Speak Into the Cupcake, Please: A Primer on How to Read the Pols and the Press

by Martin F. Nolan

Reagan Is Unquestioned Star at Conference,” said the headline in the Great Falls, Montana, Tribune, assessing the 1967 Western Governors Conference. “Romney Is Given a Mixed Review,” said the New York Times on February 26. “Views on Romney Tour Mixed,” said the Washington Post on the same day. This copydesk coincidence labeled a tour of Western states as something less than a smash hit. The headlines also enshrined theatrical metaphor as the dominant theme of this year’s political reportage.

The theater has replaced the racetrack as the arena of political discourse. The “front-runners” and “dark horses” who were “groomed” for the “presidential sweepstakes” survive only as mezzotint clichés. Now, a candidate’s “performance,” how he “comes across” or “projects his image,” is something more complicated than judging horseflesh. This year, reporters have been constructing “scenarios,” a harmless endeavor that often cloaks long-shot predictions.

The shift from stable to stage came about largely because presidential politics has become inherently more dramatic since the atomic bomb. The drama has heightened, too, with the spreading permeation of radio and television, still primarily agents of entertainment rather than information or enlightenment.

The dramatic process, however, was helped along by the power of the press. In the new dispensation, after all, reporters are more powerful, just as surely as drama critics are more influential, than handicappers. Of this increased power, there can be no doubt. Governor Romney, the original closed-out-of-town flop of the season, thinks that reporters are burdened with what he calls “the Teddy White syndrome.” The accusation is a tribute to Theodore H. White, whose gifts for capturing drama in politics helped push back the timetable for “the making of a President.” White himself has complained that politicians who once treated him as a man with a notebook now clear their throats before speaking for the ages.

Romney’s complaint is the obverse of White’s. The Michigan governor’s tour of the West early in 1967 should have been conducted in obscurity since Romney was unprepared to grapple with the issue of Vietnam and other problems far from Lansing. As his bizarre syntax and contradictions flowed into dispatches back Fast, Romney’s fate was sealed.

His wry appraisal of his fate will surprise those who thought Romney couldn’t tell a syndrome from a Chevrolet. This surprise obtains largely because of the governor’s ineptitude with the English language but partly from reporters’ attitudes toward governors and state government. “No good can come out of Lansing” remains the thought of many Washington-based reporters despite an awareness of the resurgent importance of state government within the federal system. The changing dateline of a political trip is far more glamorous than a week in Lansing, Albany, or Sacramento. This failing focuses on one aspect of a candidate — can he win? — at the expense of another question — what sort of man is he? Most political reporters in Washington are graduates of state capital coverage and do not choose to go back to its routine of humdrum and high jinks. Rather than Washington snobbery, the feeling is contempt for one’s origins, similar to the sentiment of Groucho Marx when he refused to join a club that would have him as a member.

It’s been a bad year for institutions, and the press is no exception. Proof of this institutional decay may be seen in the proliferation of the word new attached to familiar nouns. The new politics, the New Left, and the new Nixon are sometimes hedged in quotation marks, but they stand as monuments of escape from more accurate descriptions. Genuine phenomena provide genuine excuses, but this year’s semantic difficulties are also grounded in the Teddy White syndrome. White made history and literature out of the stuff of politics. By doing so, he helped make politics a more self-conscious enterprise and its mechanics more momentous than they need to be. A seismographic quiver in a public-opinion poll is subjected to as much rigorous attention as, say, a candidate’s housing policy.

The self-conscious glare of history blinds politicians as well as reporters, Lyndon B. Johnson being Exhibit A. His obsessive attention to detail in matters dealing with the press was an effect as well as a cause of the credibility gap which has obscured the enduring achievements of his Administration. And any one of the President’s four press secretaries could have told him who wins in any sustained argument between the press and a politician.

The power of the press over politics is institutionalized. Three presidential primaries, in fact, are based on this power. Election officials in Oregon, Wisconsin, and Nebraska make their ballot selections from press, radio, and television reports. An affidavit abjuring further political activity is required from a candidate before he can escape the stigma of ambition given him by the press.

This power is not necessarily bad by any means. The press has helped fill the place abdicated by convention delegates who once gathered every four years for relatively sober consideration of the best man for the job. Now, delegates gather for fun and ratification, their minds already made up. H. L. Mencken’s view of conventions — quadrennially quoted — deemed them “as fascinating as a revival or a hanging.” But Mencken spoke of gaudy, multiballot affairs in an age of less dramatic politics. Today, conventions and elections are more denouement than climax. The dramatic action takes place on that hackneyed boulevard, “the campaign trail.”

THE physical conditions of American campaigning are important since they are so unlike the carpeted luxury to which elected officials and political reporters are accustomed. Traveling scribes, even in this jet age, spend as much time in bouncing buses as any minor-league ball team or small-time dance band. The day is long; the typewriter — or camera or microphone — becomes heavy; and the atmosphere is somewhat like military life, punctuated with endless griping and moments of exhilarating absurdity, but enriched with quickly made friendships.

It helps to travel with a millionaire. In Nelson Rockefeller’s entourage, a bar magically appeared at every other stop; on the plane, the Heineken’s flowed like buttermilk. As part of an austerity effort midway through his campaign, the governor’s staff dispensed with the hiring of a bartender for the press bar, and reporters had to pour their own. This hardship never confronted those traveling with Senator Eugene McCarthy. In the early days of the senator’s campaign, the press found that food was seldom advanced or scheduled. There was no time to buy it or eat it, and the peanutbutter sandwiches sustaining student volunteers back at headquarters seemed like ambrosia to reporters on the open road.

Men, not mechanics, still dominate political reporting, and the candidates vary in their dealings with the press. Vice President Humphrey has been aided by two press staffs, his own and that of his campaign organization. The Vice President is quite as jolly with reporters as with everyone else. He has driven reporters to distraction, however, with the looseness of his private conversations. These conversations are the staple of every reporter’s think piece. Whether in trench-coat eloquence before the cameras, or in a Sunday editorial page spread or woven into a newsmagazine portrait, a reporter’s conjectures are nourished by quiet seminars with the candidate.

The rules for the game are cither “off the record” — that is, unprintable or not for any attribution, — or “for background” — attributable not to the candidate but to a “well-informed source” in the candidate’s camp. Humphrey, partly from natural amiability and partly as a hangover from his early vice presidential days, when very few reporters sought his views, has often told reporters to “use your own judgment.” This is torture for most, resulting in giving the candidate the benefit of the ethical doubt and the reporter a dull story. When reporters covering Humphrey hear him utter the same off-the-record declarations a day later before a stadium full of people, they mutter into their Smith-Coronas and vow never again to keep his secrets for him.

The bond between Robert Kennedy and reporters who followed him was strengthened during his last campaign. Kennedy always did reporters a favor during tours of shopping centers and American Legion halls by giving a consistent cue to the approaching end of the speech. Every time the candidate said, “As George Bernard Shaw once said . . . ,” reporters folded their notebooks and began a dash to beat the crowd to the press bus. Kennedy once mystified an audience by saying with a leprechaun grin, “As George Bernard Shaw once said, ‘Head for the bus!’ ”

Senator Edward M. Kennedy cited the Shaw quote as the peroration of his eulogy to his brother: “Some see things as they are and ask why; I dream of things that never were and ask why not.” For each reporter in the grieving hush of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the senator’s translation of this little ritualistic joke was uniquely moving.

NO CANDIDATE has been more solicitous of reporters than the former voodoo doll of the press, Richard M. Nixon. It’s a dullard indeed who fails to catch a new lead in a Nixon speech. The former Vice President pauses, begins emphatic gestures, and practically constructs a billboard for every new idea in his rhetoric. Afterward, the word is passed that Nixon himself is available for clarification or for writing a headline. Not only has he acted as his own press secretary during the campaign, he is his own press conference and his own political analyst. In speeches and conversations, he asks himself questions, then answers them, adding an interpretation as candid and as probing as could be offered. During one speech, for instance, he ticked off six reasons why he couldn’t answer three questions he had asked himself, then said: “Now, you see, despite all the talk you’ve heard about ‘the new Nixon,’ he still approaches problems in the same lawyerlike, on-the-other-hand fashion.” Such tactics leave reporters and commentators frustrated: could Eric Sevareid have analyzed the candidate any better? Not only is the keenness of Nixon’s commentary remarkable. His speed and agility on any political subject produce instant analyses. He is truly the Polaroid candidate.

The speaking styles of Nixon and Humphrey obviously differ, one grave and cautious, the other giddy and garrulous. Yet for reporters, as for so many citizens, the prospect of their confrontation was less than exciting because both men are predictable, even in their possible indiscretions.

Senator McCarthy began his campaign with the goodwill of most Washington reporters. In the Senate, he was an accessible coffee companion who gave witty, incisive accounts of what went on inside the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. A man at home in the world of words, McCarthy was simpatico with reporters. Even to those who had never covered him, McCarthy aroused admiration for his singular struggle and his quiet fortitude. The more famous he became, however, the more the friendship soured due to mistrust on both sides.

A landslide majority of columnists had ignored McCarthy for months, and he defined their role in society as hapless entrail-readers. To reporters asking about changes in his staff, he said, “I think you fellows are really frustrated campaign managers.” He compared the press to blackbirds on a telephone wire: “One flies off and they all follow; one comes back and they all fly back.” On several occasions, when reporters would seek clarification on a speech item, McCarthy was rude in his own gentle way: “What difference does it make what I say? You’ll print what you want to, anyway.” McCarthy, it must be noted, invoked off-therecord restrictions less frequently than any candidate. And he was acidly aware of which publications had treated him seriously and which had not.

McCarthy baffled reporters with his approach to politics and his creation of a political force. The quiet candidate and his fervent student armies and volunteer brigades ran up against the conservative customs of politics and political reporting. In the McCarthy campaign, there was no Larry O’Brien or Len Hall or Jess Unruh whom reporters could seek out for an estimate of the campaign. McCarthy’s objection about reporters as frustrated campaign managers was less accurate than a charge that reporters are frustrated prophets. The self-fulfilling prophecy is a landmark in an era of self-conscious politics; had McCarthy depended on the press instead of his student armies to spread his word, he probably would have ended up a Lar Daly, or at best a Harold Stassen.

It’s been a bad year for prophets; so few politicians consulted them before announcing surprises. Despite a series of embarrassing pratfalls, the press played the prophecy game after every primary, every state convention, every major speech of a candidate. Even if politicians regard political reporters as drama critics (smug, inbred, piranha-like), most readers — and editors — still want the handicapper’s forecast of who will win the race.

The double dozen or so reporters who form the spearhead of the loosely organized “national press corps” appreciate the problems wrought by their own increased influence and the changing ways of politics and technology. Alas, they are mortal, too; a readiness to adapt to change can involve missing the story. Take television, for instance. The message seen by millions is far more important than the set speech heard by a few thousand at a whistle-stop or shopping center rally. But to cover the television campaign presents several practical problems. One is that advertising agencies regard press queries as industrial espionage. They insist, for instance, that the “spontaneous” taped commercials of a candidate talking with voters be conducted in secrecy, with no press “to interfere.” (Barring the press from these sessions endangered press relations for Nixon on his very first day of campaigning in New Hampshire.)

Even if reporters overcome these obstacles, the editor back in the office is displeased when his reporter misses a major policy statement or even a minor peccadillo by a traveling candidate. Reporters, too, have a Puritan ethic; sitting in a motel room making notes from a television screen hardly seems like work, and the event covered hardly seems like news.

Among the nonelectronic press, a gnawing feeling grows that their efforts are becoming obsolete. This is hardly so, as the sales of Theodore White’s books can attest. But the fear of being McLuhanized into irrelevance has forced the pen-and-pencil men to fight back. John J. Lindsay of Newsweek frequently carries a chocolate cupcake with which to interview the local citizenry during a candidate’s visit. The experiment is an exquisite psychological test. After several reporters use notebooks as weapons on the mood of a voter, along comes the cupcake man, serene and smiling. The subject of the interview is a bit suspicious, but exhortations of “Speak into the cupcake, please,” invariably produce profound and forthright statements on the candidate. The experiment is thus a success, although it falls short of proving that the world is artificial or that a microphone is a confection.

That the competing media act as checks and balances is a fact. Newspapers themselves are changing, too. The much deplored trend toward chains and mergers has produced better reporting for small-city dailies. The readers of Newhouse, Gannett, Scripps-Howard, Knight, or Hearst papers can often read as sophisticated an analysis of a political event as the readers of bigger, more prestigious dailies. This small army, in alliance with the legions of Walter Cronkite, helps keep the power of the press safely fragmented.

A multimedia mix is indeed the best protection against the forces of glibness and sham. Television is no objective boon or bane. Ask Richard Nixon, now facing his third test against the tube. His “Checkers” speech saved him in 1952, but his debates in Kennedy’s milieu ruined him in 1960. Ronald Reagan, a walking theatrical metaphor, used extraordinarily slick methods with the press. To any substantive question on his political future, he replied with a telegenic grin, “Well, I’m not going to write your leads for you, fellas.” Reporters may have generally bought the line, but voters outside California have not.

The struggle of concentration between the message and how it’s received goes on in reporters’ dispatches. In one of the weirdest interludes of this year’s politics, the several weeks of Governor Rockefeller’s announced noncandidacy and determined availability, the lines of this struggle were drawn on the front pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post. Rockefeller’s apparent aim in this curious stage in his career was to galvanize public opinion into forcing him to accept his party’s nomination. So he gave speeches, one of them on his ideas on rebuilding city slums. The governor’s text was interesting and indeed refreshing to read. To listen to these original ideas, however, was an ordeal.

The audience, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, was enveloped in torpor throughout the talk. The next day, the two leading American newspapers covered the story, the Post barely mentioning the substance of the speech and dwelling on its hypnotic delivery, the Times sketching the content of the address while ignoring its enervated audience. These stories, written by peerless reporters, typify the polarization in political reporting between form and substance, policy and politics, medium and message. Waged in editors’ memos and reporters’ gripe sessions, the contest is not likely to be resolved soon.

The change in metaphor from the racetrack to the theater has not made politics easier to write about or read about. Politics is becoming less and less a spectator sport and more and more an endeavor of widespread citizen participation. Political scientists have noted an evolution of the patronage-drenched “politics of distribution” to the more disinterested “politics of innovation.” In all political discourse, there is more emphasis on the quality of American life than on the quantity of its material wealth,

“Participatory politics,” however, is still a long way from fruition. Until that time, the press must serve as the crucible for candidates. And for those who worry that current practices of the press reward the glibness of form at the expense of the substance of achievement, there is the question: if a candidate cannot meet the minimal standards of intelligibility for a night lead, how can he make himself clear to, say, the Premier of the Soviet Union?