Rough Ride on the Primary Trail

Those "upsets"are also a message to newsmen

"It's been very tough, a lot tougher than it was four years ago. I've been wrong on just about every goddam thing."

So says Washington Star Political Writer James Dickenson, and he has plenty of company in the press. Never have the nation's newspapers, newsmagazines, networks and wire services had so much trouble fathoming what is on the electorate's mind. As the presidential campaign rolled on in weekly installments, surprise, upset and the unexpected have been the bulletins of the day. Often nobody got it right in advance; the unlucky were those who got it wrong out front where everybody could read it or hear it.

It began in Maine, when George Bush, having read his advance notices, left town and was not around to deliver a victory speech after he won a Republican straw poll. Many journalists underestimated Bush's strength in Iowa and then overreacted to his victory. The day after the caucuses, NBC Correspondent Tom Pettit pronounced Ronald Reagan politically "dead." New Hampshire was easier but still vexing. Morton Kondracke of the New Republic boldly predicted that Bush would win by six percentage points and Jimmy Carter by 20. When Reagan won and Edward Kennedy came close, Kondracke offered a mea culpa: "I confess to having contracted hubris by calling the Republican race in Iowa almost exactly. But I am better now. I promise not to do it again, at least without hedging more carefully." The press was again caught off guard by John Anderson's strength in Massachusetts and Vermont.

Then came Illinois, and reporters and editors rejoiced: the desires of the electorate were finally clear. CARTER vs REAGAN, blared the New York Post. IT'S ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTING. "The Voters of Illinois," concluded Chicago Tribune Political Editor F. Richard Ciccone, "left no avenue of hope open for the man [Kennedy] who was almost everybody's hope only six months ago." Wrote Washington Post Columnist Haynes Johnson: "To suggest that Carter still may stagger while Kennedy somehow miraculously rises defies all reality."

All the numbers, the delegate counts and the geography suggest that those post-Illinois deductions are likely to stand up through August and that it will indeed be Carter vs. Reagan in November. But that does not mean that the voters have abandoned being devious, unruly and indecently unpredictable, in the view of the working press, as last week's New York and Connecticut primaries demonstrated. Again the headline writers had to unlimber their stuns, surprises and upsets to report Kennedy's trouncing of Carter in both states and Bush's beating of Reagan in Connecticut. As late as 3:59 p.m. on voting day, U.P.I, sent a story that began: "Despite a late surge by Senator Edward Kennedy, President Carter was heavily favored in New York and Connecticut."

The early start of the quadrennial selection process forced reporters into the fray before they had a chance to size up the political mood of the country. Says Washington Post Staff Writer Martin Schram: "We spent so much tune running around after meaningless events in 1979 --straw votes at dinners and the Florida caucuses--that we overloaded our circuits with trivia." After the primary season opened with New Hampshire on Feb. 26, newsmen found too many contests with too little tune between them (35 states now have primaries, more than double the number in 1960, over a three-month period). Washington Star Political Columnists Jack Germond and Jules Witcover observed last week: "Instead of allowing for a relatively pressure free, calm assessment of what the results of one primary or caucus may mean, the calendar has forced instant judgments."

Complicating things further is the ornery mood of the electorate. Party labels have become practically useless as analytical tools, especially now that one-third of the voters are registered as independents. Voters also have a hair-trigger sensitivity to external events: Iran, Afghanistan, Israel and the economy have sent tremors through the electorate. Even relatively minor things--Reagan's absence from a debate in Iowa or Bush's acquiescence in barring also-ran Republicans from a debate in New Hampshire--have substantially affected outcomes. Says Basil Talbott Jr., political editor of the Chicago Sun Times: "Anyone who missed the Nashua (N.H.) debate missed the Republican campaign."

Voters always use primaries to send messages to elected officials, but this year the timing of these negative votes has been problematical.

When the faltering economy failed to cause Carter problems in the early primaries, reporters began to discount its importance compared with other factors. They were caught napping when New Yorkers decided to vent their frustrations last week. Says Jeff Gralnick, executive producer of ABC's World News Tonight: "It's hard to read people who are changing their minds constantly."

The highly competitive nature of political journalism has put pressure on reporters and news organizations not only to be right but also to be right first. Says Washington Post Columnist David Broder: "People who read about political campaigns are less interested in what happened yesterday than what's going to happen tomorrow." Adds Detroit Free Press Political Writer Remer Tyson:

"We're victimized by an Andy Warhol syndrome. Everybody's going to be famous for 15 minutes. But you don't know when the guy's 15 minutes are going to come along."

News organizations love polls because they create news and free publicity, and lend a patina of respectability to prognostication. But the polls can cause problems too, especially when they are relied upon too heavily. "Numbers themselves are stupid," says New York Times Reporter Steven V. Roberts. "They don't tell you anything about the quality of attitudes."

Short on time and sleep, the boys and girls on the bus rarely get to see around the magnified image of the man they cover. Often their main sources are the candidate's aides, who rarely know more than the press does. Says Roberts: "It's like a closed circle of information that just keeps circling."

There is a bright side to being a lousy prognosticator. "An end result," says Broder, "may be that emphasis on this kind of reporting diminishes." The press and public probably would both profit if reporters and their demanding editors spent less time handicapping and more time exploring issues and analyzing the candidates' characters. Indeed there are signs that besides being a message to Jimmy Carter, the upside-down results in New York are being read by newsmen as a second chance for them. As a Washington Post editorial noted, somewhat tongue in cheek, "A veritable army of journalists, broadcasters, technicians and pollsters (not to mention assorted sages and pundits) were eyeball to eyeball with unemployment." But now it's on to Kansas, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and more thrills and chills on the primary trail.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.