Take the case of Vernon Jordan, Clinton’s transition-team chairman. The press reported that Jordan serves on the board of RJR Nabisco, a conglomerate that makes cigarettes. Reporters rounded up ethics experts who pointed out that Jordan’s refusal to remove himself from involvement in choosing health-care personnel undermined the ethics code issued by Clinton. The conflict is more apparent than real, but it’s getting a good ride in the press anyway.
Compare that coverage with the treatment of, say, Clayton Yeutter. When Yeutter left his job as special trade representative in 1989 to become George Bush’s secretary of agriculture, Philip Morris Inc. threw him a huge party because he’d made such a priority of opening foreign markets for American cigarettes. The media couldn’t have cared less that Yeutter was so cozy with tobacco interests. And the myriad conflicts of interest among Reagan and Bush transition-team members went almost completely unexplored.
Not this time. Finally, after years of rationalizing Washing-ton influence peddling, the press is beginning to give the Beltway sinkhole the attention it deserves. This is partly because Ross Perot made it a campaign theme, partly because Washington lobbyists-often former Capitol Hill staffers-tend to be Democrats (and thus more newsworthy right now) and partly because the story is easier to get. After Clinton transition-team members fill out their new, extra-rigorous disclosure forms, reporters will presumably comb through them and find good stories that they wouldn’t have discovered if the disclosure forms hadn’t existed. Accessibility, as Israel has learned, breeds scrutiny.
Clinton aides say that the tobacco flap was the product of a dull weekend in Little Rock. When too many reporters chase too little news, the result is story inflation. But all of the coverage of this issue has the healthy effect of putting the whole species of Washington careerists on notice: if you want to serve in government someday, there’s a price to be paid for choosing money over principles.
The president also pays a price for raising expectations about what government can accomplish. “Once you say, ‘This is a mess and we’re going to fix it’-everyone gets pissed off at you,” says Jody Powell, who was Jimmy Carter’s press secretary. For instance, during the Reagan and Bush years, Americans who weren’t covered by health insurance didn’t really blame the White House. In the Clinton administration, they probably will. The more you sound accountable, the more you will be held accountable.
Clinton plans to sound accountable by sometimes end-running the press corps. This worked during the campaign: when the questions got too rough, he retreated to town meetings and talk shows. “They [reporters] should do their watchdog function, but anyone who lets himself be interpreted to the American people through these intermediaries alone is nuts,” Clinton says in this week’s TV Guide.
Clinton lacks a public sense of humor, which is a handicap in a world where a simple quip can defuse a crisis. This also means that the press-and the public-may more easily grow bored with him; his delivery is so flawless that one’s mind feels free to wander when he speaks. The challenge for reporters is that amid his rounded and soothing sentences, he’s often slipping through some rhetorical escape hatch he’s left for himself The challenge for Clinton is that over time, his public appearances will draw fewer and fewer viewers. To stay fresh, he’ll have to take more risks and speak more bluntly, as he did last week in stressing that he would fire anyone using State Department files for political purposes. That was compelling television.
The truth is that while some presidents-Clinton apparently among them-score well at press conferences, the impression they convey at these sessions is only vaguely related to the success or failure of their administrations. The tone of coverage is more directly connected to the polls, which usually reflect concrete concerns like the economy. If the president is popular, then the questions are respectful and the stories supportive. If he’s in trouble, the media pummel him. Kick ’em when they’re down, puff ’em when they’re up. That inverted perversion (or perverted inversion) unfortunately applies to press treatment of all public figures, no double standards required.
