The 94-Minute Man
A dearth of breaking news
helped President Clinton win a clean sweep of the weekend shows. His
"encyclopedic" press conference (Mark Shields, NewsHour With Jim Lehrer )
was Issue 1, his midweek cancellation of the deadline for U.S. troop withdrawal
from Bosnia was Issue 2, and his disarming chat at the White House with
conservative critics of affirmative action ranked as Issue 3.
The
commentarians mostly thrilled at the style--not the substance--of Clinton's
94-minute press-conference marathon. Nearly every show replayed the president's
decorum-breaking response to the ABC reporter who tried to snare him with a
sticky-tape question about his race initiative. By the fifth viewing, you sorta
saw the president's point. None of the pundits did.
Ordinarily, the press complains about the president
avoiding them. Clinton's wordy outing peeved Evan Thomas ( Inside
Washington ) because all the talk proved that he doesn't have anything to
say. Charles Krauthammer ( Inside Washington ) found the silver lining: If
Clinton doesn't have anything to say, the country must be in good shape. Paul
Gigot ( NewsHour ) begrudgingly credited the president with "outlasting"
the press, while Al Hunt ( Capital Gang ) slathered on the praise, calling
the 30-question romp a "virtuoso performance." Playing to character, two
conservative Capital Gang sters found Clinton mean (Robert Novak!) and
filled with "self-pity" and afflicted with a "thin skin" (Kate O'Beirne).
Riffing
off the press conference, the pundits reprised last month's line that the
president is a lame duck. "Lamer than most," said Jack Germond ( Washington
Week in Review ), because he isn't feared or liked by anybody in his party.
Instead of noting that anybody who can control the week's news with a press
conference, a foreign-policy announcement, and a tea with domestic dissidents
is no lame duck, the pundits indulged in psychobiography: Clinton is frustrated
because "the end is now in sight" for his presidency (O'Beirne ) and he has yet
to establish his "legacy" (George Will, This Week ; Morton Kondracke,
The McLaughlin Group ). Because they will be chewing on the legacy thing
for three more years, the commentarians recently ordered a crate of
dentures.
Reversing his campaign pledge to bring the
troops home from Bosnia on June 30 earned Clinton near-uniform praise from the
pundits. Mara Liasson ( Fox News Sunday ), George Stephanopoulos ( This
Week ), and Steve Roberts ( Late Edition ) stroked the prez for saying,
"I was wrong" to promise the troops would come home in June 1998. "Nobody in
this town believed him when he set that deadline," said Germond, voicing the
majority viewpoint that the promise was an obvious campaign lie. But not
everybody loves a mensch . Pat Buchanan ( The McLaughlin Group )
barely disturbed the consensus by accusing Clinton of having "deceived the
American public" and leading the nation into a "quagmire."
Clinton's
Bosnia plan will require congressional approval--a cinch, the pundits said,
because he has already drawn down U.S. troops in Bosnia from 27,000 to about
8,500 and no U.S. soldiers have been killed. "Deadlines are a bad idea," said
Brit Hume ( Fox News Sunday ), because locals would treat one as the first
day of hunting season, locking and loading in anticipation. The only consensus
criticism of Clinton is that he lacks an "exit strategy" from Bosnia. Look for
an etymological rundown of the phrase in a future William Safire language
column.
All praised Clinton for expanding his national dialogue on
race by meeting at the White House with several leading doubters of affirmative
action. Hume called it the "legitimizing moment" for conservatives who disagree
with Clinton. "A step forward," concurred Gigot, that once again proved Clinton
to be an "aerobic listener" (Roberts). The lone dissenting view came from Tony
Blankley ( Late
Edition ), who recounted how Newt Gingrich, Bob
Dole, and Trent Lott all thought on first meeting that they could do business
with the president. They soon learned otherwise.
Jay Carney
( The McLaughlin Group ) counseled the president to mix "policy
initiatives" with his racial jawboning if he wanted to accomplish anything.
Kondracke implored Clinton to prepare for the day when the courts will strike
down set-asides based on race. He suggested preference programs based on
economic status instead.
Oh, Shut Up: John McLaughlin urged the
president to augment his racial dialogue with discussion of black racism, jury
nullification, hate crimes perpetrated against white people by black people,
and violent imagery in rap songs.
At
CNN, the Stretching Technique Is Called "Yip-Yap": How slow a news week was
it? Meet the Press host Tim Russert took his Christmas vacation five
days early by letting Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr., Laura Schlessinger, the Rev.
Jerry Falwell, and Mario Cuomo run amok in a long segment on the family and
morality. Russert regained consciousness at show's end when he introduced a
historical segment on Robert Frost's Meet the Press visit. Evans
& Novak took a holiday, too, with an inconsequential visit from guest
Art Buchwald. Bob and Elizabeth Dole chatted with Frank Sesno on Late
Edition for no good reason. And on Capital Gang , the team ran out
the clock with silly segments on what hypothetical gift each of the panelists
would give to various politicians, and what hypothetical gift they would give
to each other. The prescient Sam Donaldson wisely took the weekend off.
Note to Mark Shields: If you say it on
NewsHour don't repeat yourself on Capital Gang .
Punditus Interruptus, Week
1: Robert Novak and Al Hunt were unusually civil to one another in the Dec.
20 edition of Capital Gang , foiling "Pundit Central" 's plan to tabulate
their numerous interruptions of one another in an attempt to calculate who is
the bigger interjector. Novak cut Hunt off only twice. Hunt interrupted Novak
once. Blame the good manners on Christmas spirit.
--Jack
Shafer
