From Monitor to Public Echo

By Thomas Griffith

Newswatch

If it has been an unsatisfactory election campaign, with issues sloganized more than argued, the melancholy state of affairs says something about the decline of the power of the press. It has been much less effective this time as the self-appointed monitor of political campaigns, stirring up the issues, keeping each side honest and the facts straight. Those who say the press is all-powerful (it is mostly said by the enemies of the press) cannot prove it by election year 1984.

In more solemn moments, the press likes to proclaim its devotion to the pub lic interest, but, as it goes about its daily routine, it is more prosaically concerned with what interests the public. In the support of some cause, the press may brave ly or stubbornly defy public opinion, but it never for long pursues topics the pub lic tunes out on. The Democratic campaign began much too early, the public quickly tired of the hassling that went on all spring between Walter Mondale, Gary Hart and Jesse Jackson, and both conventions got only so-so television ratings. A public fatigued by crisis and encouraged by returning prosperity has gone on a "mental holiday," one pollster concluded.

Reagan radiated the politics of optimism, attaching himself to the flag, bal loons and the Olympics (the summer's one really popular event). He deplored criticism of his policies as negativism. That included the press as well: in matters serious (the invasion of Grenada) and trivial, the Reagan Administration had effectively excluded the press. The President stopped holding press conferences that might embarrass him; so did George Bush. But outcries from the press against such high-handedness were muted by the discovery that the public seemed not much concerned. It is this constant sensitivity to public reactions-- endemic in an institution now all too often corporately managed rather than run by opinionated old press lords-- that mocks the idea of the all-powerful media.

With the first televised debate, the public at last tuned in: here was blood sport and a chance to measure one candidate against another. After it was over, the three networks uselessly interviewed each candidate's handlers, who argued that their man had won. Then the network news stars gingerly examined their own reactions, being careful not to sound partisan.

Dan Rather: "First let's go to our CBS News veteran political correspondent Bruce Morton." Usually a sensible fellow, Morton said of Reagan, "I thought his best moment was his closing statement. He had a couple of eloquent sentences there."

Amid much blathering commentary that night, NBC's John Chancellor was both candid and prescient: "In my judgment, the President got very tired at the end. He seemed quite disorganized in his closing remarks." The public felt that way too about the first debate. The widespread distress at Reagan's lackluster performance shook the press from its initial timid opinion that Mondale had won a narrow victory on "the debating points."

With this sanction from public opinion, Reagan's "age factor" became a big news story. ABC's Sam Donaldson predicted that to win the second debate, Reagan had only not to drool. By relieving anxieties about his health, Reagan "won" the second debate while losing again on points; the proof was that he stayed high in the polls.

Ah, those polls. Never have there been so many and so frequent (New York Times/ CBS, Washington Post/ ABC, Newsweek /Gallup, TlME/Yankelovich, etc.).

They varied only in estimating Reagan's big lead. The pervasiveness of polls is one more sign of how preoccupied the press and television are with ratings and public attitudes. Political scientists deplore covering elections like horse races.

Perhaps polls do not really do much except satisfy curiosity and provide a data base for election bets. But politicians also use polls, their own and others, to direct candidates to target spots or to order up quickie commercials to exploit or deflect some new political concern.

John Maynard Keynes once regretted devoting "our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be." Perhaps he was anticipating the most pretested presidential campaign in history.