Recent commentary from National Journal:
Social Studies: Vouchers—A Liberal Plot To Destroy Private Schools, by Jonathan Rauch (December 28, 2000)
Conservatives who want to get the state out of public education may instead get it into private education.
Legal Affairs: Why the Florida Recount Was Egregiously One-Sided, by Stuart Taylor Jr. (December 28, 2000)
Not enough attention's been paid to what was wrong with the decision by Florida's state Supreme Court.
Political Pulse: At Least It's Settled, by William Schneider (December 28, 2000)
Though the Court's presidential ruling baffled many, the nation seems relieved.
Legal Affairs: The Supreme Court—and Others—Flub the Challenge, by Stuart Taylor Jr. (December 20, 2000)
If this cloud has a silver lining, it is as a reminder that judges are just as fallible as politicians.
Media: Image-Poor, by William Powers (December 20, 2000)
The strongest political story of modern times was perhaps the weakest visual story of modern times.
Political Pulse: An Election—and Much More—Lost, by William Schneider (December 20, 2000)
When the lawyerly fog cleared, Al Gore was a big loser. So was the Supreme Court.
The Campaign: After All the Acrimony, the Election Ends on Grace Notes, by Carl M. Cannon (December 20, 2000)
Gore conceded with grace and class, while Bush emphasized the need for bipartisanship.
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Media:Next Year in Georgetown
Here come the next four years, and if you're a media hack, they're looking rosier every second. Not for the obvious reasons, though. Yes, recession could be on the way, and that's gratifying. (The world's misery is always our bliss.) Then there's the presidential-legitimacy question, the divided government.... Just thinking about all that acrimony sends us into full-body raptures. Seems this long, nightmarish run of happy days might really be ending.
But there's another, far more significant reason why things are looking up, and it has nothing to do with a tanking economy or election bitterness.
Exhibit A: The New York Times reported on its Sunday front page that Al Gore is no longer the leading candidate to run the Democratic Party for the next four years. Reporter Richard Berke gathers an impressive group of senior Dems, including four U.S. Senators, and lets us watch as they slip very sharp, very long knives into the soft flesh of a defeated man. In the cruelest jab of all, Berke reports that "in a statement e-mailed to The New York Times," Gore wrote: "I'm not going to make any decisions about what I do next in life until I take some time off." It's pathetic enough to imagine the Vice President sitting in a deserted office, while staffers race out the back door like spooked cats as he taps out e-mails to journalists who used to beg for his time. But to see him participating in his own murder—he might as well have written, "Will work for food"—is the real stunner.
It was snuff journalism, one of the bloodiest media events in years, and I haven't even mentioned the best part. The piece also reports that Gore's assassins are looking to someone else to serve as the leader of their party. Someone more impressive, more charismatic, more beloved by people around Washington and all over the globe. "Clinton Seen as Leader," says the subhead. And after reading this, we have to sit down and get hold of ourselves. A line from Keats—'Tis very sweet to look into the fair/And open face of heaven—comes wafting back to us.
Exhibit B: The next day, The Washington Post's Style section reports that Sen.-elect Hillary Rodham Clinton has been shopping for a new house in Washington, and she's looked at "the fortresslike Georgetown house of Jennifer and Laughlin Phillips, founding family of the Phillips Collection gallery." We know the house, of course. Janet Auchincloss—Jackie's mother!—used to live there, for godsakes. The asking price is more than $4 million. There's no confirmation that Hillary is buying the place, but she toured it and there are rumors, and that's enough for us.
A tingly sensation runs up and down our spines. The pieces are all coming together. The Bush era isn't going to be the Bush era at all. It's going to be the Bush-Clinton era. Or, if we have anything to say about it (and we do!), the Clinton-Bush era.
All the really savvy news people, the ones who know A plus B equals J-O-Y, are all over this story. Dan Rather and Rush Limbaugh, who share more interests than they'll ever let on, both jumped. Dan asked President Clinton if it was true about the Phillips house, and the President played exceedingly coy. Rush did a nice shtick in which he mispronounced Auchincloss ("AWSH-in-closs") as if he were some heartland pumpkinhead who's never been to dinner in a swish O Street fortress. Chris Matthews instantly worked the Georgetown pile into Hardball and got Gail Sheehy to say something very special and funny and adoring about Hillary, something that summed up why the next four years are suddenly looking so dreamy. "She's a supernova among superstars around the world," Sheehy said.
And that's precisely it. We modern journalists ask every President to perform two distinct jobs. Naturally, he must be a political leader, head of the government and all that. But he has another—and to us, much more important—job. He must be a superstar. All the best Presidents have played both roles exceedingly well. And when they stumbled at the first one, when they took a dumb policy stance or did something vaguely illegal or demeaning to the office, it didn't really matter, as long as they were superstars. Teddy Roosevelt was the first modern superstar President—the teddy bear fad was proto-Hollywood. Then there was FDR, followed by JFK, then Reagan, then Clinton.
The ideology of a President has little to do with it. Remember how we despised Reagan when he first won and brought all those tacky Orange County country-club types to town? But it turned out he and Nancy had it, the superstar thing. They wound up on the cover of Vanity Fair. Something similar happened with the Clintons. Early on, we ran all the Bubba jokes, made fun of his cheesy Timex. But he grew into a superstar, and so did she.
As for the Bushes, well, George Sr. sure didn't have it. His showbiz friends were, like, country-music people. Can you imagine? George Jr. looks scarily similar. No Barbra and Tina, no Ben and Matt, fluttering around at his parties. We're talking Oak Ridge Boys. But none of that matters now. George W. and his people can run the government, but as for superstardom, we're looking at a rump presidency. And it may be based in Georgetown, perhaps even at Jackie's mother's house. For modern media hacks—who, in the end, are really just fans—we're talking nirvana.
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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.
For information on National Journal Group publications, see NationalJournal.com.
All material copyright © 2000 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
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