The spin

The pundits have spoken -- and they hate Bush and Gore

by Dan Kennedy

Even if you find some validity in the oft-repeated criticisms of the so-called front-runners (i.e., Al Gore is a pathological liar; George W. Bush is a rich boy in way over his head), the quantity -- and toxic quality -- of the media venom that greeted their less-than-stellar New Hampshire performances was startling. Even the New York Times' R.W. Apple Jr., whose role is to provide high-minded, reasonably dispassionate analysis, couldn't help himself on Wednesday morning. In a piece headlined 2 BRUISED POWERHOUSES, Apple referred to Bush and Gore as "the dauphins of 2000," calling to mind nothing so much as two increasingly ridiculous pretenders to the throne.

Indeed, John McCain, by burying Bush and his $65 million, and Bill Bradley, by whittling away at Gore's once-formidable lead, got off to a terrific start in the contest that began on Tuesday at 8 p.m., when the polls closed in New Hampshire: the media primary. If Bush and Gore think they had a rough night, they haven't seen anything yet. Because the media, already predisposed to loathe the dauphins, got the validation they were looking for in order to escalate their attack -- and to keep the primary season alive at least until the Super Tuesday primaries on March 7.

"John McCain licked his butt tonight!" screamed Chris Matthews to open Hardball on Tuesday night. "Kicked his, his butt! Kicked his butt! I've got to get my metaphors right." Matthews had set up shop at the Strange Brew Tavern, in Manchester, and the tone was that of a drunken celebration. His first guest, Newsweek's Howard Fineman, opined that Bush's problem was "not spending enough time in New Hampshire and acting like he owned the place." Retorted Matthews: "Like he inherited the place." Matthews even mocked an interview Bush gave in which he disclosed that he traveled with his own pillow. Bush is "like Linus," Matthews laughed. "Be fair," said Fineman. "I'm not going to be fair!" bellowed Matthews.

Gore didn't have it quite so bad. After all, he beat Bradley -- who had been ahead in the polls in New Hampshire for several months, only to fall way behind after the pasting he took in Iowa -- by a pretty substantial five points. But after a week in which Gore flat-out lied about his evolving position on abortion rights, and in which a Gore supporter taunted Senator Bob Kerrey, a Bradley supporter who lost a leg in Vietnam, as a "cripple," the media were having none of that. The Times' Adam Clymer wrote of Gore's win that "a victory by five percentage points is something less than a triumph." Hey, a W's a W, even if W. didn't get one.

Claims of journalistic objectivity may be the last refuge of old-school scoundrels, but there's supposed to be at least some semblance of fair play in covering a presidential campaign. Yet it's clear that the media are in open revolt, and that they're going to do everything they can to help McCain and Bradley as long as there's a chance of either one of them winning. Two pieces from Slate, the political junkie's best friend, put it in perspective. Jacob Weisberg, in explaining McCain's New Hampshire win, acknowledged that "[t]he press repaid McCain's openness with kind and generous coverage," but added that it was McCain's 114 town meetings that made the real difference. True, perhaps; but it's that "kind and generous coverage" that's going to matter from here on out. And Mickey Kaus, making a foray into New Hampshire, reported that he was "startled" by "the extent to which reporters . . . hate Gore. They really do think he's a liar. And a phony."

Given how eager the press has been to jump on Gore, his mistakes of the past week are likely to linger for a long time. After all, Bradley had proved completely unable to answer Gore's substantive attacks on his health-care proposal, other than to splutter that Gore was "Richard M. Nixon." Then Gore pissed it all away by blurting out -- and then repeating, over and over -- his big lie about abortion. As for the grotesque attack on Kerrey, the Manchester Union Leader's Bernadette Malone Connolly noted in an editorial on Wednesday that the Gore campaign won't even apologize, quoting Gore flack Chris Lehane as telling the New York Post: "Should our campaign have to apologize to Bob Kerrey that he had to come to a Gore event to find a crowd?" Ugh. And, as McCain has proven, war heroes are popular this year.

Because the meaning of the New Hampshire results was so clear -- Bush is in trouble, Bradley survived, and it's curtains for the Forbes-Keyes-Bauer freak show -- there were actually fewer attempts to devise tortured media spins than there had been a week earlier, after the Iowa caucuses. On a late-night edition of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Gore toady Tom Oliphant, of the Boston Globe, actually made an important point: that Bradley, having failed to win a state that's tailor-made for him, will probably find himself in even more trouble in urban areas and labor strongholds, where Gore is doing very well indeed. Still, Don Imus's pronouncement on Wednesday morning that Oliphant is "brilliant" is proof that Imus has either never read one of Oliphant's wretched columns or has absolutely no taste or judgment whatsoever.

At least some kudos ought to go to Charlie Rose, who put together a panel that didn't consist entirely of the usual suspects. Among his guests was Texas populist Jim Hightower, who challenged the conventional wisdom that voters are fat and happy. It's precisely because working-class and middle-class Americans have not benefited from the economic boom, he argued, that New Hampshire voters picked up the "two-by-four" McCain offered them and swung away. "People are fed up with the system, and they're saying [to McCain], `We trust you, for at least this primary, to see what you can do.' " New Republic editor Peter Beinart and U.S. News & World Report columnist Gloria Borger looked at Hightower as if he had two heads (just one, albeit covered by the strangest hair I've ever seen), but Hightower's analysis was right on the money.

Finally, the weirdest moment took place -- surprise, surprise -- on Rivera Live, where New York Daily News columnist Mike Barnicle appeared alongside Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, batting it back and forth in a Manchester studio. Barnicle, of course, was at the center of one of the great journalistic scandals of the 1990s. Alter used to write about media ethics before he graduated to political punditry. But the camera never blinks, as they say, and neither did Barnicle and Alter.