An old journalistic proverb says: “Reporter who sits on hot story gets seat burned.”
It?s an axiom that politicians also should bear in mind when they hold “backgrounders” ? meetings with the press at which the ground rule is that nothing said can be directly attributed to the speaker.
The Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Maryland, Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, has cause to reflect on that axiom, in the wake of being “outed” after spilling his concerns about President Bush and today?s GOP at such a backgrounder with nine Washington reporters.
One of the nine, from The Washington Post, lived up to the letter of the rule if not the spirit by writing a column without naming Steele, but quoting his critical remarks on everything from Bush?s handling of the war in Iraq to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and a lot in between.
Pressed to say whether he wanted the president to campaign for him, the Post reporter wrote, Steele at first dodged but finally said, “To be honest with you, probably not.”
The judgment itself could not be faulted, in light of Bush?s low poll ratings and the fact that Republicans are outnumbered by about two to one by Democrats in Maryland.
But a GOP candidate saying so added another embarrassment to the president at a time he needs one, as old comedian Jack Benny used to say, like a moose needs a hat rack.
The revelation of Steele?s flight from his Republicanism, which according to the Post he likened to having an “R” on his chest like “a scarlet letter,” sent him furiously backpedaling.
He insisted on a Baltimore talk-radio show that his remarks were in “an off-the-record conversation,” which they weren?t, and that his words were “taken out of context,” which they weren?t, as proved by a tape of the remarks acquired by another Post reporter.
White House press secretary Tony Snow, an old talk-show host himself, said he wasn?t there so he didn?t know what Steele had said.
In any event, Snow said, the president still wants him in the Senate.
Small wonder, as the Democrats hungrily pursue enough seats next fall to take control.
It all reminds me how the perils of the backgrounder wounded another Maryland Republican named Spiro T. Agnew 35 years ago. As vice president, he held a similar session for nine reporters at a governors? conference at Williamsburg, Va., and bore lasting political scars thereafter.
President Richard Nixon had just approved sending American table-tennis players to mainland China in what was dubbed “ping-pong diplomacy.” Agnew, a defender of Taiwan, injudiciously told the reporters he had opposed the initiative at a secret National Security Council meeting.
The attendees were bound by the background rule not to write what he had said, but another reporter and I, not present and thus not bound by it, found out and wrote accounts in our papers, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Los Angeles Times. They were read with fury the next day at the Nixon White House.
After a long Oval Office post-mortem on Agnew?s performance, Nixon ordered his press secretary Ronald Ziegler, to get Agnew on the phone and then say he had been authorized to report there was “absolutely no disagreement over policy.” The vice president, Ziegler said, “fully supports” the administration?s initiative to what was then called Communist China.
The reason for Nixon?s anger later became clear when he announced that he would be going there in the famous “opening to China” heralded as his greatest diplomatic achievement.
He didn?t want Agnew?s loose tongue and open split to throw a monkey wrench into the secret plans for that much more significant initiative.
Nixon never forgot Agnew?s faux pas in that press backgrounder. It contributed to a gradual falling-out between the two men that eventually led to Nixon?s thoughts of shedding Agnew as his running mate in 1972, later dropped.
The institution of the backgrounder lived on, nevertheless, and Steele may have learned another lesson as a result: Politician who attempts to sit on hot story at unattributable meeting with reporters also risks getting seat burned.
Jules Witcover, a Baltimore Examiner columnist, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He has covered national affairs from Washington for more than 50 years and is the author of 11 books, and co-author of five others, on American politics and history.
