The War Of The Words
Evan Thomas describes the complicated relationship between the media and the Clintons. In fact, the relationship between the press and any president or presidential candidate. Thomas says that the press had stormy relations with the Clintons early on in Bill Clinton's presidency.
If Hillary Clinton loses the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama, it is a good bet that she, or her minions, will cast a measure of blame on the press. Bill Clinton has already started making excuses, complaining that the media has given Obama a free ride. Though Hillary handed out chocolate Valentines to members of her traveling press corps, any embers of romance between the former First Lady and the Fourth Estate have long since died. It is also true, as Clinton spokesman Jay Carson tells NEWSWEEK, that the press is "obsessed" with Obama.
Nonetheless, the bad blood between the Clintonistas and the media has less to do with any personal failings of the Clintons themselves—or the foibles of individual reporters and editors—than it does with a poisonous, and predictable, dynamic between the press and presidents that goes back at least a half century. It's a good guess that the current media darlings, Obama and John McCain, will experience the fickleness of the press before too long.
The last president who liked and enjoyed reporters (some of them, anyway) was John F. Kennedy. Chief executives ever since have felt surrounded and beleaguered within months, if not days, of taking up residence in the White House. If they have seemed paranoid at times, it may be because they had real tormenters in the basement of the West Wing, ready to pounce on their hypocrisies. How presidents handle the ordeal of press coverage can be revealing of character. Some pretend to shrug it off better than others. The Clintons have been theatrical in their resentments and aggressive about pushing back. But in the realm of press relations, the most important difference between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama or John McCain is that she has lived for eight years in the White House and they have not.
The estrangement between presidents and the press is particularly painful because the relationship often begins as a love affair. The press swooned over the young Bill Clinton. Many reporters and pundits, tired of 12 years of Reagan-Bush, saw Clinton, only 45 when he began his run in 1991, as a fellow baby boomer who was going to rejuvenate and make more realistic and relevant the liberalism of the 1960s. They learned to put up with "Saturday Night Bill" when, on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, some tapes surfaced of Clinton sweet-talking a woman—not his wife—named Gennifer Flowers. But by the summer of 1992, the romance with the press was back in full bloom. The week of the Democratic convention, NEWSWEEK ran a cover showing a vibrant Bill and his running mate, Al Gore, under the line YOUNG GUNS. (At the Republican convention in August, NEWSWEEK put President George H.W. Bush on the cover with his dog Millie. DOG DAYS, read the headline.) Clinton's presidential honeymoon was over almost before it began. The White House stumbled in ways that now seem minor and forgettable—by, for instance, nominating as attorney general a woman, Zoë Baird, who had hired illegal aliens as nannies and chauffeurs for her kids. The press clucked and thundered. THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING PRESIDENT was Time's cover line in June 1993. NEWSWEEK's cover showed a picture of Clinton looking haggard, and asked WHAT'S WRONG?
I think the press has been considerably easier on the Clintons than they would have been on a Republican who acted in exactly the same way as the Clintons have. But that's beside the point. Thomas is quite correct that the media sees it as its job - its very reason for existence, in fact - to tear down whoever holds the Oval Office. Call it the press as political opposition, regardless of who sits in the White House.
Has Obama gotten a free ride? Well, yes. Has McCain? Well, sort of. Have the press really gone after Clinton? Not hardly. There have been some shots, but they were mostly pulled punches, delivered then forgotten. But the press will surely turn a more critical eye on Obama eventually - it is in their very nature.
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The Press and the Clintons | BitsBlog — Sunday, 17 February , 2008 @ 12:16 pm
By Bithead, Sunday, 17 February , 2008 @ 10:19 am
What this all all boils down to, in the end, is that the left in general and the Democrats in particular, are desperate to disassociate itself from the Clintons, and finding it difficult to do so within the framework any of the usual nonsense self justifications. They find themselves looking at a nomination process, which was altered several years ago to keep Jesse Jackson out of the nomination, now being used by Hillary Clinton to take the nomination. Ironically, what we have is Democrats railing against the system doing precisely what it was designed to do, that is; keep the black man out of the presidency. Jesse Jackson, when it was originally designed, and Barrack Obama today.Now, the Democrats are not responding to this situation, because of some perceived inequality. Certainly, equal rights in the voting process has been their mantra, but their actions tell a different story. If enabling the voter to effect real change was what they were about, they never would have installed thismonstrosity of a system, back when Jesse Jackson was the problem. And they’ve not changed it since. But now Hillary Clinton is the problem, and they have been forced to move. Not for the stated reasons of equality and voting, but to solve the problem of Hillary Clinton and the nomination. And they’re going to be forced to change the rules in midsteam, with all the party unrest such rule changes would imply.(Chew on that one for a bit, and then tell me again how the left is where the best path for the minority is.)They see clearly that Hillary Clinton running as the Democratic nominee is the fastest way to see John McCain in the White House. The history of the corruption of the Clintons, is still too fresh in the mind of the American voter to countenance that association of the Clintons and the Democrats come election day.As a direct result of this desperation, yes, Obama HAS been getting a free ride.. as the favored among the Democrats always do. There may be a grain of truth involved with the idea that Hillary Clinton has had a harder time of it with the press this time around, but even were that not the case, she would still blame her loss on the press. Think about it; since when has Hillary Clinton ever blamed her own actions for her own failures? This is also interesting on another level; What we’re seeing here is an oncoming battle for the soul of the Democrat party; Who will win? The Gender huckters or the race hucksters? Something to think about the next time we hear Democrats complaining about the politics of division by race and gender.