COLUMN ONE : Candidates Meet Press Inquisition : The media now anoint presidential front-runners, then chew them up one at a time, often guided by their opponents. Critics say politics has descended into a hazing process.

The same day former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas began to surpass Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton in polls in New Hampshire, an aide to Clinton began retaliating by talking off the record to reporters.

Tsongas was being treated in the press like he was “St. Paul,” the aide said. That was bull, he said, and if anyone was interested he could supply the documents about Tsongas’ career as a lobbyist to prove it.

A few days later, stories appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere probing Tsongas’ high-priced lobbying efforts for clients who needed help on Capitol Hill.

Tsongas thus became the latest example of the cyclical media law of politicking. The shift is familiar. As he began to be taken seriously, the gaze of the media inevitably turned his way. And if he continues to do well, it could quickly turn into a tidal wave of klieg lights, questions and headlines, in which the press, often aided by the opposition, look for any vulnerabilities in the front-runner.

Clinton himself had just gone through the cycle, going from anointed front-runner to candidate in crisis.

It is the hazing process of modern politics. Through the uncontrollable echo of repetition, the media help create and may even exaggerate a candidate’s ascent. Then they turn to examine their discovery for flaws. Some in the press say the media have a way of eating their young.

Most in politics believe a potential United States President should go through the most intense sort of scrutiny.

“All this is the ‘oh my God factor,’ as in ‘oh my God, this guy might actually be President,’ ” says Larry Sabato, a professor at the University of Virginia and author of the book “Feeding Frenzy” about the media and politics.

Much of this scrutiny tends to focus on a candidate’s character, more than record. “The great majority of Americans . . . want to sort this guy out on what he has accomplished, who he is, and then later look at his record,” says CNN correspondent Ken Bode.

But some journalists worry that this process can be uneven. Character questions are necessarily subjective and too easily guided by the opposition. And now that the race is in full swing, facts about character that seemed benign earlier can take on a velocity journalists neither intend nor control, the critics contend.

“The only time I think we do this (examining candidate histories) really well is when we do it really early, when it is an exercise in biography,” says Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant. “Now it is really ‘what is the black eye I can find in this guy’s background.’ ”

The scrutiny also can become controversial because it is inevitably most intensely focused on the front-runner, while his competitors seem to skate free.

While Tsongas was getting greater attention, for instance, the flaps over Clinton’s alleged marital infidelity and Vietnam-era draft status faded. Some reporters even think Clinton may now enjoy the benefit of the doubt because their colleagues feel uneasy about having repeated allegations that were first printed in a supermarket tabloid.

And many in the media believe that Republican challenger Patrick J. Buchanan may avoid intense scrutiny this year because he appears to have such a slim chance of winning the nomination. Some contend that media friends of Buchanan, a former television commentator, may be even forgiving in their analysis of some of his more controversial statements.

Criticizes Focus

Bill Kovach, curator of the Neiman Foundation of Harvard, blames the press’ tendency to focus on the front-runner on “not carefully developing an approach” to the campaign in advance.

“While we write about every major candidate on a regular basis . . . it is one of the most puzzling characteristics of current political journalism that we somehow seem to have the sense that the public can only (seriously) focus on one person at a time,” he says.

“We can’t walk and chew candidates at the same time,” says Howard Fineman of Newsweek.

The phenomenon of discovering and then dissecting candidates in the media gained importance in the late 1960s when more states adopted primary voting, giving candidates with little party backing a chance to emerge suddenly.

In 1976, for example, Jimmy Carter stunned the political professionals by winning the Iowa caucuses and then the New Hampshire primary in large part by promising voters that he would never lie to them. A few weeks later, reporters began raising questions about his personality and his Baptist background. When Carter used the phrase “ethnic purity” in an interview, his civil rights instincts were questioned.

Carter basically limped to the nomination, being repeatedly beaten in late primaries by California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., who entered the race at the last minute.

Hart Catches Heat

In 1984, Colorado Sen. Gary Hart burst on the scene by beating Walter F. Mondale in New Hampshire by promising new ideas for governing the country. Mondale, knowing that voters liked the sound of “new ideas” but were unsure who Hart really was, asked Hart in a debate: “Where’s the beef?” The press, which had been effusive in its wonderment at the Hart phenomenon, sensed it was time to turn up the heat on the young senator, and followed up with a series of stories questioning how new Hart’s ideas really were.

The questions stirred doubts about Hart the person, and Mondale hung on to beat him.

Most in politics believe that character is a crucial factor in voters’ minds. The President, after all, has the fate of the world in his hands. But recently some have begun to worry that an overemphasis on character issues can make campaigns more vulnerable to attack-dog tactics directed by the opposition and can lead the press to thinking that voters are not interested in the substance of a candidate’s ideas.

“We spend so much energy on things other than what the candidates are saying, and this year what they are saying is so much more important to people than the personal stuff,” says David Gergen, editor at large of U.S. News & World Report.

This season, the press’ skeptical gaze began to swing toward Tsongas even before he had won the New Hampshire primary.

In the final weekend before the New Hampshire primary, several papers wrote stories examining Tsongas’ health--stemming from his mid-1980s battle with cancer--something they had not felt compelled to do earlier. Timothy J. Russert, the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” for instance, made a point on the Sunday before the primary of asking Tsongas about his life expectancy on the air, as well as pressing him on some of his potentially more controversial economic positions, now that he was the front-runner.

The case also highlights to some the complex nature of assessing a candidate. Tsongas’ health “is a delicate, interesting and valid subject,” said Doug Bailey, a longtime Republican political consultant who now runs a daily compendium of political journalism called the Hotline. But given that predicting someone’s medical future can be subjective, “this runs the great risk of sensationalism that can be very, very unfair to him.”

Perhaps the most complex case of the media cycle may be that of Bill Clinton. Did the press create Clinton as the front-runner and then bring him down several notches?

Jules Witcover, the syndicated columnist from the Baltimore Sun, believes that Clinton was perceived as the front-runner because several objective factors established that he was leading the race.

“He had the most specific proposals. He enunciated them most effectively,” Witcover says. He had the best organization, was raising the most money, “and the other candidates started attacking him, which is always a sure sign that they think he is ahead.”

If the press could pick the front-runner according to whom they liked best, Witcover says, Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt would have been the Democratic nominee in 1988--”he was our pet rock”--and Barry Goldwater would have been elected President in 1964--”a lot of reporters liked Goldwater personally a lot more than they did Lyndon Johnson.”

But many other reporters are frankly stunned at how quickly Clinton was anointed and on what evidence.

“We created Clinton and on the flimsiest of grounds,” says Oliphant of the Boston Globe. “The sequence was this: He makes a good speech to the Assn. of State Democratic Chairmen in Chicago (in early December). Wins the Florida straw poll (in mid-December). Raises some money in December (more than his rivals). I mean, come on. It doesn’t compute.”

Then Clinton went ahead in early polls in New Hampshire, polls that history suggests are often wildly out of sync with the final vote there. And then Time magazine put Clinton on its cover the third week of January.

“The cover of Time was interfering in the race,” argues Gergen, influencing reporters, if not directly the majority of New Hampshire voters. “He was anointed way too early. The vote (detected in polls) was very tentative, the numbers much too fluid.”

What happened next was more predictable, journalists say. In a matter of days, Clinton lost half his support after the combined blows of tabloid allegations that he had had an affair with a sometime cabaret singer and questions raised by the Wall Street Journal about his Vietnam-era draft status.

Support Evaporates

Critics say the speed with which Clinton’s support evaporated is evidence that his status in the media may have been built on evidence that was premature.

Whether the critics are right or not, once Clinton was no longer the front-runner, some journalists believe many in the press suddenly backed away from scrutinizing him.

Michael D. McCurry, an advisor to Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, contends Clinton successfully put reporters on the defensive by arguing that voters felt the press was distorting the process with these issues. Sabato believes some journalists also may have felt guilty about writing about marital fidelity.

And some journalists also believe that there is a cadre among them who were skeptical of the character coverage of Clinton not only because they like Clinton personally but have an affinity for him ideologically.

“There are a lot of writers who come out of the neo-liberal tradition, who think of themselves as agents trying to reshape the Democratic Party . . . and they have participated over the years with Clinton and others like him,” says Fineman of Newsweek.

That is not so unusual, says Bode of CNN. “In every presidential campaign I have ever covered, there are some who are inclined to swoon, and we have seen several in full swoon over Bill Clinton.”

If this is true, it is hardly clear such swooning will have any meaningful effect on the race. If Clinton wins a few primaries and becomes the front-runner, most journalists believe the media once again will turn its full gaze on him.

But some, such as Bailey of the Hotline newsletter, thinks the threshold has now been raised for Clinton to undergo really intense scrutiny again, at least on the same issues as before.

“Somebody has to come up with a story that beats the one before, for it to come back to the surface in a significant way,” says Bailey. And, he says, “There is a point in politics at which people say this is old news, even if it isn’t.”

Buchanan Treatment

As for Buchanan, his status as challenger may have worked so far to keep the full glare of the press at bay. “My gut tells me the press is very sympathetic to Buchanan because they enjoy bloodying the nose of the incumbent, and they don’t think Buchanan is ever going to be President,” says Gergen.

And some press critics offer a more serious charge: “He is getting very good press via the buddy system,” says Stephen Hess, an author and press analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Whether that charge is true or not, Buchanan may not escape the media cycle for long, especially if he continues to embarrass Bush in the primaries. Several Bush campaign operatives are cheering on reporters who have begun digging into his record, his finances and his background.

Today’s Contests

Primaries

Delegates Dem. GOP Georgia 76 52 Maryland 67 42 Colorado 47 37 Utah 23 --

Caucuses

Delegates (Dem. only)

Minnesota: 78

Washington: 71

Idaho: 18