-Caveat Lector-
Clinton Never Liked the Media. But Don't Ask Him Why
By John F. Harris
Washington Post
Sunday, December 31, 2000; Page B01
Every reporter assigned to cover Bill Clinton over the past eight
years soon enough became expert on the same subject: the
presidential temper. Truly florid eruptions, with red face and
wagging finger, were easy to spot. But it took a more practiced
observer to recognize the everyday resentments that so often
colored this president's mood. Typically, the first hint that
some question had struck a nerve was when that familiar voice,
usually raspy and casual, suddenly would become choked and
formal: "May I remind you, sir . . ., " he would hiss, or "As
I'm sure you know, ma'am . . . ."
As a member of the White House press corps, I saw countless such
tempests (and prompted a few) and had a good vantage point on
Clinton's disdain for press coverage of him. I realize now that
I participated in a collision that was as inevitable as it was
spectacular. Reporting as it is conducted in modern Washington,
with a heightened emphasis on the personal and political motives
behind the actions and statements of public officials, clashed
with Clinton's perception of himself, and with his conviction
that his own noble motives should not be questioned.
This is a rueful story, in which each side -- Clinton's White
House and the press corps that covered it -- genuinely feels that
its suspicions and grievances toward the other have been
vindicated over time. In honest moments, both sides should also
feel at least a measure of self-recrimination. It is also a
cautionary tale, filled with useful lessons for George W. Bush
and the White House team he and Dick Cheney are now assembling.
Those lessons will probably be ignored. I mostly covered the
Democratic campaign in 2000, but much of what I read or know from
colleagues on the Republican trail suggests that Bush and the
press corps are headed for a relationship every bit as hostile,
and mutually unproductive, as what came before.
What came before was -- along with Clinton versus the
congressional Republicans and Clinton versus Ken Starr -- one of
the great antagonisms of Washington politics during the 1990s.
I began covering Clinton in 1995, after press relations with the
president had already soured. But it seemed plain enough to me,
as an interested observer in 1992 and 1993, that many political
reporters were intrigued by this new presence on the national
stage and ready to give him, his wife and his team of young aides
the benefit of the doubt as they brought a new governing approach
to Washington.
So why did the Clinton team -- which arrived in Washington full
of energy, optimism and intelligence -- end up having such a
brooding, sullen and ultimately self-defeating relationship with
the national press corps? I've heard many theories spun out in
innumerable conversations over the years with colleagues and
Clinton aides. Most of them probably have an element of truth:
The Clintons came to town privately vowing payback for what they
viewed as unfair scandal coverage during the 1992 campaign.
They resented the "Georgetown establishment" for what they
perceived as the establishment's resentment of them. Members of
the Washington press corps, for their part, were offended by
early deceptions and lies, and by the Clintons' unwillingness to
disclose relevant information about Whitewater and other
controversies. Changing societal standards, perhaps also combined
with the envy of his generational peers, lowered the deference
extended by reporters to this president.
But all these explanations miss what I believe is the most
important factor -- and the critical psychological dimension --
behind the dislike both Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton
harbored toward the press. This was a clash of values that went
far beyond specific provocations about this negative story or
that misleading statement.
Washington political reporting, in the era of the 24-hour news
cycle, is preoccupied with divining the hidden reality behind the
public face of events. For better or worse, if Clinton makes a
statement about a major overhaul of Social Security, I'm likely
to report and write as much on the rationale and strategy behind
the statement as on the policy itself. As it happens, probably
nothing drives Clinton crazy more than a suggestion, whether from
a staff member or a reporter, that his true motives are less
exalted, or more complex than his publicly stated motives -- or
that he is driven more by political maneuver than consistent
principle. So Clinton views garden-variety Washington coverage
not as a nuisance to be endured, but as a personal assault. And
when the questions genuinely do hit close to home, such as a
question about Whitewater, both Clintons respond with a rage that
aides say only hints at their private feelings toward the
inquiries.
I have my own examples. Fairly early in my White House tour I
received a finger-wagging lecture from Clinton during an
interview when I made what I thought was a fairly benign request
that he reconcile his first address to Congress, with its tens of
billions in new spending proposals and its plea that "government
must do more," with his 1996 declaration that "the era of big
government is over." And a year later, he fixed me with a cold
contemptuous glare when I asked him -- I knew this question was
hardly benign -- whether he found it odd that fellow Arkansan
Webster L. Hubbell was paid hundreds of thousands by friends of
the Clintons after Hubbell resigned from the Justice Department
under an ethical cloud but before he was to testify in the
Whitewater affair.
No president -- or any politician, for that matter -- would like
such questions. But Clinton, I'm convinced, hates them more than
most. For a lifetime, he has been projecting to the world an
idealized version of himself that at least partially obscured
more complicated realities. The model student that everyone in
Hot Springs, Ark., admired in the 1960s grew up in a home that
was more dysfunctional and violent than even his closest friends
knew. Clinton in the 1980s wanted the world to see a progressive
young governor, not a faithless husband whose political climb was
made possible by the kinds of murky compromises typical of
old-style Southern politics. In the 1990s, both Clintons believed
that Washington should take them as they presented themselves,
and they felt deeply violated when the press corps wouldn't go
along.
You may think this sounds perilously like the press corps
psychobabble that Clinton aides often denounce. For what it's
worth, though, Clinton himself partly agreed with a less
elaborately stated version of my thesis when I interviewed him
for a magazine article last summer. Is it true, I asked, that an
obsession with motive is what particularly bothers him about the
Washington press corps? "It used to bug me a lot," he said.
"It doesn't bug me any more."
But Clinton hasn't let his grievances go. When the New York
Times, in a recent end-of-term interview, asked him a searching
question about his strengths and weaknesses, he answered with a
peevish critique of the paper's coverage of Whitewater and the
Wen Ho Lee case.
What Clinton lacks, for all his high intelligence, is a quality
that modern reporters covet in politicians and their aides:
detachment. This is the ability to step outside their public
roles and comment, preferably with humor and irony, on their own
performance. Clinton's boyhood hero, John F. Kennedy, had this
ability in abundance, and it endeared him to a generation of
political reporters. (It was Clinton's 1996 opponent, Bob Dole,
who showed that detachment had its limits as a political
strategy.)
A revealing aside: Clinton often won praise for his self-mocking
performances at Washington press corps dinners. He did deliver
his lines well. But numerous aides have described to me the
process of preparing Clinton for those evenings. Unable to see
himself as others did, he often could not understand why the
material written for him was humorous. "Trust us, sir, it will
be funny," is the response they always gave.
I hardly pretend to know Clinton well, but I have seen him in
genuinely charming moments, such as when he told a funny story
about a night of drinking 20 years ago with the late writer
Willie Morris. And I have rolled my eyes in frustration at his
self-absorption, such as when he compared himself to the falsely
accused Richard Jewell of Atlanta Olympics fame.
But in the end, personal feelings between a president and those
who cover him are beside the point, which leads us to Bush.
During the campaign, the Texas governor did seem to have a more
natural facility for wisecracking banter with reporters than
Clinton ever did. Bush's aides probably believe that they can
manage the media as long as they avoid a sex scandal and cover-up
and the impeachment proceedings that tend to follow. But I
suspect they don't know how much they don't know.
When Bush is challenged on his motives, he sounds every bit as
quick to take umbrage as Clinton. "Do not judge my heart," Bush
rasped more than once on the campaign trail. And he seems to
share the illusion of the early Clintonites that it is possible,
by taking a hard line, to get reporters to report only on what he
wants them to know. When he announced John Ashcroft as his pick
for attorney general, Bush told reporters, "When he gives me his
legal advice, you won't know about it unless I tell you."
Here then, with the help of comments from reporting colleagues
and several current and former Clinton aides, are some guideposts
the Bush team -- and the press corps -- might keep in mind:
? Recognize the limits of spin. On his campaign plane, Bush had
nicknames for the regular reporters. He shouldn't forget that
the first time he faces a wave of bad news this once-chummy
spirit will buy him nothing; no modern president has press corps
friends. At the same time, he and his aides should recognize, as
the Clintonites at first did not, the difference between
campaigning and governance. During the recount controversy, Bush
strategist Karl Rove gave a news conference replete with minor
distortions and self-serving inaccuracies that would probably
have generated a week of critical stories if he had made the
comments from the White House podium.
? Dealing with the media isn't war. Nearly every Clinton aide I
spoke with expressed the same regret: They personalized their
grievances over negative coverage in a way that only led to
further tension. Even as tireless a combatant as James Carville
told me last week that the Clintonites would have served
themselves better had they been "a lot lighter, a lot more
gracious, [had they used] humor a bit more."
Clinton's current chief of staff, John Podesta, said he has
concluded that the White House "has to be a house without
grudges; you take each day as a separate opportunity."
? Don't fear process stories. The first instinct of most White
Houses is to try to shut the press out of writing about how the
sausage gets made. It never works, since someone is always
around to talk. Former Clinton senior adviser Doug Sosnik said
the Clinton White House had better results when it belatedly
decided to get in the game: "In general it's important to keep
the press fed, and load them up as much as possible on the
politics and process behind decisions. That's all they care
about, so after a while it's not worth fighting."
When this leads to unflattering stories, Sosnik advised: "Take
your hits on the days you deserve it. And remember that most
people can't remember what they read in the paper a week ago."
The Clinton years, of course, have some humbling lessons for the
press corps, as well. Political context is important. But we
should be aware that much of the public is not nearly as enamored
with dissection of motives and strategy as we are -- particularly
if they feel they're not getting a clean shot at the facts before
being deluged with analysis. All through 1996, everyone (myself
included) wrote about the poll-tested calculations behind a
parade of Clinton policy initiatives from welfare reform to
tuition tax deductions. The obvious political rationale behind
these policies did not stop the public from responding
enthusiastically to the substance. And we should all remember
that no one's motivations are truly knowable to another. "I
think," Clinton told me in our interview, "motive analysis at
least has to be undertaken with a certain amount of humility."
That's a fair point from someone who's earned the right to make
it.
John Harris reports on national politics for The Post.
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