D.C. Dispatch - 2001.01.10

Recent commentary from National Journal:

Legal Affairs: Bush vs. Gore—Why the Court Was More Right Than Wrong, by Stuart Taylor Jr. (January 10, 2001)
The harsher critics overlook three fundamental reasons for finding more to praise than to condemn in the decision.

Political Pulse: After Clinton, a Wider Cultural Divide, by William Schneider (January 10, 2001)
Gore lost because he couldn't keep his distance from the President.

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.

Media: Next Year in Georgetown, by William Powers (December 28, 2000)
Here come the next four years, and they're looking rosy. It'll be the Bush-Clinton era. Or, if we have anything to say about it (and we do!), the Clinton-Bush era.

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.

More from National Journal.

Discuss this article in the Politics & Society conference of Post & Riposte.

Media:
Clinton's Treat

In an interview with guess-which-daily, Bill Clinton finally lets the public know that he regards the media as his equal. Maybe now we'll get the respect that we need and deserve
by William Powers

January 10, 2001

It was a holiday gift from the President to the media. It arrived on Christmas Eve morning, wrapped in a blue plastic New York Times bag.

We opened it right away, and couldn't believe our eyes. We've been cherishing it ever since, holding it up to the light and admiring its many facets. It's so lovely, yet so practical.

In case you haven't heard, here is the gift, in all its glory, from page A12 of the Dec. 24, 2000, issue of the paper:

Times: The thing that seems to be a common thread that all your senior aides have said over time is that your greatest strengths are inexorably, I suppose as all human nature is, bound up in some of your potential weaknesses, and that the same aptitudes and appetites that have made you the most formidable political person of your generation have sometimes got you in trouble. I just wonder if you think there is any way that, over the last eight years, somehow America could have had the best of you without getting the worst of you, or is it all sort of wrapped up in one package?

Clinton: Oh, that's a judgment for somebody else to make.

Times: You don't want to take a—

Clinton: Yes. You guys were wrong about Whitewater. I wish we had the ... that Gertz [sic Gerth] piece was ridiculous, absurd on its face. I wish we could have had the great New York Times without that. It was like Wen Ho Lee, Chapter 1. I wish we could have had it. But we couldn't. So we still got The New York Times. Is the country better off for having The New York Times? Absolutely it is. Are we better off having The New York Times? Of course we are. I'll let—the American people will have to make that judgment.

There are so many things to appreciate in this remarkable paragraph. Let's take them one at a time:

1) It's flattering. True, in his brilliant comeback, Clinton takes The Times to task for two of its stories that didn't pan out as hoped. And he flubs the byline that appeared atop both of those stories (though we'd wager this was a conscious slip, meant to suggest that the name Jeff Gerth is being forgotten right now by powerful people everywhere). But in another way, the President is paying The Times, and by extension the entire profession, an enormous compliment. Note that he's equating the presidency and the media, likening little old us to big world-straddling him, as in: I had that little problem with my sex drive and the office help; you had that little problem of running shaky stories that made me and my Administration look bad. But hey, we've run the country pretty damned well together, haven't we? Absolutely we have. And the people should be grateful.

Because many newshounds are frustrated pols at heart—if we'd been more attractive, had more charisma, we just know we could have been President ourselves—it gives us an incredible rush to think of an actual President saying such things. No other President has ever said them. This helps explain why The Times used Clinton's ostensibly embarrassing statement not once, but twice in the same issue. It appeared partially in the text of a front-page story on his legacy, and then, in its full version, inside the paper in an excerpt box. You see, the public needs to know that the President finally thinks of the media as his equal. Maybe now we'll get the respect, and the lifetime Secret Service protection, that we need and deserve.

2) It's educational. Hidden in the folds of Clinton's sentences is a useful lesson about presidential journalism. Even as he needles The Times about Whitewater and Wen Ho Lee, the President implicitly acknowledges the validity of another story about his presidency, the one that The Times refers to with that gentle word "appetites." Though the appetites story was the one that came home to roost, and had enormous consequences for the nation, it was the Clinton story that respectable news organs such as The Times were most reluctant to cover. Aggressively covering a President's sexual behavior—including his possible sexual harassment of a former employee—would have taken us deep into character journalism, the very thing that brought journalists so much grief back in the Gary Hart days. Better to leave that tramp Paula Jones and her tawdry claims to the tabloids, we told ourselves five years ago. Now it was as if Clinton himself was saying: You thought wrong. There was more of me in that one Paula Jones story than in all those Whitewater stories put together.

3) It keeps on giving. The President's thoughtful words are useful not just as we ponder the Clinton past, but as we plan for the Bush future. We imagine ourselves sitting down with W four or eight years hence, looking back in similar fashion on his time in office. Will he, too, treat us as equals? Which W stories will we get wrong, or foolishly overlook? Is his essential flaw really a matter of intelligence, as we've already convinced ourselves, or is there something bigger, something we'd rather not think about? Maybe we'll get it right this time. And if we do, maybe that will be Bill Clinton's final gift.

What do you think? Discuss this article in the Politics & Society conference of Post & Riposte.

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More on politics and society in Atlantic Unbound and The Atlantic Monthly.

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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