Thin Reed
Dole puts his faith in Ralph's rhetoric; Fidelity's gag order
by Dan Kennedy
by Dan Kennedy
Ralph Reed, the smooth, smart executive director of the Christian Coalition, hardly projects the same sort of image as the thuggish Colson. Yet Reed's media shenanigans over the Republican Party's anti-abortion-rights plank suggest a level of cynicism in service to the Big Guy that Colson himself would admire.
Reed started off by telling the New York Times's James Bennet in the May 4 edition that he might accept a softening of the party's strict opposition to a woman's right to choose, possibly even a law that would permit abortions in cases of rape or incest. The next day he tacked the other way and insisted his anti-choice stance was as fierce as ever, necessitating a follow-up Times story and an abject "Editor's Note." Then Newsweek ran an oleaginous excerpt from Reed's forthcoming book, Active Faith (Free Press), in which he made it clear that he is, indeed, willing to cut a deal, even if he's not willing to say what that deal might entail.
Reed's game is simple: use the media to help Nixon protégé Bob Dole, who needs to get the right-to-life crazies off his back, while at the same time reassuring the Christian Coalition's million-and-a-half members that nothing's changed. A few commentators have called him to task. John Heilemann, who's covering the campaign for HotWired (http://www.hotwired.com), read the Newsweek excerpt and on May 7 pronounced Reed's denial to the Times "a bald-faced lie." Syndicated columnist Martin Schram, in a piece that appeared in the Boston Herald on May 11, said of Reed that "when public figures modify positions for political expediency, they often insist that they aren't doing what indeed they are doing." But most of the media, unfortunately, chose to take Reed at his word.
As CNN analyst Bill Schneider pointed out on a recent Inside Politics, it's Dole himself who set off the current controversy over the GOP's abortion plank, making pro-choice governors Bill Weld of Massachusetts, George Pataki of New York, and Christie Whitman of New Jersey co-chairs of his national campaign while naming US Representative Henry Hyde, a staunch anti-choicer, as chairman of the platform committee.
What Dole is trying to do is revive the late Lee Atwater's "big tent" philosophy, whereby pro-choice and anti-choice Republicans agree to respect each other's differences. Ronald Reagan used to pull this off through sheer political alchemy, talking the anti-choicers' talk with such conviction that few noticed he did little to advance their agenda. The charmless Dole, though, must rely on surrogates, Reed foremost among them.
Two Republicans who aren't going to go along with any compromise -- inspired by Reed or otherwise -- are Pat Buchanan and his sister, Ronnie Wood lookalike Bay Buchanan. Dole's hope is that Reed can keep the anti-choice movement from defecting to an independent Buchanan candidacy. Helping Dole and Reed in that effort will be Clinton's principled but politically dangerous veto of a ban on so-called partial-birth abortions.
Which raises the key question: what will Reed seek as payback if Dole wins? Reed is a cautious man who's demonstrated time and again that he's unwilling to expend political capital except from a position of strength. If the Republicans, with the help of the Christian Coalition, gain control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, he'll have the strength he seeks.
It's a frightening prospect.
Not this time, though.
Fidelity is lobbying hard for a multimillion-dollar tax break for mutual-fund companies. The state's Department of Revenue estimates it would cost $40 million, with about half going to Fidelity.
Now Asa Cole, CNC's acting editor-in-chief, says he wants to see all editorials or columns about the tax proposal before they're published in any of the local papers. Would he allow a columnist to trash the proposal? "It depends," he says. "I'd have to see it."
Cole does appear committed to doing the right thing when it comes to news coverage of the tax plan. CNC's State House-bureau chief, Mark Leccese, says the only directive he's gotten is to include a disclaimer revealing Fidelity's ownership. "I have received no coaching, no dos and don'ts," he adds. "I'm going to cover it like I cover every other issue at the State House." CNC spokeswoman Karen Ernst says the disclaimer should prevent a repeat of a well-publicized incident several years ago, when CNC papers were criticized for running a story critical of brokerage houses without mentioning Fidelity's role in the industry.
That's a plus, but it's not enough. As news organizations increasingly come under the ownership of large corporations with diverse interests, the separation of church (editorial) and state (business) is more important than ever. Yet Cole combines those roles, serving as publisher of CNC's West group, which consists of the daily Middlesex News and more than a dozen smaller papers, in addition to his editorial duties.
Cole doesn't think the tax issue is a big deal, since it's unlikely CNC's local papers, mostly community weeklies, would cover a statewide issue anyway. He's got a point. And by vowing to disclose Fidelity's interest in the tax break, Cole is taking a step in the right direction. Now he should assure his writers that the only standards to which they will be held are journalistic.
According to the Gannett-sponsored Freedom Forum and the Roper Center, 89 percent of Washington-bureau chiefs and congressional correspondents voted for Clinton in 1992, as opposed to seven percent for George Bush and two percent for Ross Perot. What's more, 61 percent of the 139 journalists surveyed described themselves as "liberal" or "moderate to liberal," whereas nine percent chose "conservative" or "moderate to conservative."
This follows on the heels of similar survey results compiled over the past several decades.
A few observations:
* If reporters describe themselves as liberal because they voted for Clinton, then the real problem may be terminology, not ideology. Clinton ran as a centrist "New Democrat" in 1992, neutralizing traditional Republican issues such as crime and taxes. As Washington Post reporter Thomas Byrne Edsall points out in the current Atlantic Monthly, this time Clinton's running as a moderate Republican, at least rhetorically.
* A liberal-leaning Washington press corps may present problems, but that's just one small segment of the media. Conservatives dominate important media such as talk radio, community newspapers, and influential journals of opinion (Commentary, the Weekly Standard, and the Public Interest, to name three).
* As Texas activist Jim Hightower has observed, the media may be liberal, but they certainly aren't populist. Liberals are only slightly more willing than conservatives to ask tough questions about the power and influence of large corporations. That leaves important issues such as NAFTA, immigration, and economic insecurity to demagogues both dangerous (Buchanan) and nutty (Ross Perot).
Supposedly Safire returned to his own office, shattered; then he had an epiphany when he glimpsed the telephone. He'd de-emphasize the pontificating, he decided, and instead make use of his extensive inside-the-Beltway contacts to write a reported column. The rest -- including a 1978 Pulitzer -- is history.
The Times's Maureen Dowd already knows how to use the phone. And she may have received her wake-up call two weeks ago in the Nation, where guest columnist Susan Faludi -- herself a Pulitzer winner, and one of feminism's most respected voices -- lambasted Dowd's lighter-than-air touch and lack of ideological passion (Faludi's piece was reprinted in last week's Phoenix).
Faludi was followed shortly thereafter by James Walcott, writing in the New Yorker, who expressed distaste for Dowd's "chick" persona and for lacking "any sense of social dimension: everything is about her, her, her."
Dowd's April 28 contribution, a sarcastic tribute to Cosmopolitan's Helen Gurley Brown, was a slight effort that exemplified what's been wrong with her 10-month-old column.
Her last three, though, have been sharp and tough-minded: a critical, closely observed look at House Speaker Newt Gingrich's bid to revive his sagging fortunes (May 5); a funny-yet-serious profile of New York Senator Al D'Amato and his recent espousal of Republican liberalism (May 9); and a brutal take on Bob Dole's moribund campaign (May 12) in which she quoted him offering this "weirdly unself-aware metaphor" at Gallaudet University's graduation: "Someone once said that commencement speakers are like a body at a funeral. You can't hold the ceremony without one, but nobody expects you to say very much."
Dowd was one of the smartest observers of the political scene during her years as a Washington correspondent. Her lack of reporting on issues that matter, far more than her lack of strong opinions, is what's made her op-ed column such a disappointment. Perhaps Faludi and Walcott have awakened Dowd's lust for battle.
In cyberspace itself, though, Kinsley -- who in an intemperate moment last fall called most Internet content "crap" -- is simply toast.
At HotWired, acerbic gossip columnist Ned Brainerd recently referred to Kinsley as Microsoft mogul Bill Gates's "Beltway boy toy." Feed (http://www.feedmag.com) attacked Kinsley by attacking the obsequious Auletta, accusing him of "lower[ing] the art of CEO porn to levels that would make Larry Flynt blush." Over at Salon (http://www.salon1999.com), Scott Rosenberg called Kinsley's skepticism over the value of linking Slate's content to other Web sites "a bit like a filmmaker being suspicious of the whole newfangled idea of cutting." (Full disclosure: I'm a contributor to Salon's "Media Circus.")
The emerging mediascape needs people with Kinsley's sophistication and high standards. But he's going to discover -- if he hasn't by now -- that there's already intelligent life out there.