From the WSJ Opinion Archives
The Prince of Wails
Clinton joins Gore and Daschle in whining about the media.
Tom Daschle, Al Gore and now Bill Clinton have to get over their belief that a media conspiracy was behind the poor showing of Democrats in last month's election.
This week the former president told the Democratic Leadership Council that successful Republican candidates were aided by an "increasingly right-wing and bellicose conservative press" which was drowning out "an increasingly docile establishment press." (Full disclosure: According to a Fox News report, "he cited only the Wall Street Journal by name.") Calling conservative criticism of Sen. Daschle "unconscionable," Mr. Clinton railed that Republicans "have a destruction machine. We don't have a destruction machine."
Those who recall James Carville declaring "war" on independent counsel Ken Starr will recognize this as both political spin and a refusal to accept that voters had something to say to Democrats in last month's elections. Mr. Clinton's remarks were of a piece with his 1995 comments after the Oklahoma City bombing in which he attacked "purveyors of hatred and division" on the "airwaves of America" as well as with Hillary Clinton's famous 1998 warning about a "vast right-wing conspiracy."
The Clintons have done a lot to create the current climate in which, as Candy Crowley, CNN's senior political correspondent, observes, "mostly what we've heard [from the Democrats] is whining" about the election results. Long before anyone had heard of Monica Lewinsky, the Clinton White House produced a preposterous 331-page report titled "Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce" which purported to show that all unfavorable coverage of Whitewater and the other Clinton scandals could be traced back to "conspiracy theories and innuendo" planted by conservative philanthropist Richard Scaife.
The White House disowned the report after The Wall Street Journal's Micah Morrison revealed its existence in January 1997. Philip Weiss of the New York Observer, who had earlier met with its authors, Clinton aides Mark Fabiani and Chris Lehane, concluded that the White House viewed ordinary newsgathering "as a sinister process." Mr. Lehane went on to become Al Gore's press secretary in the 2000 campaign.
It's possible that Mr. Lehane influenced Mr. Gore's own fevered denunciations of a media conspiracy last week. The former vice president accused media outlets such as Fox News Channel, the Washington Times and Rush Limbaugh of being "financed by wealthy ultraconservative billionaires who make political deals with Republican administrations and the rest of the media." Like his former boss, Mr. Gore attacked the establishment press: "Most of the media have been slow to recognize the pervasive impact of this fifth column in their ranks--that is, day after day, injecting the daily Republican talking points into the definition of what's objective."
Sen. Daschle himself went still further last month when he accused talk-radio hosts of inciting physical threats against himself and his family. He claimed Rush Limbaugh listeners "aren't satisfied just to listen. They want to act because they get emotionally invested. And so, you know the threats to those of us in public life go up dramatically." He then likened the conservatism of talk-show audiences to "religious fundamentalism" in foreign countries: "It's the same shrill power that motivates. . . . Pretty soon, it becomes physical in addition to just verbal, and that's happening in this country."
Although most of the media gave Mr. Daschle a pass, some commentators questioned his mental stability. Morton Kondracke, executive editor of the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, diagnosed the departing majority leader as suffering from "post-election stress disorder." He criticized Mr. Daschle's office for claiming it was "not permitted to discuss what threats had been leveled at Daschle or his family or even whether the number has increased." Charles Krauthammer, a psychiatrist as well as a pundit, joked on Fox News Channel that while he doesn't "usually practice on camera," he thought Mr. Daschle's comments were "the edge of looniness."
But there may be a method to the madness. Democrats appear to have concluded that if you can't beat the conservative media at their game, you join them and up the ante. During the same news conference in which Mr. Daschle warned that talk radio may be stoking something akin to religious violence in America, he admitted Democrats may follow the example. "We were just talking with some experts a couple of days ago about how, if we're going to break through as Democrats, we have to have the same edge that Republicans do--you know, Rush Limbaugh and all of the Rush Limbaugh wannabes have a very shrill edge, and that's entertainment."
Democrats are already building up their counterparts to "Rush Limbaugh wannabes." "Stupid White Men," Michael Moore's error-filled screed against George W. Bush, hit the best-seller lists; James Carville represents the Democratic view on "Meet the Press"; and former Clinton spinner Paul Begala is a co-host of CNN's "Crossfire," along with Mr. Carville. Last week, Mr. Begala announced on air that "I take liberties every day" and proceeded to call Mr. Limbaugh a "fat boy" and "lard butt." Is this the Democrats' idea of tackling weighty issues?
Mr. Daschle thinks the reason that "even people that don't agree with him listen [to Limbaugh is] because they're entertained." But Democrats are fooling themselves if they think name-calling or similar "entertainment" will help get their message accepted. Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post's media critic, writes that "Limbaugh is an entertainer with sharp claws, but he is more policy-oriented than many of the people who shout on cable night after night." His 20 million listeners a week tune in because he shines light on news other media outlets ignore or underplay.
True, he does so in an entertaining fashion. He lampoons the South Dakota senator as "Puff Daschle." His harshest attack on Mr. Daschle came after the senator criticized the Bush administration's handling of the war on terror. "What do you want your nickname to be?" Mr. Limbaugh asked. "Hanoi Tom? Tokyo Tom?" High-octane rhetoric, but not that much different from the constant liberal accusations that Mr. Bush is dim-witted and manipulated by his advisers.
The other major object of Democratic ire--the Fox News Channel--has also succeeded by filling a demand for an unapologetically patriotic news channel that is willing to report on stories other media outlets yawn at. The New York Times reports that "Fox has a solid lead over CNN, and has left MSNBC in the dust." Fox's prime-time ratings are up 17% from a year ago, while CNN's are down 31%. Even so, Fox's audience is still dwarfed by that of the major network news broadcasts, which Andy Rooney of CBS News recently acknowledged lean left. Mr. Rooney added that while he "always agreed" with his colleague Dan Rather, he admitted that he was "transparently liberal" and "should be more careful."
Democrats may continue to engage in ritual denial that they need to rethink their policies. They can keep raging against sinister and shadowy elements they perceive in the media. If they do, they'll keep losing.
After Britain's Labour Party suffered its fourth straight defeat at the polls in 1992, its new leader, Tony Blair, picked it up by the scruff of its neck and shook sanity into it. He purged radical and politically correct party members or brought them to heel. The party pledged no general tax increases and it introduced innovative market-oriented efforts to decentralize the provision of public services. The result is that the Labour Party completely turned the tables on the Conservative Party and now dominates British politics.
Is there a Democratic Tony Blair? So far the only insurgent in the 2004 presidential field is Al Sharpton, who insists his party should lurch so far to the left that it would crash into oncoming traffic.
The media--conservative, establishment or liberal--have been too easy on the Democrats as they whine over their election loss. In 1962, the last time a president's party did unexpectedly well in its first midterm election, the opposition party had only one major whiner: Richard Nixon. "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference," he angrily told reporters after losing his race for California governor. He blamed his defeat on media bias and on voters rallying behind the Kennedy administration's handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis (sound familiar?). Reporters roasted Nixon for his sour comments and ABC ran a 30-minute report on his "political obituary."
This time the media have handled similar antimedia rantings from the nation's three most prominent Democrats with kid gloves or silence. Liberal though the mainstream media may be, they're doing Democrats no favor.
So here's a little advice for the party out of power: Start by looking at how successful centrist Democrats who are out of favor with the Clinton-Gore-Daschle axis have won, among them Pennsylvania's Gov.-elect Ed Rendell and Sens. Zell Miller of Georgia, Evan Bayh of Indiana and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. All of them hail from states with powerful conservative talk-show hosts, but you've never heard them whine about a vast right-wing media conspiracy.
