The traditional values of the Reagan years. An adoring press
(displaying not a trace of "liberal bias") adores and excuses a chief
executive that hardly seems to to be there, while thugs and pirates
wrapped in flags loot the country
February 7, 1999
Remembering The 1980s:
The Press Slept While Reagan Rambled
by Jeff Cohen
The national press corps, inflamed by President Clinton's personal
failings, has howled like a wolfpack at the White House for over a
year now.
Things were a bit different during the Reagan era.
In her new book "Reporting Live," former CBS White House correspondent
Lesley Stahl writes that she and other reporters suspected that Reagan
was "sinking into senility" years before he left office. She writes
that White House aides "covered up his condition"-- and journalists
chose not to pursue it.
Stahl describes a particularly unsettling encounter with Reagan in the
summer of 1986: her "final meeting" with the President, typically a
chance to ask a few parting questions for a "going-away story." But
White House Press Secretary Larry Speakes made her promise not to ask
anything.
Although she'd covered Reagan for years, the glazed-eyed and fogged-up
President "didn't seem to know who I was," writes Stahl. For several
moments as she talked to him in the Oval Office, a vacant Reagan
barely seemed to realize anyone else was in the room. Meanwhile,
Speakes was literally shouting instructions to the President,
reminding him to give Stahl White House souvenirs.
Panicking at the thought of having to report on that night's news that
"the president of the United States is a doddering space cadet," Stahl
was relieved that Reagan soon reemerged into alertness, recognized her
and chatted coherently with her husband, a screenwriter. "I had come
that close to reporting that Reagan was senile."
Stahl wasn't the only reporter to hold back. Nor were her bosses at
CBS the only ones to pressure journalists to soften their coverage of
Reagan, both of his policies and his person.
But that was back then. Beginning 13 months ago, the President's
personal sexual predilections became the country's top news story; 13
years ago, a matter as important to the public as the President's
mental competence was deemed off-limits.
The national press corps spent years either ignoring the issue or
euphemizing it as "inattentiveness" or "the age issue" or his lax
"management style."
Some Americans may not remember the era when Teflon news coverage was
afforded to a president who fell asleep at White House meetings and
didn't recognize members of his Cabinet. Untethered by cue cards or
teleprompter, he could ramble off into dark fogs of gibberish.
Today's media are quick to note that Clinton now avoids news
conferences in fear of having to answer questions about l'affaire
Monica. Reagan broke records for the fewest news conferences. And for
obvious reasons. In October 1987, in his first press conference in
seven months, here's how President Reagan answered a question about
whether taxes should be increased:
"The problem is the deficit is -- or should I say -- wait a minute,
the spending, I should say, of gross national product, forgive me --
the spending is roughly 23 to 24 per cent. So that it is in -- it what
is increasing while the revenues are staying proportionately the same
and what would be the proper amount they should, that we should be
taking from the private sector."
That answer was no less coherent than his repeatedly befuddled
responses ("The poverty rate has begun to decline, but it is still
going up.") -- and his rousing "I'm all confused now" summation at the
1984 debate with Walter Mondale in Louisville.
At a disjointed 30-minute news conference in June 1986, the President
served up consistently muddled answers (aides had to immediately
"clarify" several of their boss' claims), but no reporter present was
willing to ask publicly what was wrong. None were willing to say that
the President had no clothes. A top White House official privately
marveled to the Los Angeles Times about "how easy the press was on
him" and said that reporters treat Reagan "almost reverentially."
This view of a timid, almost reverential press corps was shared by
others in Reagan's PR team-- notwithstanding their often disingenuous
complaints at the time about liberal bias. In "On Bended Knee: The
Press and the Reagan Presidency," author Mark Hertsgaard quotes former
Reagan Communications director David Gergen as saying, "A lot of the
Teflon came from the press. They didn't want to go after him that
toughly."
Today, such loopy public performances by a President might prompt
nightly "White House in Crisis" specials on national television. Back
then, establishment news outlets were in the habit of burying
embarrassing personal facts about Reagan in stories adorned by
misleadingly cheery headlines.
During Reagan's 1988 Moscow summit with Gorbachev, the New York Times
noted that the President had fallen asleep at a meeting with Soviet
dignitaries. The Times subtitled the article: "REAGAN IMPRESSES SOVIET
ELITE." Two days later, another summit-related article in the New York
Times attributed this quote about Reagan to Britain's Margaret
Thatcher: "Poor dear, there's nothing between his ears." The article's
headline: "THATCHER SALUTE TO REAGAN YEARS."
Around the same time Lesley Stahl had her 1986 meeting with a weak and
disoriented President to whom she was forbidden to pose questions,
Time magazine was painting a picture of a totally different President.
Coinciding with the Fourth of July hoopla, Time's cover projected a
beaming Reagan halloed by multicolored fireworks. Titled "Yankee
Doodle Magic," the story offered thousands of idolatrous words about
"one of the strongest leaders of the 20th century" and about "Reagan's
reassertion of presidential leadership" and how "he has restored the
authority of the American presidency."
"If Reagan is afflicted by senility," the magazine scoffed, "some of
the world's leaders might try a case of it."
Time's portrait of the American President bore distinct similarities
to the ones painted of Communist Party leaders by the Beijing press
corps. (Too bad for Time-- as the Iran-contra scandal erupted weeks
later-- that its "strong leader" was said to be out of the loop of his
own foreign policy.)
Compare Time's Teflon treatment of Reagan in 1986 with the magazine's
cover story on Bill Clinton last week. Here's the lead sentence: "Like
a weasel, Bill Clinton emerges from a drainpipe shinier than when he
went in."
The truth about relations between the press and presidency is that
while some things have changed, much remains the same. What's changed
is the willingness of mainstream journalists to unveil, even revile,
the person of the President. With Reagan, relevant questions about his
mental competence weren't even raised-- and a President being asleep
at the wheel should be as newsworthy as a President sleeping around.
Establishment journalists today resemble attack dogs on Clinton's
personal defects, his sex and lies, but they seem unable or unwilling
(or too bored) to act as tough watchdogs on Clinton's
often-conservative public policies, especially economic and foreign.
Time magazine will call Clinton a "weasel" over Monicagate, but not
over his policies on social security or NAFTA or Iraq.
In this regard, nothing much has changed. For when it came to
watchdogging Reagan's economic and foreign policies, mainstream media
were as disconnected and dozy as the President was.
Jeff Cohen is the founder of FAIR, and a panelist on the Fox News
Channel's "News Watch," the media criticism program on the Fox News
Channel (Saturday 7pm ET, Sunday 11am ET). A version of this column
appeared in the Baltimore Sun.
[FAIR Home] | [More on Clinton coverage] | [More columns by Jeff Cohen]
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