MCCURRYING FAVOR

...None of them had McCurry’s sophisticated grasp of the dynamics of press coverage—the strain of deadlines, the relative importance of different media outlets, the corrosive potential of competitive pressures, and the vanity of individual reporters—and none of them would have thought to use that knowledge, if they’d had it, to impede the ability of the press to tell the public what was going on at the White House...

...they knew, for Mike had told them, that he loved the truth so much he didn’t want to know what it was...

...He could bully a story out of existence, even though he knew it was true...

...It is a condition of utter dependence...

...McCurry Exit: A White House Wit’s End,” headlined the Washington Post on its front page, the day after the tragic news broke...

...Of all time...

...But Mike’s friends would never be so rude...

...A case could be made that McCurry is the press secretary most respected in recent times among White House reporters,” said the Boston Globe...

...Mike McCurry must have smiled at that...

...In the White House press secretary’s office over the years there have been connivers of low scruple (LBJ’s Bill Moyers, for example) and there have been chumps (poor Ron Ziegler...

...Here’s how well it worked: When the final scandal blew, and the questions came hot and furious, McCurry publicly pledged to remain ignorant about the subject of the press’s curiosity...

...Now, an adversarial reporter might conclude the opposite: that McCurry was getting out just in time...

...Here’s how well it worked, from the New York Times: “In a sign of growing confidence that it is weathering the Lewinsky investigation, Michael D. McCurry, who has used an agile wit and aggressive tactics to promote the Administration and defend it from scandal, will resign as press secretary this fall...

...And so when Jeff Gerth of the New York Times pursued the hydra-headed scandal monster too diligently, McCurry raised questions about Gerth’s mental health to complacent colleagues, who duly trashed Gerth’s efforts in their own papers...

...How well did the strategy work...

...there have been men of principle (Gerald ter Horst) and of genuine good will (Marlin Fitzwater...

...Why else would he leave...

...The Post’s display of McCurryisms raises a couple of points...

...Howard, didn’t you talk to Margaret...

...And so when a TV reporter came to him for comment on a damaging story, he put her off, forcing her to miss her deadline, so he could safely leak the story to a newspaper, where it quietly died...

...Their comings and goings are severely restricted...

...So much for the adversarial press, those ferocious bloodhounds engaged in a relentless, pitiless game of gotcha...

...A steady and experienced hand,” said Wolf Blitzer, CNN’s firebreather...

...Not of modern times...

...The White House press corps works in a room the size of a monkey cage...

...Second, and what’s even creepier, is that the McCurryisms distill perfectly McCurry’s approach to his job, which was to keep reporters from doing theirs, while simultaneously impressing them with his candor, charm, affability, and—it goes without saying—wit...

...One example, from a McCurry briefing shortly after the Lewinsky scandal broke: “I’ll refer you to my transcript yesterday, which referred to my transcript the day before...

...Again: How well did it work...

...McCurry knew how to tame them—knew how, in the end, to make them love him...

...He knew that lazy reporters hold good reporters in contempt...

...There were outright lies— recall, in a mild example, the fundraising coffees that weren’t fundraisers— and there were lies of omission, and there was verbal sleight-of-hand when outright lies would backfire...

...He was the master of referring inconvenient questions to others (private lawyers, most often), who he knew wouldn’t answer the questions either...

...Mike did one of the great jobs of all time,” said Time’s Margaret Carlson...

...When McCurry announced his resignation, he quietly advised reporters, off the record of course, that his leavetaking was evidence that the White House had weathered the storm—that the Lewinsky scandal was now trickling into nothing...

...And sometimes Stockholm Syndrome develops as a mass phenomenon, as it has in the Washington press corps...

...These were not merely disinterested appraisals of one man’s professional skill—pros judging another pro...

...The airwaves and newspapers swelled with hymns to the departing press secretary’s wit, his candor, his affability, his charm, his humor, his wit, his . . . did we mention his wit...

...First, as examples of wit, they aren’t terribly witty, and this is true even by the standards of people whose only exposure to humor is the monologues delivered by thirdtier comedians at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner...

...Their diet of information is strictly rationed...

...They betokened genuine affection...

...I don’t think you can get any better than Mike McCurry,” said NBC’s Andrea Mitchell last Thursday, shortly after the White House press secretary announced his resignation...

...Why, if you only really knew Tony,” they will say to concerned friends and relatives, “you’d know he doesn’t really mean it when he comes after me with a tire iron...

...And reporters took him at his word...

...It is seen, for example, among battered wives, whose love for the men who abuse them may only deepen with time...

...Beneath the headline, the Post included a little box of “Memorable McCurryisms”— japes from the master...

...Any shrink will tell you that this is how you create Stockholm Syndrome...

...MCCURRYING FAVOR by Andrew Ferguson SHRINKS LIKE TO SPEAK OF “Stockholm Syndrome,” to denote that scary psychological condition in which captives begin to “bond”— another shrink term—with their kidnappers...

...Howard Kurtz, the media reporter of the Washington Post, summed up: “Every White House reporter I’ve talked to, more than a couple dozen, say McCurry is the best press secretary of modern times...

...But all of them, to varying degrees, clung to the belief that their primary responsibility was to advance the flow of information from the government to the public through the press...

...And then after hours, off the record, he would play to a reporter’s vanity, offering in confidence a wry critical comment about his boss the president, letting slip a privileged detail, dispensing some swatch of color to make each reporter think he had a story all his own, and that Mike was his friend...

...McCurry knew, for example, that stories in newspapers carry less force than those on TV...

...Andrew Ferguson is a senior editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...