MANAGED DEMOCRACY: One got the impression from the coverage of the Democratic Convention that democracy is something that many in the national press corps are uncomfortable with. CBS’s Richard Threlkeld (7/13) put it this way: “Americans are going to be watching to see how Bill Clinton manages this convention to see how he can manage the country.” Again and again, Clinton won praise for “managing” to stifle any substantive discussion of issues, which raises the question of how the press would respond to similar “management” of the country. “Are you annoyed that you have to deal with people like Jerry Brown and Jesse Jackson?” Jim Lehrer asked Clinton (7/15). “Should Brown be allowed to speak if he hasn’t endorsed the ticket?” John Cochran asked a Brown delegate (7/13). Maybe the idea is to eliminate the last few traces of news from the conventions so that journalists can spend their leap-year summers doing something else.
MONEY MAZE: The chief failing of convention coverage was reporters’ failure to “follow the money.” Media consumers learned next to nothing about the corporate dollars behind Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council. It’s not that journalists don’t understand that there’s a connection between money and politics–here’s a David Broder column on Jackson (7/14): “Clinton played hardball politics with Jackson, especially after Ross Perot’s comments about homosexuality made it clear that the gay community, whose financial support is critical to Jackson’s operations, would find no alternative to Clinton in November.” Broder can analyze this kind of political triple-bank shot–when he’s writing about marginalized sectors of the party. But has anyone in the mainstream press connected, for instance, Clinton’s vague, timid position on healthcare with the support he gets from the medical industry (as Thomas Ferguson did in The Nation, 4/13)?
Robert Hager on NBC Nightly News (7/14) did do a piece about how corporate donors schmoozed democratic office-holders at the convention. Though it only skimmed the surface, and to some extent played for laughs, it was refreshing to see something that at least mentioned corporate influence.
FROM RIGHT TO RIGHT: Looking for a spectrum of opinion on the Democratic platform? You can turn on Capital Gang (7/11), and hear it denounced as “anti-capitalist” by Robert Novak and “mildly socialist” by Mona Charen. Then, for an opposing view, you can read “Column Left” on the L.A. Times op-ed page (7/9), where Elaine Kamarck praises the Democratic platform for avoiding Republican attacks by adopting Republican rhetoric and positions on everything from crime to welfare to corporations. A left perspective that holds that it’s a bad idea for a Democratic platform to adopt Republican positions is apparently too far-out for much of the mainstream media.
OPPRESSED WHITE MALES: An NBC correspondent (7/14) asked a delegate if the party was “too sensitive to black issues, to minority issues, to women’s issues. Don’t you think the Democratic Party has to reach out more to the white males?” Meanwhile, on ABC, Cokie Roberts was similarly concerned about the Democrats’ male appeal: “When you have so many women in the party, you’re going to turn off men.” After all, only a half dozen of Clinton’s top six choices for vice president were white men.
SHABBY TREATMENT?: Jerry Brown was treated with the usual disdain by the press. Tom Brokaw (7/15) called his speech “a telephone book of complaints”; a Wall Street Journal editorialist (7/15) referred to his delegates as “the largest kindergarten class ever assembled.” One surprise was Mark Shields’ defense of Brown (7/15), who he said has been treated “shabbily” by the press.
A BOX OF THEIR OWN: A New York Times contingent seemed to be in a press box of its own during Jesse Jackson’s convention speech. In the Times the next day (7/15), David Rosenbaum reported, “He drew cheers from many delegations, but others responded tepidly, and still others watched in seeming indifference.” “Though the speech touched the old chords, the passion of the speaker was in a slightly muted key, the response of the audience a shade desultory,” according to Maureen Dowd and Times drama critic Frank Rich, who was perhaps more familiar with the ovations given to Miss Saigon. B. Drummond Ayres Jr. reported that “the old fire was not there.” (Ayres’ “Jackson is over the hill” piece first appeared in an early edition before Jackson’s speech was delivered; when references to the speech were then added, they coincidentally supported the theme of the story.)
Some at the Times observed the same speech the rest of the country did. Times TV critic Walter Goodman observed that Jackson’s speech, “stronger than anything yet heard from the convention podium, was rousingly received.” The lead editorial referred to “Mr. Jackson’s electrifying exhortations to stand by the helpless and to rebuild America.”
LADIES’ MAN: When Ann Richards came up to speak on Monday night, Tom Brokaw described her as “known for her hairdo.” Brokaw had introduced Geraldine Ferraro at the 1984 Democratic Convention with these words: “The first woman to be nominated for vice president–Size 6!”
LOSS OF ROSS: Molly Ivins deserves credit for a scoop–in a Washington Post op-ed on Perot (7/15), the day before he dropped out of the race, she described him as a “quitter”: “If he can’t have it all his own way, he takes his ball and goes home.” The Wall Street Journal’s Timothy Noah (7/17) showed signs of a terminal inside-the-beltway perspective when he explained that the Perot campaign unraveled “largely because of the clash between the grassroots eccentrics who launched Mr. Perot’s campaign and the smart political professionals who were attempting to organize it.” Don’t let the people near the democracy; they might get fingerprints on it.
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