A Peculiar, Melancholy Creature

All Presidents, all politicians (and not only politicians) hope to make use of the press. All arrive in Washington determined not to be unduly influenced by the press, and all fail to some degree. It is easy enough to remember, when one is greeting the voters in Indiana, that most Americans do not read the New York Times and the Washington Post or watch the evening news on ABC, CBS and NBC—or, for that matter, necessarily believe everything they read in newspapers and magazines or watch on television or hear on radio. This memory tends to become submerged once the campaign is won and the candidate takes up residence in Washington. Then the capital, with its curious mixture of high ideals and hard work and base ambition and blind vanity, becomes the universe: If I am so famous that the Washington Post is writing about me, then, of course, the whole world is reading it.

Politicians live (and, as we know, sometimes die) by the press. The press lives by politicians. This symbiotic relationship is at the center of our national life. The relationship has always existed. Probably it came into being at about the same time as human speech, which permitted the first gossip to repeat the (suitably edited) sayings of the chief of the clan to the people in the next cave. It existed in America, an especially nourishing environment for all types of communication, before the Declaration of Independence.

The press is a peculiar, disembodied, melancholy creature driven by strange hungers, never happy with its triumphs, wanting always to be loved and incessantly suspecting that it is not. In this, of course, it closely resembles the politician. There the resemblance ends. The politician and his appointed assistants have an obligation to be responsible.

The press has none. It prints what it is given. If some important national secret is betrayed in the pages of a great newspaper, as has often happened, it is nonsense to protest that the editors and reporters have no patriotism, no decency, that this is treason. The charges may be correct, but you have arraigned the wrong defendants. The failure of patriotism, the betrayal of decency, the treachery are real enough. But these are the trespasses of the public official who, having been trusted with the secret, could not keep it.

In the Reagan Administration, leaks were not merely a problem, they were a way of life, and in the end I concluded that they were a way of governing. Leaks constituted policy; they were the authentic voice of the Government. It is not surprising that this should have been so. The President’s closest aides were essentially public relations men. They were consummate professionals-“wizards” is not too strong a word. In my view they were the most skillful handlers of the press since the New Deal.

They were grappling with a difficult problem, the most difficult faced by men trying to establish the authority of a new President since the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Neither F.D.R. in 1932, when Republicans controlled the press, nor Ronald Reagan in 1980, when liberal Democrats were the rule among journalists, had very many friends and sympathizers in the established press. How, in the face of a reflexive ideological hostility—not to say bigotry—toward Reagan and all that he stood for, were the President’s men to get fair, even favorable coverage of his Administration?

First, they had a bit of luck. As Reagan came to office, the press was nervous about itself. It had played a major role in bringing down three Presidents in a row—two of them Democrats even if they were Southerners, let it be remembered. Even within the press, some thought (though few violated tribal taboos far enough to say so outright) that there had been excesses. Besides, there is an ultimate control on the press: if its readers do not believe it and do not trust it or if they think it lacks a standard of fair play, they will stop heeding it, and it will die. Therefore the press was inclined to cool its ardor for a time, even to go so far as to show that it could be fair to a President whose policies much of it despised.

Second, the White House wizards understood the great intangible power that the Government holds over the press. I have said that the press is disembodied; I meant that it has no life of its own, it lives on the acts of others. Action, to the press, is information; it is not interested in the parentheses of policy, forethought and consequence. The press cannot live without information. It has no information of its own; it follows, then, that it must rely on others to manufacture the stuff. The Government is the great smithy of information. Appreciating this, Reagan’s men opened the doors to the workshop and escorted reporters inside in a way hitherto unknown in Washington. They literally told them everything. For the press, always the outsider, always operating on suspicion and guesswork and animosity, it was a dream come true. It had never before had sources like this. And, of course, the press could not risk losing these sources by offending them, so it wrote what it was given.

When a Roman emperor or general returned to the city after a great victory and was awarded a triumph, he passed among the populace wearing a hero’s chaplet, surrounded by his soldiers, his booty and his captives. Lest he be made drunk by glory and the cheers of the citizens, he was sometimes provided with a slave who accompanied him in the ceremonies and whispered into his ear, “Remember, you are mortal.”

In present-day America, the press performs this function.