Campaign That Was: Some Bright Spots

If the 1972 presidential campaigners did not cover themselves with glory, neither did the nation's press. With Nixon cloistered in the White House and McGovern on the defensive and increasingly shrill, there was little cogent dialogue to report or analyze. Instead of seeking out substantive issues, the press too often devoted itself to a running story on polls and predictions. Since these differed merely on the magnitude of Nixon's forthcoming victory, the campaign coverage never worked up even a small measure of suspense. There was plenty of rancorous rhetoric. The New York Times's Tom Wicker lashed out bitterly at Nixon as a preacher of falsehoods whose pious pledges are "obscene"; just as relentlessly, Syndicated Columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak belittled the "ludicrously inept" Democratic campaign.

Summing up press coverage of the campaign Columbia Journalism Review Editor Alfred Balk lamented: "My heart bleeds for our trade." Yet there were some praiseworthy exceptions by reporters and writers who dug beneath the bleak surface to uncover new material and insights. The greatest impact was probably made by the Knight Newspapers' Clark Hoyt, who unearthed Tom Eagleton's medical history. Laurels also go to the Washington Post's investigative team of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, young reporters who diligently pursued the Watergate affair and, during much of October, made daily national headlines with their findings. Other outstanding performances:

> Author Gary Wills (Nixon Agonistes) wrote brilliantly on the metaphysics of American politics. A man of both erudition and back-room savvy, Wills favored McGovern, but in New York magazine he skewered the Democratic candidate's "motiveless benignity": "He does what he does because it is right, and it is right because he does it." Writing in the New York Times Magazine on the Sunday before Election Day, Wills scoffed at liberal fears that Nixon's re-election would herald the end of freedom: "Learning to live with Nixon is just the prosaic, unappealing task of getting along with ourselves."

> David S. Broder, chief political correspondent for the Washington Post, based his often prescient columns on a thorough grasp of Washington realities and extensive travels through the country. Broder pinpointed a paradox in the voters' mood: "We're not notably consistent in any respect. We want to keep the Russians and Chinese in their places, but we want to end the draft. We want the benefits of mass production techniques, but we want relief from the drudgery of assembly-line jobs."

> The Chicago Daily News's Washington correspondent Peter Lisagor treated both parties with commendable fairness while panning a campaign he called "a dismal disappointment, the least ennobling in our experience." Mike Royko, Lisagor's Chicago-based colleague, deftly pointed out the irony of Mayor Richard Daley's quick return to party eminence after being unseated by McGovernites at the Democratic Convention: "He's getting his revenge, all right...He just sits back and lets the reformers and new-politics crowd come to him, asking: 'Steal one for us, Dick.' "

> Political Analyst Richard Reeves contributed a series of sophisticated, vignette-laden articles to New York magazine. His account of McGovern's hapless efforts to lure back the urban Jewish vote included an illustrative bit of hyperbole: "When the candidate decided to make his Israel speech in a New York synagogue on a Friday night in June, it took New Yorkers three days to explain to McGovern and his staff why they couldn't do it on the Sabbath."

> "The Nixon Watch," a regular feature in the liberal New Republic by John Osborne, continued its tradition of cool, objective observation of White House activity. No fan of Nixon's, Osborne nonetheless admired the effectiveness of the Republican campaign strategy: "It is McGovern, not Nixon, who has been driven to the harsh and shrill extremes that have been Nixon trademarks." Watching Nixon deflect questions on Watergate, Osborne grudgingly commended "a display of mixed gall and skill that I've never seen equaled." He also noted and deplored the effect on reporters of the "mesmerizing power of the presidency."

> William F. Buckley's conservative National Review early published a thorough analysis of McGovern's controversial economic theories, claiming through charts and figures that McGovern's proposed retooling of the federal budget would create an additional deficit of $100 billion a year. For one thing, increased taxation of estates would not yield as much as McGovern estimated, wrote Associate Editor Alan Reynolds! "Surely it is obvious that more donations would be made by people while alive, that there would be more profligate consumption, that people would work less and retire sooner."

> In the campaign's closing weeks, Walter Cronkite and reporters for the CBS Evening News devoted large blocks of air time to detailed reports on the Russian wheat-sale scandal, Watergate and the candidates' positions on diverse issues. CBS's willingness to go beyond superficial coverage of daily charges and countercharges was the lone bright picture in network television's spotty campaign coverage.

> Unlike their colleagues of the written word, cartoonists found the campaign an easy mark. The Denver Post's Oliphant was consistently on target, and that target was Nixon--Nixon grimly outfitting Agnew with a fright wig and electric guitar for the benefit of the 18-year-old voters, Nixon attacked by creeping "Watergate bugs." Don Hesse of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat reserved much of his fire for McGovern's foot-in-mouth campaign statements and woeful showing in the polls; a characteristic Hesse offering shows McGovern, in tattered football gear, telling a dispirited huddle, "Cheer up--we're 3rd down and 85 yds. to go." More often than not, the press found itself in that same dilemma--playing catch-up ball in a sprawling, chaotic game. In retrospect, readers must be grateful that team members scored as many times as they did.

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