COLUMN LEFT / TODD GITLIN : How Reagan Slid Past the Watchdogs : Reporters save their toughest scrutiny for Democrats, perhaps trying to prove ‘objectivity.’

When he ran for his second term in the Statehouse, the governor refused to disclose his financial assets. To do such a thing, he said, would constitute “an invasion of privacy.” “I have no conflict of interest whatsoever,” he declared. That year, he paid not a penny in state income tax. Yet, when the governor moved to the White House more than a decade later, the press declined to rake him over the coals for his secretiveness. They did not fill the front pages with investigations of the “business reverses” that the governor claimed had entitled him to a zero tax bill, although it was well known that he consorted with multimillionaires who profited greatly from his gubernatorial policies.

The governor-turned-President to whom I refer is, of course, Ronald Reagan. Reporter Lou Cannon notes in his 1982 book, “Reagan,” that the governor qualified for “an immense property-tax break” under a California law intended to reward ranchers and farmers for keeping land in agricultural use rather than selling it off for subdivisions. When Reagan purchased his Santa Barbara County property in 1974, it was a working cattle ranch for which the previous owner had acquired “agricultural preserve” status. Had the ranch been valued at the low end of its estimated market value of $1 million, Reagan’s property tax bill for 1979 would have been $42,000. What he actually paid that year was $862. And what did Reagan do to keep his property zoned as an “agricultural preserve”? He grazed 22 head of cattle.

My point is not that Reagan owned too few beasts to qualify for special treatment under the law, but that if Bill Clinton had owned the identical beasts, the fearless gentlemen and women of the press would have beaten the bushes to scare them into the light of day. The President’s accountants and lawyers and veterinarians would have been flushed out into the floodlights. The minority party would have beaten their breasts in unison for a special prosecutor. “Ranchgate” would have dogged the President the rest of his term.

Teflon isn’t born, it’s sprayed; and it’s the press that does the spraying. How’s this for a controlled experiment: During the 1980 campaign, the New York Times’ Jeff Gerth did a series on Reagan’s businessmen cronies, who were checking out his prospective staff members; it ran, all right--in the business section. During the 1992 campaign, Gerth’s comparable explorations into the mud of Arkansas ran on the front page, as have many sequels.

I have compared the coverage of Reagan’s first month in office with the coverage of Clinton’s, and the difference is astonishing. In all the New York Times coverage of Reagan’s first month in 1981, I find a grand total of two front-page articles that contain any significant criticism of his policies, speeches, appointments or demeanor. In the Washington Post, the first month of coverage revealed no front-page criticism by anyone for any reason. Compare the front-page tattoo that has never let up on Clinton.

Granted that Clinton started slowly and sloppily and that Reagan was backed by a chorus of newly released hostages to put the press into a feel-good mood, there is still a discrepancy that begs for explanation. Nor is Clinton the only victim. Jimmy Carter ran as an outsider, but once in the White House this Southern Democrat was excoriated for bringing his entourage of Georgia rubes to the capital. Clinton ran as an outsider, too, only to be blasted for ushering his own home-state battalions through the portals of power.

Question for savvy political reporters: How many governors of American states build power machines without doing plenty of favors for people who can afford to buy them?

Then why does the press lean so hard on Democrats? The sanctimonious Southern Baptist style doesn’t go over well with the pundits; Charles Krauthammer went so far in the March 28 Time magazine as to say that crimes aren’t the point, that what makes Whitewater’s foam worthy of front-page treatment is that it proves 1960s idealists are money-grubbers. (Other money-grubbers are therefore excused.) As for reporters, they’re often Democrats themselves and bend over backward to prove they’re “objective.” Publishers and proprietors, of course, are more likely Republicans, though they rarely intervene to shade the coverage of the news. (They rarely have to.)

Most of all, the press has no built-in sense of proportion. Maniacal competition fuels the search for the smoking misdeed. Hype is a drug, and the media are prone to go on binges. Thus do the guardians of public information put the Clintons in their place--in the gutter, with the rest of the country.