Media Influence? : U.S. Politics: Only Bland Need Apply

Mayor Tom Bradley. Gov. George Deukmejian. Sens. Alan Cranston and Pete Wilson. Presidential candidates George Bush and Michael S. Dukakis.

Three Democrats and three Republicans. All hard-working, conscientious public servants. But if you were having a dinner party and wanted witty, lively, charismatic guests--rather than merely famous, powerful guests--to ensure an evening of sparkling conversation, it’s not likely that any of these gentlemen’s names would be on your invitation list. Or, as Democratic political consultant Robert Squier said in a recent interview:

“We classify our clients on the basis of . . . would you have breakfast with him, would you . . . have lunch with him, would you have dinner with him? There are no dinners on that list.”

Why not? Why are the most successful candidates for the top political offices in this country increasingly uninteresting people--gray, bland centrists and technocrats unlikely to drift very far from the middle of the road, either stylistically or ideologically?

President Reagan is a rare exception to this trend, as even his critics concede, but he is just that--an exception--and many politicians, as well as many scholars, political consultants and journalists, attribute the graying of American politics largely to the impact of the media, both print and electronic.

The media, they say, have homogenized the candidates; the media now examine candidates more carefully, over a longer period of time, on more issues than ever before--questioning not just voting records but consistency, ethics, financial holdings, health, spouses’ activities, even sexual behavior.

Screened Out

Result: Some potential candidates, fearful of such scrutiny, choose not to run for office at all. Worse, say many experienced political hands, those candidates who do run and do diverge substantially from the centrist norm, either personally or politically, tend to find themselves screened out by a citizenry given more exposure to the candidates than at any previous time in U.S. history and ever more inclined to play it safe after the traumas of the last two decades--Vietnam, Watergate, the Iran-Contra scandal.

The changing political climate in America is a complex subject, and it would be oversimplification to attribute too much to the influence of the media. Indeed, many reporters, editors and broadcast executives insist that the media have little real power and that what power they do have is not expanding. Concerns about “unprecedented” press power have been raised in every election since television first became a major factor in 1960, they say.

“The problem I have with all of these analyses that put a great deal of emphasis on media skills of candidates or the influence of the media . . . is that they too often end up sounding like the voters are sort of robots being steered around by superior intelligence (in the media and elsewhere),” says David Broder of the Washington Post, dean of the nation’s political reporters.

But interviews with others strongly suggested that the press has had a major and growing impact on the political process of late, “a striking and immense role in picking presidents,” as political scientist Everett Carll Ladd wrote in the Christian Science Monitor last fall.

This impact goes far beyond the media contribution to the growing blandness of American politics.

Assumed Functions

As the power of American political parties has diminished, the press has assumed many of the parties’ traditional functions, both in screening candidates for the voters and serving as the institutionalized opposition to whatever party is in power.

Sen. Estes Kefauver won more primaries in 1952 than any other candidate, but lost the Democratic presidential nomination to Adlai Stevenson because the party bosses preferred Stevenson. In 1988, with 37 primary states and no party bosses in the traditional sense, it was disclosure in the press, not discussion in the back room, that helped to kill the candidacies of at least two strong contenders--former Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado and Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.

The press did not seek this role, says William Schneider of the American Enterprise Institute; rather, the change has been “an unintended consequence of political reform.”

Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. With the decline of political parties--as measured by the decreased number of party-line votes in Congress, increased ticket-splitting at the polls, a diminished number of voters who identify themselves as strongly partisan and the replacement of the brokered convention and the smoke-filled room with the direct presidential primary--the press has stepped into the resultant vacuum. Campaigns are now conducted, essentially, in and for the press.

“Someone has to . . . serve (in) the role that probably the old party bosses did,” says Edward Rollins, chairman of the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1984 and now a Republican political consultant. “If you were a (skirt) chaser or a boozer or had some real significant shortcomings in the old days . . . those things would’ve been known and, I would assume in most cases, someone would have objected in private to a person like that being put forward.

‘Would’ve Been Nominee’

“Today, you take a Gary Hart, who obviously would not have been picked by party bosses . . . and you make him an instant . . . celebrity . . . . My sense is Gary Hart would’ve been the nominee of the Democratic Party and on his way to the presidency today if it were not for press scrutiny.”

Many people who favor the principle of political reform think the demise of party bosses has actually hurt the political process. A blend of the old system and the new would be better, they say--in part because they aren’t comfortable with the press doing the work of the parties and the bosses and, in some cases, of the voters as well.

“Two leading candidates (Hart and Biden) were out of the race as a result of press scrutiny close to a year before the public got a chance to weigh in,” says Paul Taylor, political reporter for the Washington Post. “I find that very troubling.”

But in presidential and other highly visible campaigns, the press more and more often seems to decide who the viable candidates are long before the voters even begin to think about the campaign.

As recently as 1976, a long shot such as Jimmy Carter could sell his candidacy to the voters on a retail basis, by appealing to small groups of voters at a time. Now, politics is essentially a wholesale business, with the media acting as the wholesaler, the middleman.

‘Participant Status’

“The national news media have been elevated to participant status in the campaign,” political consultant William Keyserling wrote in the Washington Post. “The media . . . judge who is ‘succeeding,’ who is ‘failing.’ ”

Many of these media judgments become self-fulfilling prophecies: Candidates deemed to be front-runners receive a lot of press attention. If that attention is favorable--or at least not negative--it helps them do well in the public opinion polls, which helps them raise a lot of money, which helps them build solid campaign organizations and buy television advertising time and hire consultants, which means they can solidify their front-runner status. Similarly, candidacies deemed hopeless receive little coverage, often fare poorly in the polls, raise little money and usually finish, well, hopelessly out of the running.

Early judgments in the press are far from infallible, of course--as witness the success of the Rev. Jesse Jackson after early press dismissals of his candidacy. Early victories at the polls do not guarantee ultimate victory, either--as witness the failures of Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) and Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) to parlay their Iowa caucus victories and the resultant media bonanzas into their party’s presidential nominations this year.

But neither Dole nor Gephardt was the early front-runner for his party’s nomination. A more telling example of the impact of early media judgments is that of former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt.

When the press wrote that Babbitt was perceived as having performed poorly in the first debate among Democratic presidential candidates in Houston in July, 1987, seven months before the Iowa caucuses, his fund-raising and poll standings immediately suffered.

‘On the Defensive’

The Babbitt campaign was put “immediately on the defensive,” says David Shribman, political reporter for the Wall Street Journal. “The whole dynamic of that campaign shifted.”

Babbitt’s other shortcomings may well have kept him from winning the nomination anyway, despite the enthusiasm many individual reporters felt for him because of his personality, his willingness to speak unpopular truths and his issue-oriented campaign. But the early, negative media evaluations of his chances helped doom him to defeat.

The press focuses more today than ever before on campaign strategy and candidate personality, rather than on substantive issues, Babbitt and others say, and they attribute this to polls, paid political consultants, the legacy of author Theodore White and the dominance of television.

“Newspapers . . . are devoting too much time, money, energy and newsprint to . . . polls and quotes from ax-grinding consultants . . . instead of doing reporting,” says Martin Nolan, editorial page editor of the Boston Globe.

The press publishes polls for a variety of reasons, among them (1) they are one of the few ways campaign progress can be measured in tangible terms, and (2) people tend to be interested in who is ahead, in winners and losers, in any field.

But the trouble with polls early in the campaign process, says Robert Shogan, national political correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, is that “any time that a pollster asks a . . . voter a question that the . . . voter hasn’t previously thought of himself . . . the answer isn’t worth much . . . . The strength of the conviction . . . is very fragile.”

Few voters think much about an election a year or two ahead of time--when many of the early polls are taken--but the polls are taken, analyzed and published anyway.

This obsession with “horse-race journalism”--with who’s ahead and by how much, with where a candidate stands in the polls rather than where he stands on the issues--continues throughout the campaign, according to a recent study conducted by the Center for Media and Public Affairs. That study showed that from February, 1987, through the end of the primaries this year, the three TV networks broadcast far more “horse-race” stories than any other kind--more than twice as many “horse-race” stories, for example, as stories on policy issues.

The primary system has “created a horse race,” says Hal Bruno, political director of ABC. “This probably oversimplifies our role, but the truth is all we do is cover a horse race that moves on to a different track every single week.”

Early Races Emphasized

The press treats the first horse races--the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary--as if they were the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes all rolled into one, lavishing far more print space and broadcast time on them than on later races in larger states that involve far more voters and more wide-ranging issues.

In a USA Today-Cable News Network (CNN) poll early this year, 80% of the respondents said the press “gives too much emphasis to Iowa and New Hampshire.” In fact, more than half the respondents said “the media make it harder for us to choose the best person” for President.

This is, in part, the legacy of Theodore White.

White’s “The Making of the President” books--especially the first one, about the 1960 presidential contest--gave many Americans their first insider’s glimpse of a political campaign. Similarly, it also inspired a whole generation of nascent political reporters to seek out the inside story of what makes the candidates tick and what tactics they plan to follow and who will win.

White “changed American journalism and, arguably, changed American politics too,” Robert G. Kaiser wrote in the Washington Post Magazine earlier this year.

Reporters as Nit-Pickers

James Perry of the Wall Street Journal, in his book, “Us & Them,” says too many political reporters have become “nit-pickers peeking into dusty corners, looking for the squabbles, celebrating the trivia and leaping to those sweeping, cosmic, melodramatic conclusions and generalities that mark the Teddy White view of politics.

“If we play White’s game,” Perry wrote, “we . . . fail to keep the voters informed about who the candidates really are and what they are trying to do and say . . . . We are far too interested in trying to find out who’s going to win.”

Telegenic Skills

Thus, journalists writing in the heat of the campaign, while voters are still making up their minds--not, like White, after Election Day, when the winners are already known--may produce stories that inevitably (if unintentionally) favor candidates whose fund-raising abilities, telegenic skills and professional consultants’ tactics enable them to mount early, strategically effective campaigns. Candidates who may have more intelligent positions on the major problems confronting society may suffer accordingly.

The consultants themselves have played a major role in the transformation of American politics. Reporters call consultants for comment constantly--often, some reporters admit, to quote what the reporter has concluded but can’t say himself under the constraints of traditional journalism. No wonder, then, that the press has become “a cheering section for . . . consultants,” in the words of Stephen Hess, senior fellow in government studies at the Brookings Institution.

Reporter-Consultant View

“We are sources, we are friends, we’re sort of the ongoing entity,” says Republican consultant Rollins. The continuing relationship between the press and the consultants from campaign to campaign has become so enduring that “the players (the candidates) . . . are almost irrelevant in the sense . . . (that) we’ve seen ‘em come, we’ve seen ‘em go,” Rollins says.

Patrick Caddell, longtime consultant to Democratic candidates, thinks the reporter-consultant coalition is an “unhealthy, dangerous . . . incestuous” relationship that “. . . creates a community of people who reinforce each other . . . (and) wind up with a uniform world view.”

Press coverage of major political campaigns, especially for the presidency, has become so intense and so ubiquitous that voters are now exposed to an unprecedented volume of information on the candidates--and voter turnout has steadily dropped over the last two decades, from 62.8% of eligible voters in the 1960 presidential election to 53.1% in 1984.

Voter Turnout Discouraged

There are many who say expanded press coverage has discouraged voting: People are overwhelmed and intimidated by all the information now available. They are repelled by the negative campaigns they see and read about. They interpret the cynicism they often perceive in the press as proof that the political process is corrupt, the candidates unworthy and indistinguishable and their own votes meaningless. They find the candidates, as portrayed in and by the media, so boring, so ordinary and so similar to each other that they figure it doesn’t matter who wins.

Reporters who disclose candidates’ shortcomings and consultants who talk primarily about the weaknesses of their candidates’ opponents ultimately “humanize” the candidates, Rollins says, but people “think a congressman or governor--obviously a President--should not have the human frailties that they have or their wife has or the next-door neighbor has.”

Rollins readily concedes that the consultants help create a negative campaign environment. Indeed, the symbiotic relationship between the press and the professional consultants contributes significantly to the cynicism many see in today’s press coverage of campaigns.

In previous generations, most top campaign officials worked for a candidate because they strongly believed in him and in his ideas. It was a labor of love. Today’s highly paid professional consultants generally are guns for hire; they may believe in their candidates, but their “long-term constituency” is the press, says Ellen Hume, White House reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

Consultants serve that constituency--and earn the press attention that guarantees them future clients--by being candid with the press, candor being the single quality reporters admire perhaps more than any other in a source.

“Obviously, George Bush is my candidate,” Rollins says. “I’m going to try to stress his strengths . . . . but if you and I had a long-term relationship, I’m not going to try to bullshit you . . . . I’m going to basically dump on him. I’m not going to take the blame myself.”

Consultants and reporters alike say that a consultant who “dumps” on his own candidate inevitably contributes to the cynicism of the press, which is then conveyed to--and may help turn off--the voters.

Television may play an even greater role in reducing voter turnout.

Sociologists have long argued that television has turned the United States into a passive, stay-at-home, spectator society. Just as many sports fans would now rather watch a game on television than go to the ballpark, many just stay at home and watch the election returns rather than participate. One difference: Fans still pack stadiums for the playoffs, the World Series, the Super Bowl; voters are staying home in record numbers for the electoral Super Bowl--the presidential elections.

It can be argued, of course, that the press is not responsible for any of these changes in the political process--that, for example, the decrease in voter turnout is largely attributable to 18-year-olds being given the right to vote in 1971. Many people that young don’t vote; voter turnout in the 18-20 age group was only 36.7% in the 1984 presidential election.

Record Belies Influence

It can also be argued that if the press were so powerful, neither Richard M. Nixon nor Ronald Reagan--two names not likely to be found on any media list of all-time favorite presidents--would have been elected President (not once, but twice each) and that Babbitt and Dole--the press favorites in the primaries this year, according to interviews with journalists and a study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs--would now be their parties’ nominees for President.

Babbitt, displaying the sense of humor and irony that originally endeared him to the press, acknowledged what the New York Times called his “reputation as the sweetheart of the press corps” when he said, in withdrawing from the race: “I would like to say a word to all of those Americans who worry that the press is a giant conspiracy that controls politics. You have nothing to fear. The press has little or no influence.”

Moreover, in terms of the influence of the press in the graying of the American political landscape, it is instructive to remember that American voters have traditionally been far less ideological, far less partisan and far more cautious than those of, say, Europe.

“The most remembered and most adored European leaders have been erratic and charismatic, with at least a touch of the demonic,” historian Daniel J. Boorstin wrote. Yet American political leaders have generally been “respectable spokesmen for the respectable community,” Boorstin says, “. . . ‘representative men,’ possessing the commonplace virtues in extra degree.”

In other words, few eccentric giants--and few demons, either. This may help explain why opponents of Dukakis thought they could gain political mileage from spreading unsubstantiated rumors that he had sought psychiatric treatment for depression.

Charisma is far less important in a leader than competence and character, of course, but many European leaders have had all three. Not so the vast majority of American leaders, especially of late, when what former Gov. Richard Lamm of Colorado calls a “reverse Darwinism . . . the survival of the unfittest” seems to be driving American politics.

Centrist Trend Seen

In fact, there is little question that the American voter’s fondness for the normative center--ideologically as well as stylistically--has grown even stronger in recent years.

“When I was a young political journalist . . . there were plenty of honest scoundrels and jolly rogues in American politics,” says R. W. Apple, assistant Washington bureau chief for the New York Times. “Whom do you want to talk about--Wayne Hays, Lyndon Johnson, Charlie Halleck, Everett Dirksen . . . ? There were a lot of great characters around in American politics--rich, intriguing, prolix, often demagogic.

“It’s pretty bland now,” Apple says. “I don’t think there’s any doubt that there’s a graying-out of American politics.”

Jeff Greenfield, political and media analyst for ABC News, attributes this, in part, to changes in the press corps itself.

“The press has become more respectable . . . less raffish,” he says. “They’re professionals . . . not ink-stained wretches. Therefore, I think there may be somewhat less tolerance for eccentric behavior on the part of the press in general.”

These days, a candidate whose behavior is occasionally even a bit out of the ordinary--Rep. Patricia Schroeder of Colorado, for example--winds up being “dogged . . . by the impression that she is erratic, ‘a flake,’ ” as the Washington Post put it last fall.

To Apple, this change is attributable at least in part to television--to “the camera’s love affair with the compact, the small and the understated. . . . “

Doug Conner of The Times’ editorial library assisted with research for this article. VOTER TURNOUT Based on vote for President Percentage of eligible voters 1960--62.8% 1964--61.8% 1968--60.9% 1972--55.1% 1976--53.6% 1980--52.6% 1984--53.1% Source: Congressional records