Clinton follows Bush’s lead on the Media

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This is exactly what we need — four more years of this crap:

Reporters who have covered the hyper-vigilant campaign say that no detail or editorial spin is too minor to draw a rebuke. Even seasoned political journalists describe reporting on Hillary as a torturous experience. Though few dare offer specifics for the record–“They’re too smart,” one furtively confides. “They’ll figure out who I am”–privately, they recount excruciating battles to secure basic facts. Innocent queries are met with deep suspicion. Only surgically precise questioning yields relevant answers. Hillary’s aides don’t hesitate to use access as a blunt instrument, as when they killed off a negative GQ story on the campaign by threatening to stop cooperating with a separate Bill Clinton story the magazine had in the works. Reporters’ jabs and errors are long remembered, and no hour is too odd for an angry phone call. Clinton aides are especially swift to bypass reporters and complain to top editors. “They’re frightening!” says one reporter who has covered Clinton. “They don’t see [reporting] as a healthy part of the process. They view this as a ruthless kill-or-be-killed game.”

Despite all the grumbling, however, the press has showered Hillary with strikingly positive coverage. “It’s one of the few times I’ve seen journalists respect someone for beating the hell out of them,” says a veteran Democratic media operative. The media has paved a smooth road for signature campaign moments like Hillary’s campaign launch and her health care plan rollout and has dutifully advanced campaign-promoted themes like Hillary’s “experience” and expertise in military affairs. This is all the more striking in light of the press’s past treatment of Clinton–particularly during her husband’s White House years–including endless stories about her personal ethics, frostiness, and alleged Lady Macbeth persona.

It’s enough to make you suspect that breeding fear and paranoia within the press corps is itself part of the Clinton campaign’s strategy. And, if that sounds familiar, it may be because the Clinton machine, say reporters and pro-Hillary Democrats, is emulating nothing less than the model of the Bush White House, which has treated the press with thinly veiled contempt and minimal cooperation. “The Bush administration changed the rules,” as one scribe puts it–and the Clintonites like the way they look. (To be sure, no one accuses the Clinton team of outright lying to the press, as the Bushies have done, or of crossing other ethical lines. And reporters say other press shops–notably those of Rudy Giuliani and John Edwards–are also highly combative.)

So far, the strategy has worked brilliantly. In the current climate, where the mainstream media is under attack from both conservatives and liberals, Clinton may have picked the right moment to get tough with the press. But, as the murmur of discontent among the fourth estate grows–and Hillary’s coverage has taken a sharper tone since a widely panned debate performance late last month–even some Hillary supporters fear that the strategy may produce a dangerous backlash.

Assuming Clinton wins the presidency, I’d just like to thank the Clinton team in advance for providing “Candorville” with at least four years of material.


Discussion (9)¬

  1. Darrin Bell says:

    I know, and I agree.

    But I don’t think the Media should be painted with one brush. There are the Wolf “it’s a yes or no question” Blitzers, but then there are people like Charlie Rose and Jon Stewart who invite nuanced, thoughtful debate.

  2. Ken says:

    I’m always disappointed when I get to this time in the campaign when I begin to feel that no one is going to be as positive and honest as I would want. There’s already too much negative sniping and too much hedging on answers. Maybe I err to much toward the “Don’t hate the player, hate the game” school, but I am tired of media complaining about a problem of their own creation.
    Maybe I’m more positive about some of these candidates because they look better in comparison to Guiliani who seems to have carefully studied the Nixon play book.

  3. Ken says:

    I want to be clear I respect your complaint. However, these candidates are the product of a media environment and I get weary of reporters complaining about the monsters they create. You don’t get your answers to questions on issues because reporters usually focus on everything except issues. When they say that they can’t get answers to their questions what they’re saying is that they’ve let the candidates play them. I suspect that the media likes the current campaign more than they admit. They’d rather talk tactics than issues. It sells more ads.
    Please don’t confuse me with a Hillary fan. I don’t trust her (or most the others). That’s why I need reporters to do something other than complain.

  4. Darrin Bell says:

    Again, this wasn’t the National Review, this was the New Republic.

    “I don’t think Clinton is significantly more manipulative, deceptive, intimidating, or evasive (there seem to be many criticisms floating through National Review’s comments) than anyone else out there.”

    I find her far more evasive than either Edwards or Obama. As self-serving as his comments were, Edwards had a point. You can come away from a debate not knowing any more about Clinton’s positions than when you went in.

    Where does she stand on drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants? Does she think her 2002 vote on Iraq was wrong? WHY doesn’t she think voting to declare part of Iran’s armed forces “terrorists” gives Bush cover for whatever he may want to do to Iran? I’ve been looking for answers for weeks, and none of the answers I’ve found have done anything but further confuse the issues.

    Yes, she has ample reason to believe her words would be twisted, but that’s not a good enough reason to be so damn evasive. I’m not going to just trust that she’ll be a good president (even though anyone would be an improvement over what we’ve got now). I believe people govern the same way they campaign. Secrecy and evasiveness, if it remains a pattern through the campaign, isn’t likely to just evaporate once she’s in office.

    Bush showed the very same survival skill during his campaign, and look what we ended up with. Even conservatives didn’t know what they were getting.

  5. Darrin Bell says:

    Typo, it’s the liberal New Republic, not the National Review (and not the “National Journal”).

    “Let me get this straight. Darrin trusts the National Journal to tell him that Clinton is getting overly positive coverage because no one is covering her evasiveness.”

    I’m not sure what you’re trying to get straight. Neither I nor the article said anything resembling “no one is covering her evasiveness.”

    “I have a lot of trouble believing that the media is reluctant to criticize Hillary Clinton. It seems to have echoed every rant coming out of the right wing noise machine.”

    That’s not the point. The point is this: we don’t need another four years of leaders who won’t give straight answers. I, for one, don’t want to be deceived or jerked around, not even by someone with whom I often agree.

  6. Ken says:

    My apologies to National Journal. It's the best political magazine in the country.I don't think Clinton is significantly more manipulative, deceptive, intimidating, or evasive (there seem to be many criticisms floating through National Review's comments) than anyone else out there. Haven't you been frustrated at times with everyone so far?I think Clinton and the others know that everything they say will be twisted and repeated endlessly by publications like National Review. People are still saying that Gore believes he invented the Internet or the Hillary held seances to communicate with dead First Ladies.I think the Hillary is demonstrating a survival skill and the media are as much to blame for the environment as the candidates are for creating it. I love honest candidates–they just don't seem to hang around very long.

  7. Ken says:

    Let me get this straight. Darrin trusts the National Journal to tell him that Clinton is getting overly positive coverage because no one is covering her evasiveness. But we all know about her evasiveness.
    I have a lot of trouble believing that the media is reluctant to criticize Hillary Clinton. It seems to have echoed every rant coming out of the right wing noise machine.

  8. Doug says:

    And then we have Obama stating that he won’t even begin a troop withdrawal process until 2010 according to his statements on Meet the Press.

    Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle…

  9. Paul says:

    Old adage in business "