Get Spun
When the Flytrap scandal
broke in January, I joined the media herd in calling it fatal. The chance that
Bill Clinton would serve out his term, I estimated early on, was only 25
percent. This laughably inaccurate prognostication reflected the hysteria of
the moment and has illustrated for me the foolishness of making predictions,
especially ones that can be proved wrong and used to shame you in social
settings. I also learned something else: why the press is so eager for
Clinton's downfall. If a doctor tells a patient he has six weeks to live and
the patient survives for many years, it's humiliating for the doctor.
There are
other reasons--conscious, unconscious, and semiconscious--why journalists would
like to see Clinton kaput. On the high-status but low-interest White House
beat, there is no story as exciting as that of the fall of a president. You
can't get around the fact that bad news for him is good news for us. An even
more powerful reason flows from the groupthink that afflicts the White House
press corps. The general consensus is that, since 1992, Clinton has got away
with murder--on draft dodging, Gennifer Flowers, Whitewater, Travelgate, Paula
Jones, etc., etc. From the day the Lewinsky scandal broke, many journalists
determined this could not and should not happen again. The feeling that the
Slick One must not be allowed to elude capture once more is palpable in the
daily White House briefings, in the hostile questioning by David Bloom of NBC
or Deborah Orin of the New York Post , and in the massive play the
scandal continues to receive everywhere.
Clinton's unanticipated resilience leaves reporters in an
awkward position. Journalists are most comfortable following public opinion,
not leading it. Now they must explain to themselves and to their audiences how
it is that the public has not come to share their low opinion of the president.
One obvious explanation is the strength of the economy. Another is that moral
strictures have loosened, at least when it comes to political leaders. But
faced with the reality that the president has actually become more popular
since the scandal broke, journalists have ventured a third explanation of late:
Clinton has survived thanks to diabolically effective "spin."
This
theory is now treated as acknowledged fact. "Given the White House's
state-of-the-art public relations machine, it is not a surprise that the
President has appeared to enjoy the upper hand," wrote Don Van Natta Jr. in one
recent New York Times story. The Chicago Tribune refers casually
to the president's "obsessive and adroit image machine." That the White House
is wickedly good at PR is the premise of Spin Cycle: Inside the Clinton
Propaganda Machine , a new book by Howard Kurtz, the Washington
Post 's media reporter. Kurtz points to the skill of White House Press
Secretary Michael McCurry. Writing of Clinton's 60 percent approval rating
before the scandal, he notes, "McCurry and his colleagues had mastered the art
of manipulating the press and were reaping the dividends." Elsewhere Kurtz
comments, "It was a carefully honed media strategy--alternately seducing,
misleading, and sometimes intimidating the press--that maintained [Clinton's]
aura of success."
Is it not possible that the aura of success is
generated by real success? Might Clinton have become a popular president not by
brainwashing the nation but by legitimately winning the public's support? In
fact, there's no real way to judge the effectiveness of media relations except
results--and the results depend far more on the underlying reality than on the
spin. But "spin control" remains a useful explanation for reporters who can't
understand how the public can like this guy. In fact, it's not the first time
they've trotted it out. The current round of barbed paeans to the White House
PR machine echoes press grousing during the Reagan years, when reporters sought
to explain why the public supported a president they believed was ineffective
and incompetent. Since journalists knew they weren't wrong, Reagan's
popularity had to be a tribute to his team of Hollywood image makers. Michael
Deaver did it with smoke and mirrors.
That
reporters now think of the Clintonites as master spinmeisters is especially
ironic in light of what they said about the White House spin machine a few
years ago. Back then, the common wisdom was that the administration was
breathtakingly inept at communications. Officials assigned to deal with the
press were arrogant and hostile. The result was an administration that was
regularly embarrassed by PR "fiascoes." Officials naively thought they could
bypass the press and speak directly to the public. In 1994, Kurtz himself
wrote, "By initially trying to circumvent the White House press corps, the
president and his aides clearly underestimated the degree to which negative
news reports could cause them political trouble."
Administration officials sort of liked this line, because
it exonerated them at a substantive level. They had failed only at
communicating their agenda. The inverse of the proposition--that they have
great form but lousy content--pleases the same officials far less. In reality,
very little has changed. It is true, as Kurtz writes, that McCurry is an
especially smooth and capable spokesman. But the reason he is so well liked is
that he is generally straightforward and truthful; he does not go in for heavy
spin. Judged as a whole, the Clinton media-wrangling team is not obviously more
skillful than others past. Few reporters think Ann Lewis is a more competent
communications director than her predecessor Don Baer. I would venture that
none thinks Sidney Blumenthal is more effective as a press tactician than his
first-term counterpart, David Gergen.
When journalists explain
Clinton's popularity as the result of brilliant spin, what are they saying?
"Spin" means the administration using the media to mislead the public. So they
are, in effect, praising the White House for lying to them--and getting away
with it. What does that say about the journalists themselves?
Reporters, whose job is
depicting reality, profess to despise spin. In fact, they like getting spun. It
makes them part of the great Washington game, and it gives them something to
act cynical and world-weary about. If politicians took to telling the truth,
journalists would lose their role as interpreters. But to say that the White
House spin is working amounts to saying that you, the journalist, are failing
in your job of blocking it. It's a startling admission--all the more shocking
because it isn't true.
