FOR THE PAST TWO YEARS, President Clinton has gotten gentle, sometimes flattering treatment in the media. Now, the cycle of good press is over. The intense, unfriendly coverage of the foreign-contributions flap indicates what’s in store for Clinton in a second presidential term: rougher handling by the press. No, he won’t be dealt with as brutally as a Republican president would be. But he and his aides will notice a distinct change (some already have). The simple fact is the press has turned against Clinton.
It’s no coincidence the media perked up when the fund-raising story blossomed in mid-October. Before then, reporters had failed to pursue such juicy subjects as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s censuring of Hillary Clinton and credible testimony that the White House’s acquisition of FBI files on Republicans was no accident. But Clinton was a candidate then, still struggling to defeat Bob Dole and his conservative allies. Consciously or not, the press was wary of zinging Clinton if that might abet conservatives. By mid-October, however, practically everyone in the press believed Clinton had locked up his reelection. That mattered enormously. “The media seem to love Clinton when he campaigns and hate him when he governs,” says Robert Lichter of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. Having brushed Dole aside, Clinton was, in effect, in governing mode again. So the press pounced.
A good example is mild-mannered, apolitical Charles Gibson, host of ABC’s Good Morning America. He was suddenly outraged. “We now have the Democratic party hiding this guy John Huang until after the election, who was out raising money,” Gibson fumed on October 29. “You’ve got rafts of big contributions all listing the same address, which is the Democratic national headquarters. Newsweek says you have the ambassador to Taiwan out there soliciting gifts from people, businessmen in Taiwan, and you have Buddhist monks and nuns who have taken vows of poverty giving big amounts of money. . . . Somebody said the other day if the Republicans had done this the press would be killing them. Why are they getting away with this?”
They aren’t. Instead, the natural course of scandal coverage is being played out. First, the major newspapers — the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times – – got on the story. The print press is a leading indicator. Then television, usually a lagging indicator, jumped in (though ABC’s Brian Ross had started covering the story early on). If the networks needed a push, it came on October 29 when it was disclosed the Democratic National Committee wouldn’t file its final pre-election compilation of contributions with the Federal Election Commission. That act of arrogance, together with the emergence of Democratic fund-raiser John Huang from hiding, moved the scandal to the top of the evening-news agenda. The White House was on the defensive. At a breakfast with reporters that morning, White House press secretary Mike McCurry, who has chummy personal relations with reporters, was pummeled with questions about fund-raising.
Why is the tougher coverage bound to continue? For one thing, reporters feel vaguely guilty about having given Clinton a free ride. It’s not quite the shame many felt after George Bush won the presidency in 1988. That was largely a matter of distaste for the conservative issues (Willie Horton, the flag, etc.) Bush used against Michael Dukakis. In Clinton’s case, there’s a sense of buyer’s remorse. The media’s kind coverage has helped Clinton. Yet the press may have created a monster, a reelected president given to stonewalling and inaccessibility. “There’s a well of resentment [against Clinton],” says a veteran White House reporter. “He’s not going to be playing to a happy crowd. It’s true all over town, but it’s especially true at the White House.” One senior reporter recently advised McCurry to quit before a second Clinton term because relations with the press are certain to be mean and sour.
Another factor is the abundance of negative stories to cover. Independent counsel Kenneth Starr hasn’t gone away. On the contrary, he’s improved his reputation with the Washington press corps by lying low during the presidential campaign. He even backed off when Susan McDougal, the convicted former business partner of the Clintons, accused him of using unethical tactics to nail the president. Meanwhile, his portfolio of investigations has expanded to include a probe of whether ex-White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum lied about Hillary Clinton’s role in Travelgate. “This is dead serious,” declared Tim Russert on the October 27 Meet the Press. “I mean the ethical problems of the Clinton administration are now troubling even to the most partisan Democrats.”
There’s one more factor that guarantees less friendly coverage of Clinton. The press goes after whoever is top dog in Washington. That was Clinton in his first two years, and he got unfavorable coverage. House speaker Newt Gingrich replaced him at the top in 1995 and 1996, and the media pilloried him. In fact, Clinton purposely hibernated for months to leave Gingrich alone at the top, giving the press a single target. Now, Gingrich has been neutered and Clinton is top dog again. That makes concentrated media scrutiny all but inevitable. Clinton won’t be mauled the way Gingrich was, of course, but he’ll be bruised, perhaps badly.
Skeptics don’t have to take my word for it that Clinton is doomed to a spate of bad press; the folks who follow media coverage closely think so too. “Reporters have a growing sense Clinton has broken some rules to get where he is,” says Richard Noyes of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. “He’s beaten Bob Dole, but he hasn’t yet beaten the Washington establishment.” The press is a big part of that establishment. Adds media critic Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post: “The combination of Clinton’s likely re-election and all this red meat in the form of questionable foreign donations has reporters salivating in Clinton’s direction in a way we haven’t seen in a long time. The press is poised to give this president a very hard time and there are a lot of timebombs.” Reporters “will land on Clinton with both feet after the election, just as they did in the first months of his tenure,” echoes Carl Leubsdorf, Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News.
At the White House, McCurry is bracing for trouble. “It’ll be a lot tougher, ” he told me. McCurry sees the coverage of the fund-raising scandal as a precursor. Reporters could have unearthed plenty of dubious donations to Bob Dole if they’d wanted to, he says. But they weren’t interested because Dole was “toast” by mid-October. “There used to be something called a honeymoon,” says McCurry. The president “didn’t get one the first term. I suppose he won’t get one this time.” Not a chance.
by Fred Barnes
