Many pundits are worried about the delay in finding out who will
become the next occupant of the Oval Office. "That's probably the most
crippling blow I've ever seen to a new president," David Gergen lamented on
national television. Whoever the next chief executive turns out to be, he
has "been denied or robbed of the romance that we have that we associate
with the selection of a new president, the crowning of a new president."
For decades, Gergen has spun through the revolving door between
government and media elites, working as an image-crafter for presidents and
as a commentator for major news organizations. He understands vital
dynamics of propaganda. So, it's no surprise that Gergen sounded distraught
the other night when he declared: "There's always been an anointment
process as we lift that figure up and put him up on a pedestal. There's no
pedestal with this election."
Appearing with Gergen on CNN, a reporter for Time was quick to
add: "I think David's absolutely right that, you know, at the magazine and
other news outlets we're so used to this being a honeymoon period, roll out
the red carpet, get into the biography, let's look at who's this next great
president."
Indeed. It's a hoary media ritual -- so deeply ingrained that
journalists don't seem the least bit embarrassed when they use fawning
terms like "romance," "put him up on a pedestal" and "roll out the red
carpet" to describe their usual approach. As a matter of time-honored
routine, from early November to Jan. 20, the president-elect basks in the
mythic lights of intense media glory.
A dozen years ago, a dazzling blaze of deification accompanied
George Bush the elder as he moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. On
inauguration day, few eyebrows were raised when the New York Times strained
to set the proper tone on its front page. "George Bush embodies the
patrician ideal of responsibility begotten by privilege," reporter R.W.
Apple Jr. wrote, an "American tradition reaching back through the many
presidents more at home in mansions than log cabins, from Washington of
Mount Vernon to Jefferson of Monticello to Roosevelt of Hyde Park."
Days later, in the nation's largest-circulation news magazine,
Time's Michael Kramer was slinging the sanitized manure with the best as he
narrated the inaugural moments for posterity: "Kind words. Gentle words.
Nothing flashy or particularly memorable. Just good, plain talk from the
heart." And, as if to reassure Americans that no imposter had reached the
throne, Kramer explained: "Perhaps it was only the trappings, but George
Bush finally looked presidential."
Ordinarily, the transition involves a media process by which
Americans are encouraged to believe that the dubious fellow becoming
president has swiftly ascended to historic heavens. The rocketing rhetoric
often overheats.
When voters elected a new president in 1992, numerous media
outlets seized on fabulous prophesy in footage of 16-year-old Bill shaking
hands with President John Kennedy on a sun-drenched White House lawn.
Newsweek made ecstatic noises about "JFK reaching across the years to a boy
he did not know -- and to whom the torch of leadership now passes in an
emphatic statement of America's desire for change."
After 10 weeks of obsequious blather in mainstream news outlets,
the president-elect has usually been able to count on a profuse overflow of
media adulation saturating his inauguration. But this time around,
frustration is growing among journalists who yearn to tell fanciful tales
and put out political versions of Hallmark cards. Post-election events
continue to preempt the standard unctuous reporting.
In the next couple of months, the amount of syrupy media swill
about the incoming president's greatness is apt to be significantly
curtailed. Schlockmeisters are wringing their hands -- but the rest of us
ought to applaud.
"Our presidents at their inaugurals...make us the dupes of our
hopes," the incisive journalist I.F. Stone wrote in early 1969. Today, as
in previous decades, countless reporters and commentators are eager to
assist in the duping. But right now the task looks difficult.
Norman Solomon is a syndicated columnist. His latest book is The Habits of
Highly Deceptive Media.
