Outsmarting the Questioner

Many Americans besides Gerald Ford must have got a lump in their throats at

the prospect that a troubled United States may have only Jimmy Carter and

Ronald Reagan to choose from come next November. Since this is a campaign where no one else seems to be in charge, the press has its share of responsibility for this turn of events. But the fact is, candidates have learned to outmaneuver the press, and television in particular.

In the Illinois primary, William J. Lanouette reported in the National Journal, candidates played to TV audiences with the "flyaround," stopping at airports long enough to be photographed for the local evening news. Camera lights turned on long enough for candidates to deliver a prepared two-minute opener, which is all the evening news would have time for. Invariably, when the babble of reporters' questions began, lights switched off. Issues were thus asserted, not argued. And it's no accident that the two front runners, Reagan and Carter, have been most successful at rationing, and controlling, press access to them.

TV news coverage, of course, can't be blamed for the candidates' egregiously deceptive commercials, but the coverage itself often merely records polls and gaffes. Even debates aren't about issues, or even character, but only about behavior--like watching which basketball coach gets angrier under pressure.

Perhaps the old relationship between press and politician changed forever when the two began to appear together on TV interview shows, each equally desirous of appearing to be the sensible and calm good guy to viewers. Ronald Reagan had his problems with cool, courteous and well-prepared questioners on Issues and Answers. ABC's John Laurence asked about Reagan's proposal to cut income taxes 30% as Reagan says President John F. Kennedy did, though the actual Kennedy cut was only about 20%.

Reagan: No, I don't know what the rate of cut was. I said that he went for a broad-based cut.

Laurence: If I can quote you from your own ad, you're saying on camera: "I didn't always agree with President Kennedy, but when his 30% federal tax cut became law..." Do you remember saying those words?

Reagan: I don't remember saying that because I honestly don't know what the rate of tax cut was.

Laurence: Well, perhaps someone else wrote them for you.

Reagan: I'm sure, but I don't even remember reading that.

Naturally, no candidate says he deliberately misleads the press, or confesses to repeating himself constantly to avoid the risk of saying something new. But candid admissions of such practices by their predecessors are beginning to turn up in the history books. Remember Eisenhower's contorted syntax in press conferences? Jim Hagerty, Ike's press secretary, was worried about what the President might say about the 1955 Quemoy-Matsu crisis, but Ike reassured him: "Don't worry, Jim, if that question comes up, I'll just confuse them."

This year the New York Times has put together and published the "Basic Speech" of candidates that jaded reporters must constantly listen to. The classic advice on the subject is Nixon's to his own speechwriter, William Safire: "Please, Bill, don't try to please the press by saying something new all the time. Keep saying what works. Tom Dewey told me you have to tell people something at least four times before they remember it. We all have 'the' speech. Lincoln made the House Divided speech at least 100 times before Cooper Union."

Experienced campaigners now seem to have the upper hand over press questioners. If it's any consolation, no candidate, however tempted, has so far dared to dismiss importuning reporters in the way Muhammad Ali does: "I ain't gonna answer that because if I did, you'd be just as smart as me."

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