F Is for Foolish
John F. Harris is a mythmaker, not a media analyst.

By Tim Graham, White House correspondent for World magazine, & former director of media analysis at the Media Research Center
May 14, 2001 10:10 a.m.

s the political press rolling over for George W. Bush? Democrats certainly think so, or at least they think their journalist buddies ought to be worried about the appearance of pro-Bush bias. "The Washington press corps has become like little puppy dogs," Clinton spin specialist Rahm Emanuel says. "You scratch them on the tummy and they roll right over."

The Emanuel view was championed in a front-page piece in the Sunday "Outlook" section, where Washington Post reporter John F. Harris drew a tempest of conservative criticism by comparing Bush II to Bill Clinton and suggesting Clinton had it oh, so much worse. This, to any conservative who followed the Clinton years, is an assertion to be greeted first with a laugh track, and then perhaps later, a rebuttal.

There are two types of media analysis in Washington. The rare kind immerses itself in the actual content of media coverage, collects data and quotes over a long period of time, and then lays trends out on the table, like the media's stubborn, long-standing refusal to acknowledge that the scientific debate over global warming has more than one side. That's measurable.

The second, everyday kind is demonstrated by Harris's Post piece, filled with vague impressions and jumping to conclusions. This reductionist school says: Bush 100-day polls are good, so reporters must be puppy dogs with tickled tummies. But Harris, who admits his article was spurred by a Rahm Emanuel phone call and then later supported by the media theories of James Carville, reveals that he is a mythmaker, not a media analyst. The myth is Clinton's long-standing contention that no president in history had a tougher press than he did, which is utterly ahistorical and unfounded. Everyday reductionist media analysis suggests Clinton was impeached, so his press must have been really bad.

But Harris isn't really writing about the press here. He's writing about how forces outside the liberal media ruined Clinton's legacy:

Above all, however, there is one big reason for Bush's easy ride: There is no well-coordinated corps of aggrieved and methodical people who start each day looking for ways to expose and undermine a new president. There was just such a gang ready for Clinton in 1993. Conservative interest groups, commentators and congressional investigators waged a remorseless campaign that they hoped would make life miserable for Clinton and vault themselves to power. They succeeded in many ways. One of the most important was their ability to take all manner of presidential miscues, misjudgments or controversial decisions and exploit them for maximum effect.

Notice Harris doesn't say the press made Clinton miserable. He's implying that without conservatives, Clinton would have had it easy. Harris's article only hints at being right on one count: left out by liberal bias, conservatives created their own alternative to the media-Democrat complex, from the rise of nationally syndicated talk radio spurred by Rush Limbaugh, to the advent of the Internet and the Drudge Report, from dogged investigative groups from Judicial Watch to the Landmark Legal Foundation to thoroughgoing print analysis by the Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and conservative opinion journals.

But Harris would be dead wrong to imply that the media was responsive to these outlets, instead of deriding them as "Clinton haters" and poring over their IRS forms and ridiculing their second marriages and decrying their information as Internet gossip. The liberal media only ultimately acknowledged the evidence of the conservative media through a third party: official Washington, represented by federal courts, independent counsels, the Department of Justice, and congressional investigating committees. Some of those officials — think Kenneth Starr and Dan Burton — were also pounded by the press as out-of-control zealots. None of these factors kicked in during Clinton's first year in office, which didn't have any ethical headaches to worry about until late December, when the Troopergate stories and Jerry Seper's stories on the office shenanigans after Vince Foster's death pushed bimbo-phobic reporters into Whitewater.

Harris could have explained that some institutional arrangements are different for Bush than for Clinton, most obviously, the decline and fall of the independent counsel statute. Congressional investigations didn't go very far until the Republicans won the majority. But Harris would not explore the possibility that Bush may simply be less corrupt than Clinton.

Harris charged that Bush "has done things with relative impunity that would have been huge uproars if they had occurred under Clinton. Take it from someone who made a living writing about those uproars." Harris has no list of the things Clinton did "with relative impunity," like rummage through FBI files, hand away missile secrets to his Chinese campaign contributors, completely disassociate himself from his business partners being convicted of multiple felonies, and even possibly, get away from a rape charge.

But by far, Harris's most ridiculous argument is that Clinton may have "disgraced himself through his personal behavior and by then taking flight from honor and accountability. But Washington's snarling public tone was caused more by his opponents; he was as ready to meet with Republicans as Bush is with Democrats. Little of his rhetoric ever matched the vitriol that congressional Republicans aimed at him."

But in an essay in the book The Postmodern Presidency: Bill Clinton's Legacy in U.S. Politics, the same John F. Harris explained how the Clinton White House pulled off one of its biggest exercises in vitriol, blaming the Republicans for the Oklahoma City bombing. While Clinton aides "indignantly denounced cynical reporters" for suggesting political gain, Harris recalled, when Dick Morris laid out his agendas from weekly political meetings, "I saw how the strategy was laid out coldly just a week after the tragedy: 'Temporary gain: boost in ratings,' read the agenda for a meeting on the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. 'Permanent possible gain: sets up Extremist Issue vs. Republicans.'" Harris concluded: "It makes one wonder about Clinton's admonition that the public would be taken aback by the idealism of politics, if only people had a chance to sit in on the meetings."

Harris's piece asserting a pro-Bush press is long on allegation, but very short on documentation. It's the sort of piece which can be dismissed with "bias is in the eye of the beholder." Only systematic media analysis tends to crack that argument. Outside the bitter White House bunker, where even pom-pom waving Margaret Carlson said she was not trusted, the reality was the press in the Clinton years was instinctively supportive and often apathetic. With those phone calls coming from Rahm Emanuel and James Carville, reporters like Harris preferred to ignore conservative charges against Clinton except to note the "unusually virulent hatred" that came with them.