campaign reporters looked down on White as a pathetic, written-out hack. They saw him as a political groupie who wrote flattering, mawkish descriptions of major politicians in order to keep them primed as sources for future books. His 1968 volume, with its penitently overkind description of Richard Nixon, had taken a beating from reviewers. A lot of reporters laughed out loud when they read sentences like: “In 1968, Nixon conspicuously, conscientiously, calculatedly denied himself all racist votes, yielding them to Wallace.” It was left for three of White’s British competitors, in a book called
An American Melodrama
, to give a decent account of Nixon’s wholly opportunistic Southern Strategy.
By 1972, the traveling press openly resented White. They felt that he was a snob, that he placed himself above the rank and file of the press. White would suddenly appear in some pressroom, embracing old friends on the campaign staff, and would immediately be ushered off to the candidate’s suite or the forward compartment of the plane for an exclusive interview. And the reporters would grumble about Teddy White getting the royal treatment.
These same reporters forgot that Teddy White’s first books had radically altered the function of the campaign press. Because of him, the press now began to cover political campaigns two years before the election. † Unlike White, the reporterswere not collecting tidbits for use at some remote future date, in case one of the primary candidates went on to win the Big One. They were using the information immediately, exposing flaws and inconsistencies in the candidate that could ruin his chances before he even reached the primaries. As recently as 1960, or even 1964, a coalition of party heavies, state conventions, and big-city bosses had chosen the candidate in relatively unviolated privacy, and then presented him to the press to report on.
Now the press screened the candidates, usurping the party’s old function. By reporting a man’s political strengths, they made him a front runner; by mentioning his weaknesses and liabilities, they cut him down. Teddy White, even in his wildest flights of megalomania, had never allowed himself this kind of power. The press was no longer simply guessing who might run and who might win; the press was in some way determining these things. The classic example was George Romney. Romney had opened his campaign almost a year before the first primary, expecting a press contingent of two or three reporters. Instead, twenty or thirty showed up for Romney’s first exploratory trips around the country, and they all reported Romney’s embarrassing inability to give coherent answers to their questions about Vietnam, thus dooming his candidacy. But Romney was the perfect, textbook example. The process was usually more subtle, and more difficult to describe.
The journalists involved in this selection process were a very small group, consisting mostly of the national political correspondents, and they formed what David Broder called “the screening committee.” Of the two-hundred-odd men and women who followed the candidates in 1972, less than thirty were full-time national political correspondents. Most of the campaign reporters came from other beats around Washington—the Justice Department, the Pentagon, the Hill, or the White House. After the campaign, they would go back to these beats, and if they did well, they would rise to a management position at their newspaper, magazine or network. But the nationalpolitical correspondents had covered the whole political scene for five, ten or fifteen years and were likely to continue doing so until they died in harness; and if the actuarial tables were correct, their jobs would kill them at a relatively early age. Many of the members of this group belonged to an organization called Political Writers for a Democratic Society, an organization whose evolution requires some explaining.
In 1966, a stolid, slightly
An American Melodrama
, to give a decent account of Nixon’s wholly opportunistic Southern Strategy.
By 1972, the traveling press openly resented White. They felt that he was a snob, that he placed himself above the rank and file of the press. White would suddenly appear in some pressroom, embracing old friends on the campaign staff, and would immediately be ushered off to the candidate’s suite or the forward compartment of the plane for an exclusive interview. And the reporters would grumble about Teddy White getting the royal treatment.
These same reporters forgot that Teddy White’s first books had radically altered the function of the campaign press. Because of him, the press now began to cover political campaigns two years before the election. † Unlike White, the reporterswere not collecting tidbits for use at some remote future date, in case one of the primary candidates went on to win the Big One. They were using the information immediately, exposing flaws and inconsistencies in the candidate that could ruin his chances before he even reached the primaries. As recently as 1960, or even 1964, a coalition of party heavies, state conventions, and big-city bosses had chosen the candidate in relatively unviolated privacy, and then presented him to the press to report on.
Now the press screened the candidates, usurping the party’s old function. By reporting a man’s political strengths, they made him a front runner; by mentioning his weaknesses and liabilities, they cut him down. Teddy White, even in his wildest flights of megalomania, had never allowed himself this kind of power. The press was no longer simply guessing who might run and who might win; the press was in some way determining these things. The classic example was George Romney. Romney had opened his campaign almost a year before the first primary, expecting a press contingent of two or three reporters. Instead, twenty or thirty showed up for Romney’s first exploratory trips around the country, and they all reported Romney’s embarrassing inability to give coherent answers to their questions about Vietnam, thus dooming his candidacy. But Romney was the perfect, textbook example. The process was usually more subtle, and more difficult to describe.
The journalists involved in this selection process were a very small group, consisting mostly of the national political correspondents, and they formed what David Broder called “the screening committee.” Of the two-hundred-odd men and women who followed the candidates in 1972, less than thirty were full-time national political correspondents. Most of the campaign reporters came from other beats around Washington—the Justice Department, the Pentagon, the Hill, or the White House. After the campaign, they would go back to these beats, and if they did well, they would rise to a management position at their newspaper, magazine or network. But the nationalpolitical correspondents had covered the whole political scene for five, ten or fifteen years and were likely to continue doing so until they died in harness; and if the actuarial tables were correct, their jobs would kill them at a relatively early age. Many of the members of this group belonged to an organization called Political Writers for a Democratic Society, an organization whose evolution requires some explaining.
In 1966, a stolid, slightly
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