government than the headquarters for an endless campaign—just another war room, whose only object is to vanquish enemies, whoever they are, and to defend the leader, regardless of cost...
...I guarantee you, if you do this, you'll never work in Democratic politics again...
...Instead it attacks...
...For some reason, CBS decides not to use it...
...They're not going to be diverted by side issues...
...What is the Pentagon doin' leakin' somethin' like this...
...And it gives you the creeps...
...A scrum of reporters surrounds him in New Hampshire to ask about Gennifer Flowers...
...I mean, you never ask me whether Martians walk on the earth, do you...
...It's all here, in other words, preserved forever in a well-wrought and ultimately depressing movie: the blame-shifting, the bullying, the smears, and the attacks, no matter how preposterous, in the face of any threat to the president's political viability...
...There's some truth to this, though not much...
...But think of yourself," he continues, his voice all the more ominous for its toneless-ness...
...it emanates from him, and radiates outward to encompass all those who assist him in his ambitions...
...Watching The War Room today, you realize you're seeing the Clinton presidency in seedling form...
...In 1992, Clinton and his boys ran against a feeble incumbent and an extraterrestrial munchkin who chose "Crazy" as his campaign song, and they still managed to win only 43 percent of the vote...
...The lengthiest episode in the movie concerns Carville and Stephanopoulos's effort to plant an anti-Bush story with CBS News...
...he's a voice on the telephone, a flashing image on a TV monitor...
...And if we win this, then you have knocked this s— back fo-evah...
...But they practiced the art with an inexhaustible energy—so inexhaustible that it races along at high voltage even now...
...He consoles himself by screaming over the phone at a reporter from the Washington Post, which had dared to run another Clinton-draft story on the front page...
...The War Room is full of such eerie echoes, for the Clintonian approach to the press and the public has remained essentially unchanged...
...Gov...
...You would be laughed at and people would think you're crazy," he tells the caller...
...The real innovation came after the election, when the methods of Clinton-style campaigning were uprooted and transplanted, in their entirety, to the executive branch...
...The War Room makes it plain: We were warned...
...Close to the movie's end, Stephanopoulos takes a phone call from a Perot operative who threatens to go public with a now forgotten allegation about Clinton's private life...
...Andrew Ferguson is a senior editor of The Weekly Standard...
...Ailes, and of course Bush and Georgette Mosbacher...
...Carville is crestfallen...
...That's too bad, because its value as a cultural document has grown with time...
...I rented The War Room, a documentary about the 1992 Clinton campaign, which made stars of Carville and his diminutive sidekick, George Stephanopoulos...
...It's sad that this could be published in a paper like the Star, which reports Martians walk on the earth...
...And people will think you're scummy...
...We are going to win...
...The Clintonites didn't invent the combination of cajolery, dissembling, and equivocation that we today know as "spin...
...Remember Muskie...
Vol. 3 • April 1998 • No. 29
