2000 Election
Character Assassination
In
the 2000 presidential election campaign the Republican Party Noise
Machine, which worked for years to convince Americans that the
Clintons were criminally minded, used the same techniques of
character assassination to turn the Democratic standard-bearer, Al
Gore, for many years seen as an overly earnest Boy Scout, into a
liar. When Republican National Committee polling showed that the
Republicans would lose the election to the Democrats on the issues, a
“skillful and sustained 18-month campaign by Republicans to portray
the vice president as flawed and untrustworthy” was adopted, the
New
York Times
reported. Republicans accused Gore of saying things he never
said—most infamously, that he “invented” the Internet, a claim
he never made that was first attributed to him in a GOP press release
before it coursed through the media. Actually, Gore had said, “During
my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in
creating the Internet,” a claim that even former House Speaker Newt
Gingrich verified as true (Brock
6).
The
press didn't object to Gore's statement until Texas Republican
congressman Dick Armey led the charge, saying, "If the vice
president created the Internet, then I created the interstate highway
system." Republican congressman James Sensenbrenner released a
statement with the headline, delusions of grandeur: vice president
gore takes credit for creating the internet. CNN's Lou Dobbs was soon
calling Gore's remark "a case study … in delusions
of grandeur." A few days later
the word "invented" entered the narrative. On March 15, a
USA Today headline
about Gore read, inventing the internet. March 16 on Hardball,
Chris Matthews derided Gore for his
claim that he "invented the Internet." Soon the distorted
assertion was in the pages of the Los
Angeles Times and The
Boston Globe, and on the A.P. wire
service. By early June, the word "invented" was actually
being put in quotation marks, as though that were Gore's word of
choice. Here's how Mimi Hall put it in USA
Today: "A couple of Gore
gaffes, including his assertion that he 'invented' the Internet,
didn't help." And Newsday's
Elaine Povich ridiculed "Gore's widely mocked assertion that he
'invented' the Internet." …
Belatedly
attempting to defuse the situation, Gore joked about it on
Imus in the Morning, saying
that he "was up late the night before … inventing the
camcorder." But it was too late—the damage had been done
(Peretz 7).
The
right-wing media broadcast this attack and similar attacks
relentlessly, in effect giving the GOP countless hours of free
political advertising every day for months leading up to the
election. “Albert Arnold Gore Jr. is a habitual liar,” William
Bennett, a Cabinet secretary in the Reagan and first Bush
administrations, announced in the editorial pages of the Wall
Street Journal. “…Gore lies because he can’t help
himself,” neoconservative pamphleteer David Horowitz wrote. “Liar,
Liar,” screamed Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. The
conservative columnist George F. Will pointed to Gore’s “serial
mendacity” and warned that he is a “dangerous man.” “Gore may
be quietly going nuts,” National Review’s Byron York
concluded. The Washington Times agreed: “The real question
is how to react to Mr. Gore’s increasingly bizarre utterings.
Webster’s New World Dictionary defines ‘delusion’ thusly: ‘The
apparent perception, in a nervous or mental disorder, of some thing
external that is not actually present…a belief in something that is
contrary to fact or reality, resulting from deception, misconception,
or a mental disorder.’”
This
impugning of Gore’s character and the questioning of his mental
fitness soon surfaced in the regular media. The New York Times
ran an article headlined tendency to embellish fact snags Gore, while
the Boston Globe weighed in with Gore seen as “misleading.”
On ABC’s This Week, former Clinton aide George
Stephanopoulos referred to Gore’s “Pinocchio problem.” For
National Journal’s Stuart Taylor, the issue was “the
Clintonization of Al Gore, who increasingly apes his boss in
fictionalizing his life story and mangling the truth for political
gain.” Washington Post editor Bob Woodward raised the
question of whether Gore “could comprehend reality,” while
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews compared Gore to “Zelig” and insisted,
“Isn’t it getting to be delusionary” (Brock 7).
As
he was running for president, Al Gore said he'd invented the
Internet; announced that he had personally discovered Love Canal, the
most infamous toxic-waste site in the country; and bragged that he
and Tipper had been the sole inspiration for the golden couple in
Erich Segal's best-selling novel Love
Story
(made into a hit movie with
Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal). He also invented the dog, joked David
Letterman, and gave mankind fire.
Could
such an obviously intelligent man have been so megalomaniacal and
self-deluded to have actually said such things? Well, that's what the
news media told us, anyway. And on top of his supposed pomposity and
elitism, he was a calculating dork: unable to get dressed in the
morning without the advice of a prominent feminist (Naomi Wolf).
… in
the bastions of the "liberal media" that were supposed to
love Gore—The New
York Times, The
Washington Post,
The Boston Globe,
CNN—he was variously described as "repellent,"
"delusional," a vote-rigger, a man who "lies like a
rug," "Pinocchio." Eric Pooley, who covered him for
Time magazine,
says, "He brought out the creative-writing student in so many
reporters.… Everybody kind of let loose on the guy."
How
did this happen? Was the right-wing attack machine so effective that
it overwhelmed all competing messages? Was Gore's communications team
outrageously inept? Were the liberal elite bending over backward to
prove they weren't so liberal (Peretz 1)?
The
media began the coverage of the 2000 election with an inclination not
so different from that demonstrated in other recent elections—they
were eager for simple, character-driven narratives that would sell
papers and get ratings. "Particularly in presidential elections
… we in the press tend to deal in caricatures," says Dan
Rather, who was then anchoring for CBS.
…
In
2000, the media seemed to focus on a personality contest between
Bush, the folksy Texas rogue, and, as The
New York Times
referred to Gore, "Eddie
Haskell," the insincere brownnoser from “Leave
It to Beaver.” ABC anchor
Claire Shipman, who covered the 2000 campaign for NBC, says, "It
was almost a drama that was cast before anyone even took a good look
at who the candidates were."
George
Bush made it easy—he handed them a character on a plate. He had one
slogan—compassionate conservatism—and one promise aimed squarely
at denigrating Bill Clinton: to restore honor and integrity to the
White House. He was also perceived to be fun to be with. For 18
months, he pinched cheeks, bowled with oranges in the aisles of his
campaign plane, and playacted flight attendant. Frank Bruni, now the
restaurant critic for The New
York Times
but then a novice national
political-beat reporter for the same newspaper, wrote affectionately
of Bush's "folksy affability," "distinctive charm,"
"effortless banter," and the feather pillow that he
traveled with.
But
Gore couldn't turn on such charm on cue. "He doesn't pinch
cheeks," says Tipper. "Al's not that kind of guy."
With Gore still vice president, there was a certain built-in
formality and distance that reporters had to endure. Having served
the public for nearly 25 years in different roles—from congressman
legislating the toxic-waste Superfund to vice president leading the
charge to go into Bosnia—Gore could not be reduced to a sound bite.
As one reporter put it, they were stuck with "the government
nerd." "The reality is," says Eli Attie, who was
Gore's chief speechwriter and traveled with him, "very few
reporters covering the 2000 campaign had much interest in what really
motivated Gore and the way he spent most of his time as vice
president: the complexities of government and policy, and not just
the raw calculus of the campaign trail."
Muddying
the waters further was the fact that the Gore campaign early on was
in a state of disarray—with a revolving door of staffers who didn't
particularly see the value in happy chitchat. "We basically
treated the press with a whip and a chair … and made no real effort
to schmooze at all," says Gore strategist Carter Eskew. "I
fault myself." It was plain to the reporters that this was not
the tight ship of Bush's campaign, led by the "iron triangle"
of Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, and Joe Allbaugh.
"The
campaign went through several official slogans," says The
New York Times's Katharine Seelye, who would become one of
the more critical reporters who covered Gore. "They had a hard
time latching onto a clear idea of what the campaign was about.
[Democratic strategist] James Carville once said to me that if you
want reporters to write about hamburger, you give them hamburger. You
don't give them French fries and ice cream."
Gore
needed to give them hamburger, as Carville put it—a simple,
dramatic character; a simple, dramatic story line; a 10-word slogan.
If Gore couldn't provide it, the press would. As the campaign wore
on, the media found a groove they could settle into: wonk so
desperate to become president he'll do or say anything, even make
stuff up. It complemented perfectly the other son of a politician
running for president: irresistible frat boy who, when it came to the
presidency, could take it or leave it.
…
As
with all campaigns, the coverage of the 2000 election would be driven
by a small number of beat reporters. In this case, two women at the
most influential newspapers in the country: Seelye from The
New York Times and
Ceci Connolly from The Washington Post.
A
prominent Washington journalist describes them as "edgy,
competitive, wanting to make their mark," and adds that they
"reinforced each other's prejudices."
…
Building
on the narrative established by the Love
Story and Internet episodes, Seelye, her critics charge,
repeatedly tinged what should have been straight reporting with
attitude or hints at Gore's insincerity. Describing a stump speech in
Tennessee, she wrote, "He also made an appeal based on what he
described as his hard work for the state—as if a debt were owed in
return for years of service." Writing how he encouraged an
audience to get out and vote at the primary, she said, "Vice
President Al Gore may have questioned the effects of the internal
combustion engine, but not when it comes to transportation to the
polls. Today he exhorted a union audience in Knoxville, Iowa, to pile
into vans—not cars, but gas-guzzling vans—and haul friends to the
Iowa caucuses on January 24." She would not just say that he was
simply fund-raising. "Vice President Al Gore was back to
business as usual today—trolling for money," she wrote. In
another piece, he was "ever on the prowl for money."
The
disparity between her reporting and Bruni's coverage of Bush for the
Times
was
particularly galling to the Gore camp. "It's one thing if the
coverage is equal—equally tough or equally soft," says Gore
press secretary Chris Lehane. "In 2000, we would get stories
where if Gore walked in and said the room was gray we'd be beaten up
because in fact the room was an off-white. They would get stories
about how George Bush's wing tips looked as he strode across the
stage." Melinda Henneberger, then a political writer at the
Times,
says
that such attitudes went all the way up to the top of the newspaper.
… "… Al Gore was a laughline at the paper, while where Bush
was concerned we seemed to suffer from the soft bigotry of low
expectations."
Connolly,
too, at The Washington Post, wrote about Gore's "grubbing
for dollars inside a monastery," and "stretching the
[fund-raising] rules as far as he can." Her stories about
the distortions extended the life of the
distortions themselves. In one article, she knocked Gore for "the
hullabaloo over the Internet—from [his] inflated claim to his
slowness to tamp out the publicity brush fire." In another,
co-written with David Von Drehle, she claimed, "From
conservative talk radio titan Rush Limbaugh and the New York Post
(headline: 'Liar, Liar') to neutral papers across the country,
the attack on Gore's credibility is resonating."
…
On
December 1, 1999, Connolly—and Seelye—misquoted Gore in a damning
way. Their error was picked up elsewhere and repeated, and snowballed
into a political nightmare. Gore was speaking to a group of students
at Concord High School, in New Hampshire, about how young people
could effect change. He described a letter he had received as a
congressman in 1978 from a girl in Toone, Tennessee, about how her
father and grandfather had gotten mysteriously ill. He had looked
into the matter and found that the town was a toxic-waste site. He
went on:
"I
looked around the country for other sites like that. I found a little
place in upstate New York called Love Canal. I had the first hearing
on that issue and Toone, Tennessee. That was the one you didn't hear
of, but that was the one that started it all.… We passed a major
national law to clean up hazardous dumpsites, and we had new efforts
to stop the practices that ended up poisoning water around the
country.… It all happened because one high-school student got
involved."
Jill
Hoffman, a high-school senior in the audience who was helping to film
the event, says, “I remember thinking, I really, really like what
he has to say.” But what Seelye and Connolly zeroed in on was Gore
yet again claiming credit for something he didn’t do—
“discovering” Love Canal (which was, in fact, discovered by the
people who lived there). In addition to mischaracterizing his
somewhat ambiguous statement, they
misquoted
him, claiming he said, “I
was
the one that started it all,” instead of “that
was
the one that started it all.” The next day, Seelye offered a
friendlier account of Gore’s visit to the school. Connolly repeated
the misquote. In an article titled “First ‘Love Story,’ Now
Love Canal,” she wrote:
The
man who mistakenly claimed to have inspired the movie "Love
Story" and to have invented the Internet says he didn't quite
mean to say he discovered a toxic waste site when he said at a high
school forum Tuesday in New Hampshire: "I found a little place
in upstate New York called Love Canal." Gore went on to brag
about holding the "first hearing on that issue" and said "I
was the one that started it all."
The
story picked up steam. “I was the one that started it all” became
a quote featured in U.S. News &
World Report and
was repeated on the chat shows. On ABC’s This
Week, host George
Stephanopoulos said, “Gore, again, revealed his Pinocchio problem.
Says he was the model for Love Story, created
the Internet. And this time he sort of discovered Love Canal.” On
two consecutive nights of
Hardball, Chris
Matthews brought up this same trio as examples of Gore’s
“delusionary” thinking. “What is it, the Zelig guy who keeps
saying, ‘I was the main character in Love Story. I
invented the Internet. I invented Love Canal.’ It reminds me of
Snoopy thinking he’s the Red Baron.” “It became part of the
vocabulary,” Matthews says today. “I don’t think it had a
thunderous impact on the voters.” He concedes, however, that such
stories were repeated too many times in the media.
…
A
study conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center and the
Project for Excellence in Journalism found that 76 percent of stories
about Gore in early 2000 focused on either the theme of his alleged
lying or that he was marred by scandal, while the most common theme
about Bush was that he was “a different kind of Republican.”
Al
Gore suffered other forms of disparagement.
One
obstacle course the press set up was which candidate would lure
voters to have a beer with them at the local bar. "Journalists
made it seem like that was a legitimate way of choosing a president,"
says Newsweek
columnist
Jonathan Alter. "They also wrongly presumed, based on nothing,
that somehow Bush was more likable." Chris Matthews contends
that "the likability issue was something decided by the viewers
of the debates, not by the commentators," but adds, "The
last six years have been a powerful bit of evidence that we have to
judge candidates for president on their preparation for the office
with the same relish that we assess their personalities."
Maureen
Dowd boiled the choice between Gore and Bush down to that between the
"pious smarty-pants" and the "amiable idler," and
made it perfectly clear which of the presidential candidates had a
better chance of getting a date. "Al Gore is desperate to get
chicks," she said in her column. "Married chicks. Single
chicks. Old chicks. Young chicks. If he doesn't stop turning off
women, he'll never be president."
"I
bet he is in a room somewhere right now playing Barry White CDs and
struggling to get mellow," she wrote in another.
Meanwhile,
though Dowd certainly questioned Bush's intellect in some columns,
she seemed to be charmed by him—one of the "bad boys,"
"rascals," and a "rapscallion." …
As
the Daily Howler noted, MSNBC anchor Brian Williams went after Gore's
clothes at least five times in one week. "Here is a guy taking
off his suits.… This is the casual sweater look—what's going on
here?" … "He would have been in a suit a month ago."
… "He's wearing these polo shirts that don't always look
natural on him." Williams's frequent guest *Newsweek'*s
Howard Fineman later chimed in: "I covered his last presidential
campaign, in 1988. One day he was in the conservative blue suit, the
next he was playing lumberjack at the V.F.W. hall in New Hampshire."
…
The
trivial continued to dominate during the postmortem following Gore
and Bush's first debate, on October 3, 2000. The television media
were sure Gore won—at first. But then Republican operatives
promptly spliced together a reel of Gore sighing, which was then sent
to right-wing radio outlets. Eighteen hours later, the pundits could
talk of little else. "They could hear you audibly sighing or
sounding exasperated as Governor Bush was answering questions,"
Katie Couric scolded him the next day on the Today
show. "Do you think
that's presidential behavior?" For the *Times's
Frank Bruni, the sighs weren't as galling as Gore's familiarity with
the names of foreign leaders. "It was not enough for Vice
President Al Gore to venture a crisp pronunciation of Milosevic, as
in Slobodan," he wrote. "Mr. Gore had to go a step further,
volunteering the name of Mr. Milosevic's challenger Vojislav
Kostunica" (Peretz
7-17).
During
my internet search to find material to write this post, I came upon
the following
notes written by a UCLA professor, who failed
to disclose
his
name.
George
W. Bush, whose surreal campaign compares to absolutely nothing
that I have ever seen in my life, not even Richard Nixon's, not even
George Bush Senior's, has been a fanatical practitioner of
projection. The conscience-wrecking pundits constantly remark on
what a clean campaign Bush has been running, and yet he and his
people have been calling his opponent a liar just about every day
since the campaign began. It's somehow in the nature of the new
political jargon that nobody notices how routine and how offensive it
is. In April, for example, Gore said that Bush's foreign policy
proposals treat China and Russia as enemies. USA Today
(5/1/00) quotes Condoleeza Rice as follows:
[Bush] has said that China is a competitor and we should reach out to Russia. It is very much
like the vice president to distort [Bush's] record. In other words, not just that Gore had distorted Bush's record, not just that Gore has often
distorted Bush's record, but that "it is very much like" Gore to distort Bush's record -- an attack on his character, and on the thinnest of arguments. Of course, it's theoretically possible that
these routine character attacks are right. But are they right in reality? The fact is, the Bush
campaign is now preparing to broadcast television commercials that make two harsh
accusations
against his opponent -- both of which are false. Not just arguably
false but straightforwardly false. This commercial makes the grave
claim that Mr. Bush's opponent raised funds at a Buddhist temple.
This is not only unproven, but as even prominent Republicans have
observed, it is simply not true. The evidence is overwhelming --
it's not even a close call. Yet the media routinely refer to the
Buddhist temple thing as a "fund-raiser", even though it
was not any such thing. Most of the basic facts of the case are
never reported, and those that are reported are routinely spun in the
most deceptive fashion.
The Bush advertisement's other claim is that Al Gore falsely claimed to have invented the
Internet. This, too, is false. It simply never happened. The advertisement quotes half of a
sentence, the first half of which makes clear what Mr. Gore plainly and obviously meant -- the accurate, true claim, forcefully acknowledged by the Internet's scientific leadership, that
he did the pioneering legislative work that made the Internet possible. This is it: this is the Bush campaign's best shot, and all they've got is lies. And not just any lies,
but projective lies: in order to lie about their opponent, they are accusing him of being a liar.
Everything they say about their opponent is actually true about them. … … … now, in the darkest of all possible projections, we're hearing the first media rumblings that
maybe
Gore's mental health is suspect, given that he and his family went
into therapy after his son was hit by a car (Some
6).
The
well-orchestrated media cacophony had its intended effect: The
election was far more competitive than it should have been—and,
indeed, was decided before the Supreme Court stepped in—because of
negative voter perceptions of Gore’s honesty and trustworthiness.
In the final polls before the election and in exit polls on Election
Day, voters said they favored Gore’s program over George W. Bush’s.
Gore won substantial majorities not only for his position on most
specific issues but also for his overall thrust. The conservative
Bush theme of tax cuts and small government was rejected by voters in
favor of the more liberal Gore theme of extending prosperity more
broadly and standing up to corporate interests. Yet while Bush shaded
the truth and misstated facts throughout the campaign on everything
from the size of Gore’s federal spending proposals to his own
record as governor of Texas, by substantial margins voters thought
Bush was more truthful than Gore. According to an ABC exit poll, of
personal qualities that mattered most to voters, 24 percent ranked
“honest/trustworthy” first—and they went for Bush over Gore by
a margin of 80 percent to 15 percent. Seventy-four percent of voters
said “Gore would say anything,” while 58 percent thought Bush
would. Among white, college-educated, male voters, Gore’s
“untruthfulness” was cited overwhelmingly as a reason not to vote
for him, far more than any other reason (Brock
7).
Works
cited:
Brock, David, “The Republican Noise Machine.” Center for American Progress Action Fund. June 30, 2004. Web. https://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/general/news/2004/06/30/882/the-republican-noise-machine/
Peretz,
Evgenia, “Going after Gore.” Vanity
Fair,
September 4, 2007. Web.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/10/gore200710
“Some Notes on the Campaign Before I Disappear for a While.” Web.
https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/notes/00-9-3.html
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