Goodby Sound Bites, Hello Sounding Boards

It was like connecting dots, only the game was history.

In a memorable week of television, past and present seemed to link up--the 20th anniversary of the Watergate break-in and an MTV audience trying to overcome the legacy of cynicism that the event engendered toward political candidates.

Images of Watergate saturated the TV screen, from the network morning news shows to nighttime programming: Richard Nixon . . . John Dean . . . G. Gordon Liddy . . . Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who made history by uncovering the story for the Washington Post. NBC’s “Today” series winds up its weeklong, five-part remembrance of Watergate today.

And in the midst of all this recollection, up popped Democratic candidate Bill Clinton on MTV’s first “Presidential Forum”--a seemingly unlikely pairing that turned out to be one of the year’s very best programs. For those who missed the 90-minute Q&A; session with an audience of about 200 young people in Los Angeles on Tuesday, it will be repeated today at 9 a.m. and Saturday at 7 p.m.

One incisive question from that gathering--by a male student from Crenshaw High School--captured the tone of both the week of Watergate and the malaise among voters in the current political campaign: “Why,” he asked, “should the young people of America trust the system?”

The sad, lasting legacy of Watergate, a buzzword to this day even among the young, was suggested in a printed message on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Wednesday: “Half of Americans alive today were under the age of 13 when the Watergate break-in occurred.”

Hal Bruno, ABC’s director of political news, noted that the scandal, coming on the heels of the Vietnam War, marked the beginning of a disenchantment with politics.

The sweep of history emerged yet again this week in TV coverage of the arms control agreement between President Bush and Russia’s Boris Yeltsin--perhaps a reminder to some of the significant role that Nixon played in foreign policy before Watergate brought his downfall.

In fact, 1972 should have been Nixon’s seminal year. In February of that year, he opened the door to Communist China by visiting the nation. In May, he traveled to Moscow for a summit meeting. In November, he was reelected in a landslide.

But in June, five men had been arrested for breaking into the Democratic Party National Headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington. By 1974, Nixon resigned the presidency in a TV address.

Watching TV’s coverage of the 20th anniversary of Watergate and the Bush-Yeltsin agreement, one couldn’t help thinking of how history will evaluate Nixon’s foreign policy as a factor in the years that preceded glasnost and the collapse of the Soviet Union and communism.

On Wednesday night, meanwhile, the two-hour CBS special “Watergate: The Secret Story,” anchored by Mike Wallace, was a devastating reminder of how the incident evolved into a national crisis.

The program speculated that the famous and unidentified source for Woodward and Bernstein, “Deep Throat,” may have been L. Patrick Gray, former acting director of the FBI. Gray, 76, has denied being the source.

Over on MTV, Clinton made pop history of a different sort. Once again emulating the example of Jerry Brown by seeking out lengthy broadcast opportunities to talk straight to the public, he ventured into a lion’s den of the youth culture.

It could have been a fiasco, but it wasn’t. Quite the contrary, Clinton’s appearance was yet another important step by the various candidates--including the unofficial contender Ross Perot--in altering political campaigning from the increasingly brief and atrocious sound-bite commercials of recent years.

Sound-bite politics may not be gone, but there is no question that candidates--especially underdogs and those with limited funds--are using radio and such new technologies as cable television, public-access channels and cheap-to-produce home videos as potent alternatives.

With Clinton’s original broadcast and four reruns ending Saturday, for instance, the Democratic candidate got 7 1/2 hours of MTV air time from his single outing, with the program available for viewing in the 58 million homes that the channel reaches.

In addition to the new opportunities for exposure, what the candidates like about direct communication with the public is the opportunity, on some programs, to avoid questioning from journalists, particularly those who are well-versed in their political maneuvering.

The antipathy by politicians to such TV practices as instant analysis by pundits--for example, following major speeches--surely heightened the search for alternatives, and the new technology obliged.

MTV, which has also extended invitations to Bush and Perot, now has joined such cable channels as CNN, C-SPAN, CNBC and even Comedy Central--which presented Bush’s 1992 State of the Union Address with irreverent commentary--in becoming a new television force.

But the practice of lengthy TV political interviews, including direct and phone contact with the public, is spreading to all areas of the broadcast spectrum. Perot appeared on NBC’s “Today” show as well as with CNN’s Larry King. Clinton is everywhere: He was scheduled for a King interview Thursday night. And he’ll appear on ABC’s “Good Morning America” from 7 to 8 a.m. Tuesday in a segment titled “Breakfast With Bill Clinton.”

But he’ll rarely be better than he was on MTV. Anyone who has ever lectured to a young audience--say, of college or high school age--knows that it’s usually the toughest, most skeptical and therefore the best sounding board in terms of directness. And MTV’s audience was just that.

“Who did you believe--Clarence Thomas or Anita Hill?” asked one questioner.

“Anita Hill,” Clinton fired back without hesitation.

When matters turned to special interest groups, another questioner bluntly asked Clinton: “Who’s behind you? Who’s going to be knocking on the door at the White House?”

The youngest of the candidates, Clinton, 45, while coming off as rather square, nonetheless loosened up as he went along, started getting applause and showed a reasonable amount of rapport with the MTV audience, which ranged generally from 18 to 24 years of age. He also displayed some spirit in defending the American system of government.

Like many organizations, including newspapers and TV firms, politics is wooing young people because their allegiance is crucial to future survival. And MTV’s purpose was certainly admirable: getting its young viewers to participate in the political process as part of a TV voter drive throughout this election year.

Thanks in great part to New Age TV, this supposedly dull, unsatisfying election campaign is suddenly fascinating, intimate and even exciting at times for viewers. A revolution is taking place on the home screen.