Media Notes: Dissing the Democrats
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 16, 2003; 9:00 AM
Is the press blowing off the beleaguered House Democrats?
They certainly think so.
Journalists gravitate toward power in Washington -- and that power, at the moment, is held by the GOP.
The Senate Democrats get some coverage because they're always a vote or two away from forcing the majority to change its legislation or reduce a tax cut (Although have you noticed how much less attention Tom Daschle is getting since he took himself out of the '04 sweepstakes?).
But the House is largely covered as a DeLay operation that rolls over the minority party without so much as a backward glance. The House almost always gives the president what he wants (unless Tom DeLay disagrees, on subjects like tax credits for lower-income kids), shifting the real fight to the Senate, where the Dems at least play a moderating role.
How many articles have you read about Nancy Pelosi lately? Exactly.
The House Dems let off steam about this in a New Republic piece by Michael Crowley. Lots of complaints about a near-total inability to offer amendments or otherwise shape legislation, along with all manner of petty slights.
Of course, the Democrats acted in a similarly high-handed fashion during the decades when they ruled the House, as people like DeLay used to complain. This point sort of gets short shrift.
But of particular fascination to us, deep in the piece, is the charge that the press just looks the other way because it isn't interested in the behind-the-scenes maneuvering through which the Republicans repeatedly stick it to the Dems:
"Nothing agonizes House Democrats more than the perception that they don't even put up a fight. And, for this, they have a culprit almost as loathsome as Tom DeLay: the media. This dilemma was never more clear than on May 14, when a group of more than a dozen House Democrats, led by Bernie Sanders of Vermont (an independent in name but a loyal Democrat in practice), organized a press conference on a subject of urgent concern to them: an upcoming Federal Communications Commission ruling on media consolidation. The Democrats assembled and waited for the reporters. And waited. None showed up. None, that is, until a scribe from Roll Call hurried over to cover the humiliating spectacle of a press conference with no press.
" 'The press has been disgracefully acquiescent,' says [Rep. Barney] Frank. 'Democrats these days are told by other Democrats, who are not full-time in politics, "Well, we're disappointed. We don't hear much from you." '
"One reason for this, Democrats say, is that the press doesn't write about the procedural tactics the GOP employs to quash opposition. The public often assumes Democrats rolled over in cases when they were, in fact, steamrolled. "The press won't cover Rules or Rules Committee votes,' says House Democratic spokesman David Sirota. 'It's process--but it's tantamount to substance.'
"Shrewdly, Republicans make process stories especially unappealing to reporters. The Rules Committee, for instance, often considers controversial bills late at night, long after the evening news and even newspaper deadlines."
Diabolically clever!
" 'They intentionally do things late at night so they can sneak things through,' says Rep. Martin Frost, who has dubbed this the Vampire Congress. Another aide offers a blunter assessment, one borne of obvious bitterness: 'The press is pretty goddamn lazy. In order to write about the Rules Committee would mean that you actually have to learn something about rules and procedures. And the press just doesn't do that.'
"What truly drives Democrats berserk, however, are media reports declaring that 'the Congress' has passed a bill, without any mention of even the most furious Democratic opposition. 'We're out there organizing press conferences, fighting them on the floor, debating them nonstop,' says a leadership aide, 'and what you read in the press is, "The Congress passed this," "The Congress passed that," and you don't even hear about the opposition.' "
"During last month's tax-cut fight, a Democratic leadership aide said: 'I'm just out here to badger any reporters into including a paragraph--a paragraph--on our alternative. But I don't see anyone.' The next day, The New York Times did include such a paragraph (after 14 others on the Republican plan), but The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and two of the three major network news shows made little or no mention of the Democrats' protests."
Maybe journalists are catching on: Here's a Washington Post piece on what goes on in the all-powerful Rules Committee:
"In 1994, Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.) lamented how Democrats were routinely preventing Republicans from getting votes on their more conservative ideas. 'All we are asking for is fair treatment on both sides of the aisle here,' he said.
"A decade later, Dreier now rules the House Rules Committee with an iron fist and routinely prevents Democrats from getting votes on their more liberal ideas."
In a shrewd campaign move, Bush has tapped a media-savvy veteran to run the RNC. The New York Times plays up the revolving-door angle:
"Over the past decade, Ed Gillespie, who was chosen today by President Bush to be chairman of the Republican National Committee through next year's election, has worn many hats, some of them simultaneously.
"Mr. Gillespie has been the party's spokesman, the manager of the 2000 Republican convention, a Congressional aide, a campaign strategist and consultant, an official on Mr. Bush's transition team, an outside adviser to the president, a political fund-raiser, a television pundit and, most recently, a lobbyist for big corporations and trade associations.
"But for the next 18 months, he said in an interview, he will wear only one hat. "I will be a full-time party chairman," he said. 'There will be no lobbying, no discussion of government policy with clients, no meetings about lobbying strategy.'
"Mr. Gillespie, 41, said he would retain his stake in his lobbying firm, Quinn Gillespie & Associates, where he is a partner of Jack Quinn, who was President Bill Clinton's White House counsel and Vice President Al Gore's chief of staff, but would do no work for the firm and collect no salary as long as he was a party official.
"In the long term, Mr. Gillespie's lobbying business will hardly suffer from his term as party chairman, but he says he did not take the job to make more money."
Which is probably true, since he was already making boatloads of money.
Howard Dean has won the race to the airwaves, as USA Today reports:
"The contest for the Democratic presidential nomination intensifies today with the first candidate advertising. The Iowa TV campaign by Howard Dean is the latest example of the aggressive tactics the former Vermont governor is using to boost his profile and put pressure on rivals.
"Analysts say Dean's two-week, $300,000 ad buy is a gamble that could pay off Jan. 19, when the Iowa caucuses launch the nomination season. Or the ads could give him just a temporary boost while taking a big bite of the estimated $2.5 million that federal rules permit candidates to spend this primary season in Iowa. . . .
"The ad is called 'Straight Talk,' evoking the maverick theme of Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign in 2000. Dean is in shirtsleeves, with a barn and a tractor behind him. He says President Bush's foreign policy 'isn't making us safer' and his tax cuts 'are ruining our economy and costing us jobs.' He says 'too many Democrats in Washington are afraid to stand up for what we believe in.' "
Will anyone remember this ad in six months? That's the gamble.
Vermont's Times Argus says Dean is moving slightly toward the center, at least on one issue:
"Former Gov. Howard Dean appears to be shedding some of the liberal tendencies that have won him national attention as he now expands his support for the death penalty.
"In his 11 years as Vermont's governor, his position on capital punishment 'evolved' from staunch opposition to limited support, Dean acknowledges.
"Now, on the stump for the Democratic nomination for president, Dean has extended his endorsement of a death sentence for those who kill children or police officers to include those who commit terrorist acts.
" 'As governor, I came to believe that the death penalty would be a just punishment for certain, especially heinous crimes, such as the murder of a child or the murder of a police officer. The events of September 11 convinced me that terrorists also deserve the ultimate punishment,' Dean said in a statement released by his campaign last week.
"Dean, who was unavailable for an interview, did not define a terrorist act in his statement. He elaborated only to say the punishment would be sought in 'very serious cases' and he would do his best to avoid any 'unjust imposition of the death penalty.' "
Our print column yesterday examined how much tougher the British press has been on the WMD issue. Which leads us to these Joe Conason observations in Salon:
"The White House can't fool all the people all of the time, but with the help of the mainstream media the administration has deceived a lot of people about issues of global importance. A national survey reported in Knight-Ridder newspapers says that one-third of the American public 'believes U.S. forces found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq' -- which means they also believed the false (and universally quoted) statement to that effect the president made two weeks ago on Polish television. The political science professors who analyzed that survey for the University of Maryland are wondering why a substantial minority would think they have seen proof that doesn't yet exist.
"Theories aside, the most suggestive fact found by the mid-May poll is that respondents who supported the war are more likely than others to believe that weapons of mass destruction have already been discovered. They won't let the facts disturb their opinions. Weak, credulous media coverage of administration claims also serves to confuse the citizenry.
"That explains why pollsters find strikingly different results in Britain, where the press treats the Blair government with the skepticism it has earned on this issue. Nearly 60 percent of the British public suspects that their own government and ours 'exaggerated the threat of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction,' while a third said the Iraq war has diminished their trust in the prime minister."
Of course, the Brits were more skeptical of the war from the beginning.
American Prospect's Robert Kuttner is worried that the '04 candidates may rip each other apart:
"The next year of Democratic candidates' debates can either be a demolition derby for the amusement of Karl Rove or a year of free television time to hone the Democrats' case against the Bush presidency.
"Game theorists famously describe a 'prisoners' dilemma' in which everyone would be better off if all involved cooperated, but each prisoner in isolation maximizes his personal advantage by betraying the others. The Democratic debates amount to a partisan prisoners' dilemma: The whole field would be better off if everyone turned their fire only on President Bush, but they can't resist attacking one another.
"Ronald Reagan, back in 1966, called for a Republican Eleventh Commandment: 'Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.' If even one candidate began speaking in the spirit of the dialogue above, maybe the others would be shamed into reciprocating.
"Amid their frenzy to raise candidate money, the Democrats might also find some funds for generic advertising -- now -- on what the Republicans are doing to the country and about Bush's penchant for chronic deception, whether the issue is education, taxes, health care or war. That would also improve the prospects of the eventual nominee."
Days after financial disclosure forms revealed he made about $9 million on the speech circuit last year, Bill Clinton manages to change the subject:
"This is what the other Clinton is up to," says the Philadelphia Inquirer.
"While his wife, Hillary, the U.S. senator and best-selling author, has been in the spotlight, former President Bill Clinton has been spending much of his energy and global influence fighting AIDS overseas.
"Speaking with a small group of reporters yesterday at his office in Harlem, Clinton waxed enthusiastic about his yearlong effort to coordinate drug companies, local governments and public-health experts. And he admitted he did not do enough as president to battle the global epidemic."
Speaking of 42, Roger Simon explains how incredibly strange it was for Clinton to express sympathy for Howell Raines in a call to Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger (as we reported yesterday):
"Raines was the editor of the Times editorial page when Clinton was president and wrote editorials so stinging that Mike McCurry, then the White House spokesman, once told me - - on the record and I printed it - - that Raines was 'psychotic.' . . .
"There are scores of examples that demonstrate how tough Raines was on Clinton, but a single editorial, perhaps the most extraordinary the New York Times has ever published about a president, sums it up.
"It appeared on Dec. 16, 1998, a few days before the House voted to impeach Clinton. It was a difficult editorial to write because even though the editorial board had been scathing in its view of Clinton, it did not think he should be impeached.
"The editorial begins by saying Clinton was a 'man blessed with great talent and afflicted with a mysterious passion for lying.' Then it begins talking about 'Mr. Clinton's ugly little lies, his abject failure to lead by example and to speak truthfully to the American people, his equally dismal failure to honor the historic residence entrusted to him, and his abandonment of his constitutional duty to defend and uphold the law. He is, in sum, a man you cannot trust whether you have his handshake, his signature or his word on a Bible.'
"This is about a sitting president, keep in mind, the Leader of the Free World and all that. The editorial goes on to talk about Clinton's 'mendacity,' but also warns that the House vote 'will be setting precedents by which the nation will be governed when this Presidency is a memory as distant and distasteful as that of Warren G. Harding.'
It also calls Clinton's term in office the 'most disappointing White House tenure since that of Richard Nixon' and describes Clinton as 'wrapped in dishonor, his face a mask of depression.'
But my favorite line . . . 'That transfer of power without gunfire or legislative chicanery is the jewel in the crown of American democracy,' the editorial said. 'It should not be sacrificed over Bill Clinton's inability to resist looking at thong underwear.'
"Pow! Right between the eyes!
"Even people who had wanted Clinton to resign, such as Timothy Noah of Slate, wrote that this editorial showed Raines' 'pathological hatred' of Bill Clinton.
"So what happens? Less than five years later, Clinton is the most beloved figure in the Democratic Party (admittedly the competition is not fierce) and Howell Raines is out of work.
"But who comes to Raines' defense? Bill Clinton! Why? Because Bill Clinton is still trying to win Raines over, still trying to get some love."
The man does not give up.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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