Plague on Both Houses

Only last spring it looked as if the script for Campaign 1972 would include as a subplot a nonstop firefight between the Administration and much of the press. If George McGovern won the Democratic nomination, it seemed then, he would certainly enjoy favorable treatment at the hands of many columnists and reporters. So far, however, that has not happened; disenchantment with McGovern has drawn tough criticism even from sources that are ostensibly sympathetic to his candidacy. Though attacks on Richard Nixon have been harsher, the White House hardly needs to seek fresh quarrels with the media. The President not only has a huge lead in the opinion polls but is enjoying the spectacle of the press giving McGovern his share of lumps.

Columnist Joseph Kraft seemed to speak for a number of antiwar liberals last week when he wrote: "The basic fact is that the country is faced with an unhappy choice." With Nixon representing the Republican right and McGovern the Democratic left, Kraft observed, there are "no good options. The middle ground of American politics has been torn to tatters." Moreover, he added, McGovern's "performance in the campaign continues to raise questions about his capacity to govern." New York Times Columnist Tom Wicker, a Nixon critic of long standing, has not been quite so stern, but he called attention last week to "a long McGovern summer of fumbles and foolishness."

Wry Note. Reporters have compiled a long list of black marks against McGovern: his early waffling on welfare and wealth-distribution, his inept handling of the Eagleton affair, dissension within his own campaign organization, and contradictory statements that called his credibility into question. When McGovern came up with new tax proposals two weeks ago, David Broder noted wryly in the Washington Post that the candidate had "interrupted his devastatingly effective effort to discredit himself as a presidential contender." "McGovern's problem these days," wrote Bob Healy in the Boston Globe, "is that he does not know what he wants to say, how to say it, and with what kind of constituency he wants to be identified."

Arthur Schlesinger Jr., one of McGovern's staunchest defenders, has questioned the ability of what he calls "conventional-minded political reporters" to understand the McGovern campaign. Indeed, the press seems to have gone through three separate phases with McGovern's candidacy. Until Edmund Muskie faltered in the primaries, reporters generally consigned McGovern to also-ran status and paid little attention to his ideas. Then coverage focused on the organizational wonders of his nomination drive. During that period, observed the Christian Science Monitor's Godfrey Sperling, McGovern was getting a "free ride" from a largely uncritical press. Finally, the fare went up during the California primary, when journalists joined Hubert Humphrey in picking at McGovern's specific proposals and finding fault with them.

That criticism, together with massive coverage of the Eagleton gaffe, led the Administration to declare a ceasefire on the press. Through the spring, leading Republicans had been attacking the media--and especially TV (TIME, May 29). Signals changed abruptly in July when the new Spiro T. Agnew announced that "discussion based on reason and public interest" was preferable to "harangue and cliche." Said White House Communications Director Herbert Klein: "I don't anticipate any concerted effort to get on the press in a general way."

Other Cheek. So far, the truce has been unilateral; journalists who have vexed the Administration all along are continuing to chastise Nixon. The New York Times editorial on Nixon's acceptance speech was captioned "Call to Fear," and Columnist James Reston wrote that if the address was "any indication of the future, we are in for four more years of mistrust and division." The Chicago Daily News' Peter Lisagor said that the main ingredient of Nixon's "basic speech" is a "series of 'applause lines,' a euphemism of sorts for words and ideas that stir the passions and prejudices, and hopefully the judgment, of the listener."

The White House can afford to turn the other cheek to that sort of thing. Already the endorsements of Nixon-Agnew have started to roll in, not only from such predictable publications as the New York Daily News and National Review but also from the San Francisco Examiner, which backed Humphrey four years ago. They are bound to outnumber those for Nixon in 1968. But both the New York Times and the Washington Post are expected to swallow their disappointment and support McGovern by Election Day, if only because they could hardly feel comfortable in the company of Richard Nixon.

One major newspaper announced last week that it would not endorse any candidate for any office this year. Long Island's Newsday (circ. 440,000) termed the endorsing tradition "obsolete" and cited four reasons for its decision: 1) "A newspaper's primary obligation is not to tell its readers whom to vote for but to give them the kind of information they need to make thoughtful choices"; 2) "To avoid even the appearance of bias"; 3) "If we endorse a candidate and he wins, it could make it harder for us to maintain our independence and do our job properly"; and 4) "We were struck by the outcry earlier this summer when the executive board of the Newspaper Guild...declared the union in support of McGovern. If it is ill-advised for a union that represents some newsmen to endorse a presidential candidate, isn't it equally ill-advised for a publisher to do the same?"

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