Recent commentary from National Journal:
Legal Affairs: Bush vs. Gore -- A First Draft for the Justices to Consider, by Stuart Taylor Jr. (December 6, 2000)
We're judges, not magicians, and so we are in no position to somehow anoint the legitimate President.
Political Pulse: Why Al's Losing the Spin War, by William Schneider (December 6, 2000)
Many Americans regard the dispute over the presidential vote as a mere political spectacle.
The Campaign: If Gore Loses, He Needs to Be More Than Magnanimous, by Carl M. Cannon (December 6, 2000)
Should he fail, the Vice President needs to work to repair the breach this challenge has caused.
Media: The Great White Board, by William Powers (November 22, 2000)
Before memories of Election Night (and the nets' by and large miserable performance) fade to black, a last look at Tim Russert's low-tech white board and why it was such a hit.
Political Pulse: The Cost of Victory, by William Schneider (November 22, 2000)
Each candidate has to make a political calculation: how much is winning this election worth?
Legal Affairs: It's About More Than Which Judge Has the Last Word, by Stuart Taylor Jr. (November 22, 2000)
Neither literalism nor originalism nor postmodernism can substitute for the old-fashioned quality called wisdom.
The Campaign: Losing the Election Shouldn't Make You a Loser, by Carl M. Cannon (November 22, 2000)
The ethos that holds that the winner takes everything and the loser is a fool is a barrier to statesmanship.
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Media:Tidal Wave? Don't Bet on It
Sooner or later, the tide will turn. It's the working assumption of media folk everywhere because this, we believe, is how political crises work. There's a standoff over some difficult, polarizing question; then there's a dramatic turning point, and the tide of opinion goes one way. It happened in Vietnam, it happened in Watergate, and it will happen again any moment now, just watch.
Defections, crossovers from Team A to Team B, are thought especially meaningful. The media watch closely for these and leap on them. Thus, when The Washington Post's Richard Cohen recently wrote, "I voted for Gore because he was the better man for the job. I can't help thinking that he no longer is," we were all over it. An influential liberal from an influential liberal paper was dumping Al Gore -- the tide was turning! National Review Editor Rich Lowry went on CNN and called Cohen "a potential important straw in the wind." And it wasn't just hopeful conservatives who saw portents. Cohen was summoned onto the center stage of this crisis, MSNBC, to explain his apostasy to Brian Williams, who seemed, as usual, on the verge of exploding over this incredibly dramatic development.
And the tide promptly failed to turn. Why? Because the tides don't work the way we assume they do. When defectors like Cohen stand up, it's naturally news. Watching any politician or pundit speak against his own congregation is inherently fascinating stuff. It's risky, brave, and often costly. Liberals and conservatives punish such behavior with equal severity. Do it often enough, and you'll be drummed right out of whatever club you're in.
Defections are interesting precisely because they are exceptional, but exceptional is what they remain. Maybe there was a time 25 or 30 years ago when a prominent defector really signaled a changing tide. Back then, the condition that Washington players aspired to was that of the statesman, the public figure who nobly puts the good of the country before his own good or that of his party. When a Democrat jumped ship and came out against the Vietnam War, or a Republican against Richard Nixon, this was deemed statesmanlike behavior, and had real influence.
That was then. In today's Washington, the rewards of statesmanship -- a concept so antique, the word itself feels awkward -- are not so obvious. If you really want to make it in politics or punditry, what you have to do is sign up with one team and stick with it no matter what. Reston and Lippman are dead and rotting; this is the age of Hardball and Crossfire, Matalin and Carville, Begala and North. The condition that the player aspires to is not that of statesman, but of ideological warrior. When someone crosses the line and pulls a nonideological move, sure it's news for a day, but that's all it is. Nobody follows, the tide doesn't turn. We're all dug in.
When Joe Lieberman stood up in the Senate two years ago and rebuked Bill Clinton for his behavior in the Lewinsky case, there was talk throughout the media of the tide having turned against the President. He was cooked, finished, probably sitting down at that very moment to write his resignation. Hours after the Lieberman speech, Ted Koppel said: "It may have marked the beginning of the end for the President, a chief executive being deserted by some of the leaders of his own party. Or, it may have been an opportunity in disguise. If the President is looking for an opening, a chance to deliver a deep, unambiguous apology before the independent counsel delivers his report to Congress, Sen. Lieberman mapped out the difficult territory that Mr. Clinton will have to cover."
We know how that story ended. It wasn't the beginning of the end for Clinton, and he didn't deliver the kind of apology Koppel prescribed. Lieberman did nothing to shift the tide. Still, the Senator was enunciating something that a lot of people were thinking but not saying. His defection didn't alter the outcome of events in the short term. But it's why he was picked to run for Veep. The tide doesn't turn quickly, or in exactly the way we expect. But it turns eventually.
Some readers felt I was implying that the NewsHour used Drudge's numbers that night. It didn't, and that's exactly why I told the story. My point was that the media are a market economy, and the market rewards those outlets that care most about accuracy and fairness, and show it in their decisions. PBS, which airs the NewsHour, was the only major television outlet that chose not to call the election prematurely, and in doing so it showed how you get to be one of the most trusted news organs in the land. The NewsHour and Drudge make vastly different choices every day, and reap vastly different reputations.
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William Powers is media columnist for National Journal. He recently spent three months in Japan as a Japan Society Fellow, studying the role of reading in Japanese life. This column appears every week in National Journal, a weekly magazine covering politics and government published in Washington, D.C.
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All material copyright © 2000 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
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