Bill Clinton Takes On the Media

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 14, 2008 9:03 AM

In case anyone doubted that Bill Clinton still harbors considerable resentment toward the press, it bubbled to the surface last week.

He was, quite understandably, promoting his wife's candidacy. His chief mission, therefore, was to rough up Barack Obama. But his decision to rip news organizations for not reporting on what he sees as inconsistencies in Obama's record on Iraq raises an intriguing question.

Have the media failed to adequately scrutinize the Illinois senator's stance on Iraq? Or was the former president simply trying to prod the press into carrying the campaign's water on an argument that Hillary Clinton herself has not raised?

"It is wrong," Bill Clinton said Monday in New Hampshire, "that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior judgment and how he had been against the war in every year, enumerating the years -- and never got asked one time, not once, 'well, how could you say that, when you said in 2004 you didn't know how you would have voted on the resolution, you said in 2004 there was no difference between you and George Bush on the war . . . and there's no difference in your voting record and Hillary's ever since?' . . .

"Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen."

Obama has long contrasted his 2002 opposition to the war, when he was an Illinois legislator, with Clinton's Senate vote to authorize the war. Hillary Clinton aides want the press to highlight Obama's history on the issue because they fear their candidate will be branded as negative if she does so.

Bill Clinton was referring to a July 2004 New York Times piece that said Obama "declined to criticize Senators Kerry and Edwards for voting to authorize the war, although he said he would not have done the same based on the information he had at the time. 'But, I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports,' Mr. Obama said. 'What would I have done? I don't know. What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made.' '' So "I don't know" was just a caveat.

The next day, the Chicago Tribune quoted Obama as saying: "There's not much of a difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage."

But the media haven't totally ignored this. On "Meet the Press" in November, Tim Russert asked Obama to explain both quotes. Obama replied that during the 2004 convention, "it probably was the wrong time for me to be making a strong case against our party's nominees' decisions when it came to Iraq." A month earlier, CNN's Candy Crowley asked Obama about the 2004 comments. In March 2007, The Washington Post covered the issue when Mark Penn, Clinton's chief strategist, raised it at a forum.

Beyond that, a front-page Post story last September said Obama "tempered his rhetoric and his opposition once he arrived in the Capitol, rejecting timetables for withdrawal and backing war funding bills." A front-page Times piece early last year said that "the level of his criticism lowered" after Obama came to Washington.

Other media mentions have been spotty, however, fueling the argument that journalists aren't taking the same magnifying glass to his record that they apply to just about everything Clinton does.

"Given that Senator Obama has put forward his 2002 position, we would have expected the media to look into the comment he made in 2004 that his views on Iraq were about the same as George Bush's," Penn says. "We think it's up to the media to look at everybody's record. Because that didn't seem to happen, we're now in a phase where we're talking about our record and his."

But Obama spokesman Bill Burton dismisses the notion that his boss has wavered on Iraq. "They're taking a small slice of his words to make an inaccurate point. He has always said that the case was not made," Burton says.

The former president missed the mark when he invoked "the Obama thing calling Hillary the senator from Punjab. . . . Or what about the Obama handout that was covered up, the press never reported on, implying that I was a crook. Scathing criticism over my financial reports." (He couldn't resist adding that former special prosecutor Ken Starr "indicted innocent people to find out that I wouldn't take a nickel.")

There was no coverup. In June, the Clinton camp obtained -- and gave the Times -- an attack memo that Obama's team had been circulating to reporters on a not-for-attribution basis. It referred to Clinton's political designation as "D-Punjab" (citing the couple's personal and financial ties to India) and suggested conflicts in Bill Clinton's relationship with California multimillionaire Ron Burkle. The Times reported the memo's contents as part of a Page 1 story that also said the Clintons had sold millions of dollars in stocks from their blind trust to avoid potential conflicts, and noted the former president's investments with Burkle.

Dozens of news organizations reported on the "Punjab" memo. But Obama defused it by admitting his staff had made a "dumb mistake."

Bill Clinton, who first got steamed at the press over the 1992 stories on Gennifer Flowers and Whitewater, undoubtedly believes that his wife isn't getting a fair shake. But he's also pretty good at working the refs.

Timesman Returns

Nearly five years after he was forced to resign as the top editor of the New York Times, Howell Raines is taking on a new role: media critic.

He will write a monthly column for Portfolio, the new Conde Nast magazine. And his perspective is that of a battle-scarred veteran: "I've got more arrows in me than Custer's horse," he says.

From his home in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, Raines, 64, sounds a bit mellowed: "It's been refreshing and a bit daunting to try to think about writing something that hasn't been said 30 times. I don't have any thunderbolts to throw at my former profession." He plans to focus on campaign coverage.

Raines was ousted from the Times in 2003 during a backlash against his handling of the Jayson Blair fabrication scandal and his domineering management style. In a scathing Atlantic Monthly article the following year, he infuriated ex-colleagues by accusing the paper of a "culture of complaint," "clock-punching atmosphere," "indifference to competition" and "sloppy work . . . accepted as adequate."

Now, says Raines, who is absorbed in writing a Civil War novel, "I don't want to be seen as fighting old battles." While it would "feel artificial" to avoid critiquing the Times in his new column, "five years pretty well healed a lot of loose ends that might be dangling from my experience."

Collateral Damage

Carol Leigh Hutton, who has been talking about blowing up the newsroom at the San Jose Mercury News, may have pushed too hard. She is out as executive editor after just seven months on the job, with a replacement immediately named, after promoting a radical redesign that would have cut the paper, now four or five sections, to three while also shrinking the scope of the coverage.

Staying Put

Paul Begala says he's never had a conversation about joining Hillary Clinton's campaign -- despite reports to the contrary on Fox News.

The CNN commentator was swamped with calls last week after Fox's Major Garrett quoted sources as saying the Clinton camp planned to bring in Begala and James Carville as top advisers. Begala says that while he has donated to Clinton's campaign, he has not offered even informal advice or, as Garrett reported, joined a conference call.

"Whoever told you I am joining Hillary's campaign fed you some bum info," Begala wrote in an e-mail to Garrett. "It's just not true. Or as I say to my boys, N.H.D. Not. Happening. Dude." Garrett replied that he would "take it under advisement" and added Begala's denial to his reports.

"He has better sources about what I'm going to do than me?" asks Begala, who recounted the exchange on the Huffington Post.

Garrett says his sources insist the story is on target. "Just because someone denies what you're reporting doesn't mean you're in fact wrong," he says. "I have a record in this town, when I'm wrong, of admitting I'm wrong instantly. . . . I feel extremely good about my sources."

Says Begala: "I don't accuse him of making it up. I accuse him of not checking with me."

Carville, also a CNN analyst, says he "never had a conversation with anyone" about joining the campaign and was never called by Fox. He calls himself a "friend of the family" and says he did write a strategy memo for Clinton.

In Other News . . .

By the way, Hillary and Tim Russert really got into it when he played only the "fairy tale" part of her husband's attack on "Meet the Press," and she insisted--accurately, in my view--that Bill was talking about Obama's record on Iraq, not his entire candidacy. Some civil rights leaders have taken offense at that and Hillary appearing to diminish the accomplishments of Martin Luther King Jr.On the other hand, the Obama camp has put out a memo detailing how Hillary and her supporters have made what are depicted as racial references, including Andrew Cuomo's incredibly inelegant comment that Obama tries to "shuck and jive" his way through news conferences. (Read it here.)

Mitt Romney either has an eight-point lead, a smaller lead or is tied in tomorrow's Michigan primary, according to a spate of new polls. And we all know how accurate primary polls are.

But John McCain has soared nationally in a NYT poll: "Republican voters have sharply altered their views of their presidential candidates following the early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, with Senator John McCain, widely written off just weeks ago, now viewed more favorably than any of his major competitors."

I ask again: widely written off by who? The New York Times and everyone else in the media!

The poll has McCain at 33, Mike Huckabee at 18 and Rudy Giuliani at 10, down from 22 last month.

"Thirty-three percent of Republican primary voters in the poll named Mr. McCain, of Arizona, as their choice, up from 7 percent a month ago." Mitt is in single digits.

On the Democratic side, "About half (49 percent) of black Democratic primary voters said they planned to vote for Mr. Obama, while 34 percent said they backed Mrs. Clinton. Among white Democratic primary voters, 42 percent said they were supporting Mrs. Clinton, while 24 percent said they backed Mr. Obama."

In a WashPost/ABC poll, Hillary has a 42-37 lead over Obama, which is a big jump for him (he trailed by 27 on Nov. 1). For the GOP, McCain leads Huckabee 28-20, but Romney is at 19 and Rudy 15.

I agree that the media are addicted to polls, and that polls are sometimes wrong, but I don't see how this Arianna proposal helps America:

"Do we want our political debate dominated not by issues but by who is up and who is down, who is hot and who is not?

"No wonder politicians have become pathological people pleasers, addicted to the short-term buzz of a bump in the polls, who can't even get dressed in the morning without consulting the latest numbers.

"But we can't expect these polling junkies -- both in the media and those running for office -- to kick the habit on their own. We have to stage an intervention. And it's as easy as hanging up your phone. Response rates are already abysmally low -- often dropping below 25%. So if enough of us refuse to answer, the polling data will become so unrepresentative and unreliable even the media would have to admit it was useless."

But aside from the ephemeral horse-race stuff, isn't it useful to know what people think--or have a rough approximation of what they think--about Iraq, health care, immigration and so on? Hasn't Arianna cited polls showing, for instance, public disillusionment with the war when it suits her purpose?

Given our MTV attention spans, Bill Kristol has a notably succinct take on Thursday's GOP debate:

" Best exchange. Thompson-Huckabee. Thompson launched a powerful attack on Huckabee from the right. Huckabee responded with a strong defense of his record that would have appealed to less ideological voters. Both were high quality minutes-and-a-half.

" Most improved. Thompson. Woke up, smelled the coffee, and showed his stuff.

" Best in foreign policy. McCain. Very strong and eloquent on the surge.

" Failed to do what he had to do. Romney. He had to get some momentum in Michigan. But after McCain slapped him down in the first exchange, Romney was passive and not much of a presence.

" Best political skills. Huckabee. The guy's unusually talented, and still underestimated inside the Beltway.

" Helped himself in Michigan. McCain. Strong as commander in chief, and held his own on economics.

" Helped himself in South Carolina. Huckabee. Boffo answer on religion.

" Best joke. Thompson. Virgins.

" Shadow of his former self. Giuliani. Where did the zip go?"

Many conservatives were dazzled, for once, by Arthur Branch. Here's Andrew Sullivan:

"For me, the big news was that Fred Thompson is alive. He came out swinging against Huckabee in ways that frankly surprised me. Funny at times, acerbic at others, he seemed much more comfortable as a campaigner. I also have to say that on national security, McCain was simply far and away the most reassuring as a potential president. When he ran through his national security experience, you could almost see Giuliani shrinking visibly into his suit. His weak points were his somewhat desperate plea to 'round up' illegal immigrants and his [demagogic] resort to calling any critique of the Iraq occupation as somehow an attack on the troops. Please."

Has the Democratic contest become a class war?

It's not unusual to hear calls for an also-ran to drop out, but this one by Lawrence O'Donnell is striking for its anger:

"John Edwards is a loser. He has won exactly two elections in his life and lost 31. Only one of his wins and all of his losses were in presidential primaries and caucuses. He remains perfectly positioned to continue to lose with a Kucinich-like consistency. Nothing but egomania keeps Edwards in the race now. All presidential candidates are egomaniacs but some of them have party status worth preserving that forces them to drop out when they hit the wall. A loser like Edwards has no status or dignity to lose. Campaigning and losing is his life. So, he will continue his simple-minded, losing campaign and deny Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton the one-on-one contest they deserve.

"If John Edwards stays in the race, he might, in the end, become nothing other than the Southern white man who stood in the way of the black man. And for that, he would deserve a lifetime of liberal condemnation."

Are we in the MSM reducing certain candidates to stereotypes? The Nation's Patricia Williams lets us have it:

"To judge by the popular media, being 'presidential' is akin to winning a popularity contest in middle school.

"It's all about what they wear, how tall they are, how much they spend on a haircut, whether their spouses are spousal enough, who has a 'forced jackal laugh' (as the Guardian described Hillary Clinton), who is 'blessed with a weighty baritone' (as Newsweek described Obama) . . .

"It's worth looking at the race and gender narratives already circulating, whose exploitation we need to resist. Barack Obama personifies a civil rights triumph for which we as a society have yearned but are a long way from achieving (given prison, health and poverty statistics alone). But even as he silently telegraphs the image of longed-for victory, should he actually talk too much about racial equality or all that remains to be done, he risks reducing his iconicity as one who floats above it all. In the months to come, I expect he'll be prodded and poked about this, in an all-out media effort to conform him in the polarizing, no-win contradictions that weigh upon his typecasting as a non-raced race man.

"Thus far he's done an admirable job of avoiding the trap; he uses the rhetorical tropes of the civil rights movement in an expansive, inclusive way. He has attracted a constituency of whites and blacks, women and men, Asians and independents--and even a few Republicans. But there are things to brace for: if history is any guide, his suavity will be construed as too silky smooth, his suits too tailored, his 'agenda' too black. Maureen Dowd says that the Obamas 'radiate a sense that they are owed.' Newsweek sneaked in that Obama tends 'toward the grandiose' and that his wife, Michelle, keeps him from 'getting too full of himself.' Owed? Grandiose? Intimations of 'uppityness' will waft up in new guises . . .

"As Senator Clinton campaigned [in Iowa], it was to the snarky drone of Rush Limbaugh's chuckling about her wrinkles and babbling about how no one wants to watch a middle-aged woman grow old. Dowd cast Clinton as a 'dominatrix' 'control freak' who 'whips' men into line, who 'owns' Obama by snubbing him. On NPR, an Iowan who identified herself as 95 tittered in her papery voice that 'all the women are in love' with Obama. No such happy flirtation with 'all the guys' is attributed to Clinton, the pants-wearing, perpetually suspected lesbian murderess of Vince Foster."

So apparently, we slap everyone around.

Critics of the NYT's decision to hire Bill Kristol as a columnist have gone way too far, says ombudsman Clark Hoyt. Sample letter: "That rotten, traiterous [sic] piece of filth should be hung by the ankles from a lamp post and beaten by the mob rather than gaining a pulpit at ANY self-respecting news organization."

So nice when we can have a civil discussion, isn't it?

Howard Kurtz hosts CNN's weekly media program, "Reliable Sources."