‘The Character of Candidates’

William Schneider’s article (Opinion, May 10), “The Character of Candidates,” is casuistry of a high order. Its implied thrust is that, thanks to the watchdog press, Americans are able to enjoy the best of all possible worlds. Fortunately for us, the press will weed out “flawed” political candidates and we will be spared the mistake of electing them.

This is yet another commentator’s attempt to assure us that the press can do no wrong. The arguments don’t wash.

For example, Schneider mentions a 1985 opinion poll finding that “87% of the public said that adultery was always or almost always wrong.” He then implies that this poll legitimizes the Miami Herald’s tawdry stationing of reporters outside Gary Hart’s house in Washington. Nonsense.

The public may well consider adultery a serious marital matter. But does the poll suggest any public belief that it is a serious matter of public policy? This is casuistry.

If Schneider wants to make his argument, let him demonstrate that adultery impairs the practice of statecraft.

Is it not also casuistry for Schneider to state: “The system is far from perfect. Once in a while, we eliminate a good candidate, like Edmund S. Muskie in 1972”?

Schneider is being a little careless with his pronouns. Surely his “we” means “we journalists,” not “we Americans.” If my memory serves, Muskie’s candidacy faltered because of false reports printed in a Manchester, N.H., newspaper. Once the press closed ranks (as it is now doing to protect the Miami Herald), Muskie could make no credible answer to those false reports. If there was any flaw in that instance, surely the flaw was journalistic.

Schneider says: “The U.S. political system has one big defect”--our being stuck with a President once he’s elected.

Surely there is a second defect: the fact that the press, a prime player in the political process, is answerable to no one but itself.

The press is now in a position to overthrow our elected governments--as it did in the Watergate case and without ever revealing the identity of its news sources.

The press is in a position to choose the context in which presidential candidacies will be viewed--and it invariably portrays the candidacies as sporting events.

The press, particularly television news programming, now controls candidates’ access to the voters. It controls the focus of that access. Gary Hart cannot talk about issues and ideas if the press decides that it has a duty to talk about his sex life. As we see in the Hart case, the press now has the power to foreclose a candidacy.

This is a very dangerous situation for the country. The press has a public trust. That trust is not served by scandal-mongering, casuistry, the foreclosing of candidacies or these knee-jerk, we-stand-by-their-story defenses of disreputable reporting.

FREDERIC HUNTER

Santa Barbara