A FEW MONTHS AGO I was on a TV talk show I used to appear on fairly frequently. The host is a friendly, mild woman who tosses the assembled pundits softball questions and then ducks while we swing at them wildly. I liked being on this show a lot, and this particular day I didn’t suspect trouble. The host was pleasant as always. She opened our little discussion by mentioning some bit of good economic news reported that morning: Orders for durable goods were, I think, up. Or was it down? Whichever, the economic news was good, as it has been for a couple of years now. She asked me my thoughts, and though it’s hard to have provocative opinions about orders for durable goods, up or down, I came out for good economic news. “But Andrew,” she said sweetly, “isn’t the economy supposed to be in the tank by now? I seem to recall what you said this time a couple of years ago, when the administration’s tax increases went through. . . .” Sirens screamed, soundlessly; alarm lights swam, invisibly. My host was violating the most fundamental rule of TV punditry. It’s true that during the 1993 budget debates I had appeared on this program, sat in the very same seat, and announced confidently that the Clinton tax hikes would break the fragile, precious reed that is the American economy. And it’s true that the American economy did not break. It has performed like a trouper. It’s true, in short, that I had been wrong. That’s not the point. The point is: This is TV. This is punditry. Sitting side by side before the camera, host and pundit enter into an unwritten compact. The guest gives pithy answers of rock-solid certitude. The host agrees never again to mention what those answers are. Exceptions are permitted, when, for example, the guest makes some outlandishly implausible guess–say, Alan Keyes will sweep 50 states in the presidential election next November–that, God help us, proves correct. Otherwise, pundits’ opinions are supposed to sail through the air, bounce off the satellites, enter the viewer’s home, roil around a minute, then disappear into the ether where they belong. I discovered later that our host had been pulling this particularly nasty trick for a week or so–cornering right-wing pundits on the air (live!) and asking them why they, to a man, had been wrong about the consequences of the Clinton tax increases. Don’t tell me there’s no liberal bias in the media. As it happens, in my own desultory career as a pundit, I have a long history of being wrong. I had the painful experience of going through my old clippings recently and finding an article from early 1988, datelined New Hampshire. I’d been trailing presidential candidates and wrote that one in particular had all but wrapped up the Democratic nomination, which meant, in turn, that he would be our next president, since it was impossible that a Republican could win in ’88. That lucky winner’s name was Dick Gephardt. As things turned out, he withdrew from the race before my article was back from the printers. My prediction, as we say in the trade, was “overtaken by events.” This glance through my clips reminded me, too, how wrong I–and most other conservatives–had been about Mikhail Gorbachev. At the State of the World Forum in San Francisco a few weeks ago, I had a chance to watch him at fairly close range, over the course of several days. Hearing him talk airily for hours about stupefying banalities, you couldn’t help but find his cluelessness touching. And to think that throughout the ’80s, conservatives tried to brand him another Stalin, or at least another Brezhnev. What he was, was another Jimmy Carter: incompetent and feckless, indecisive and easily distracted. This more than anything explains why, when his far-flung empire was collapsing, he didn’t roll out the tanks. He couldn’t make up his mind. That was not my reading of events as they took place, of course, and I hope no one ever cares enough to resurrect the clips that will show what my reading actually was. At the time–I admit it, I admit it–I was wrong. I don’t think I am wrong now, though, and apparently my present interpretation more closely conforms to that of the Russian people, who during their long association with Gorbachev neither demonized him, as American conservatives did, nor canonized him, as did our liberals. Russians just didn’t like him. And if the rumors are true that Gorbachev will seek the Russian presidency next year, be assured that he will be roundly defeated. You may quote me.
