Nixon’s Media Memo to New President

Richard Nixon advising George Bush on handling the media is like Quasimodo giving advice on grooming and personal hygiene. Or Dracula promoting a balanced diet.

It’s been said by his enemies that the only way to get rid of Nixon is to drive a stake through his heart. Perhaps, for the former President continues somehow to flourish as a post-Watergate author/elder statesman. And here he is in this week’s TV Guide, now playing the unlikely role of media consultant under the headline “Memo to President Bush: How to Use TV--and Keep from Being Abused By It.”

Now that is quaint and amusing, for if ever a politician continually sank his fangs into and exchanged jugular bites with the media, it was Nixon, who not only failed to woo or understand them, but frequently antagonized and blamed them for his problems and failures.

Having learned at least one lesson from his own experience, Nixon does not urge Bush to hunch his shoulders, thrust his arms above his head and make “V” signs with his fingers.

At once the most valid and redundant advice that Bush gets from Nixon is not to expect to match Ronald Reagan’s success on television. Yes, of course. But surely, as he approaches Friday’s inauguration, Bush already knows that he is no Reagan in front of the camera. He knows that he tends to whine, that he lacks presence, that his own tendency to misspeak on TV will not be as easily forgiven, that he will never persuade anyone to win one strictly for the Busher.

When it comes to TV Presidents, there may never be another Reagan, who, for reasons that remain undefined, was able to blur the separation of messenger and message almost as soon as the red light clicked on. It mattered not whether he was flawlessly delivering a prepared speech or badly floundering and speaking Gipperish at a press conference. Reagan was Reagan. He , not what he was saying, was the communication. And he whizzed through it all--almost unscathed.

How Nixon must envy Reagan for that, for if anything screams out from the New Nixon’s 2,000-word article in TV Guide, it’s the Old Nixon’s bitterness and paranoia about the media.

“They have to be outfoxed, outflanked and outperformed,” he writes. “Unless the President finds a way to use them to pursue his own agenda, they will use his failures to pursue theirs.” The same words would apply to terrorists.

Curiously, Nixon credits most TV reporters with being “conscientious, intelligent and hard-working,” then proceeds to vilify them as a sort of faceless monolith. As you read his words and your brain replays TV pictures of a self-pitying Nixon assuring reporters that they won’t have him “to kick around anymore” after failing to win the 1962 California gubernatorial race, it becomes clear that he is less interested now in advising Bush than in settling some very old scores.

Some of his points:

--”Of all the institutions arrayed with and against the President, none controls his fate more than television.” So TV will determine the destiny of George Bush, more even than Congress or the White House itself? Come now.

Surely the media--and especially TV--are vital to any Administration, and the electronic age requires Presidents who have at least the basic skills to communicate to the nation through TV. Moreover, TV’s handling of stories obviously does have an effect on public opinion.

But are Presidents 99-pound weaklings or something? On the contrary, it’s logical to conclude that the fate of Bush is chiefly in the hands of Bush, not TV--just as Nixon, not TV, deserves blame for Watergate as well as credit for a policy toward China that many feel was visionary.

--”Televised press conferences should be held monthly at most. . . .The media have been clamoring for more news conferences, and it is certainly in their interests for the President to acquiesce. . . . But a news conference is only in the President’s interest when it achieves some purpose other than satisfying the media’s insatiable thirst for confrontation. Contrary to the media’s fulminations, the public does not much care how often the President has a press conference.”

This is an argument for less access--if not outright secrecy. More televised press conferences are merely in the media’s interest? The media are interested only in confrontation ? The public doesn’t care ?

Granted, televised press conferences are flawed, sometimes yield little information and too often lead to showboating--by the President and reporters. They are, however, extremely valuable as a rare, direct link to power. What’s more, they set the President adrift in a relatively uncontrolled environment and allow Americans to see for themselves if he is physically and mentally fit or is foaming at the mouth.

Finally, here is one more piece of advice for Bush from another source: Ignore Dick’s tricks of the trade and set your own course, knowing that although the media aren’t perfect, they’re the only media we have.

And one more thing: Neither overestimate nor underestimate the power of pictures, and thank your lucky stars that it wasn’t you the cameras caught riding around in a tank.