Bill Clinton’s former spokesman, Mike McCurry, has been busy on the collegiate lecture circuit offering revisionist history to students at Princeton University. In an address to students yesterday, McCurry attempted to rewrite history by depicting his former boss (McCurry was White House Press Secretary from 1995 to 1998) as the victim of a media conspiracy that hobbled all efforts by Clinton to grapple with “more substantive topics.”
As reported by the Daily Princetonian, McCurry’s explanation for former President Clinton’s political failures included a casual dismissal of Clinton’s penchant for personal scandal. McCurry jokingly stated Clinton’s political legacy would forever be a “stain,” in clear reference to his messy relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Were it not for Clinton’s lack of discipline, McCurry opined, Clinton could have risen much higher in his political skills and accomplishments. At first that might seem to be a candid and objective assessment from someone who worked so closely with the former president. Then McCurry proceeded to offer an incredibly deceptive argument for the reason Clinton’s legacy will be a “stain.”
Though McCurry never used the term “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” to label the forces that in his opinion made certain Bill Clinton could focus on nothing other than his personal scandals, he did not have to. When setting out to enumerate the three factors that most influenced the Clinton presidency, McCurry decried the growth of the Internet and “partisan media networks” that focused only on Clinton’s scandals. It is easy to sympathize with McCurry, who must have found it difficult to try and steer media inquiries away from scandal after scandal to more important matters, like Clinton’s failed efforts to respond to the first World Trade Center bombing, the embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, the missed opportunity to capture or kill Bin Laden . . . . On second thought, Mr. McCurry, perhaps it worked out better for you that the focus was NOT on the administration’s performance record. Hiding behind the skirts of the Monica scandal permitted you to market your boss as a victim of a vicious media assault, a figure to pity, not to impeach.
Shall we begin with the “blame the partisan media networks” defense? When a former Clinton spokesman uses the term “partisan media networks,” to what networks and web sites is he referring? The author of the Daily Princetonian story specifically mentioned the Drudge Report as an example of electronic media that McCurry noted would not look beyond scandals including gays in the military, "White House sleepovers," Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky and the impeachment proceedings. McCurry was quoted as saying, "This was the press' focus day after day. There was an inability to change to more substantive topics." Perhaps McCurry should consider that personal character, self-restraint, and honesty ARE substantive topics, especially when the man holding the most powerful position in the world clearly lacked all three.
What McCurry failed to include in his “expert” assessment of the rise of alternative media, such as talk radio and the Internet, was the context in which they began to flourish. McCurry railed on “partisan media networks” while omitting the obvious: the existing major media networks were then and continue to be blatantly partisan, made up almost entirely of liberal-leaning journalists who intentionally select story titles that mislead and use terms that evoke memories rather than reality (quagmire, anyone?). One need look no further than recent exposures of New York Times reporters’ story fabrications or the CBS News Bush National Guard episode during the 2004 campaign to know which party members of the media personally prefer in power. I will never forget standing at a major political event on election night in 2000 and seeing the unmistakable glee on the faces of CNN’s live news team when they initially called Florida for Gore. That memory is contrasted so clearly with the palpable gloom I observed in the same crew when that fictitious result was retracted and Florida went to Bush instead. There are numerous books and columns exposing the liberal leanings of the traditional media, but none of these address it as effectively as Hugh Hewitt’s revealing interview with ABC News Political Director Mark Halperin. Halperin seemed to believe he was completely impartial, but note his descriptions of his own staff at ABC News. Halperin clearly saw that the vast majority of employees at major media outlets were liberal Democrats and that media bosses like himself needed to correct this imbalance because it was harmful to objective reporting. I find it impossible to accept that McCurry, a former White House Press Secretary, could innocently omit this truth while telling Princeton students the new conservative media networks were responsible for stalling Clinton’s presidency.
Mr. McCurry, here is a novel idea: stop rewriting history by asserting that alternative conservative media introduced media conflict and an unhealthy focus on scandals. There were no conservative “partisan media networks” in existence during Watergate, Iran-Contra, or other “scandals” during Republican administrations. The media, liberal or conservative, have always sought scandal (apparently this former press secretary is not acquainted with the historical term Muckrakers) because we as a society seem to crave it and seek after it for entertainment. The talk radio and Internet phenomenon, including the blogosphere, sprouted because the majority of Americans grew weary of hearing and reading only the liberal interpretation of the news. Fox News, which is often attacked by liberals for being too conservative, was a breath of fresh air ten years ago because it presented stories from the novel perspective that there were in fact two sides and each was worthy of being reported. With all the major network and cable news channels marching in liberal lockstep, they were forced to compete with each other for shocking news, since they all shared the same opinions and thus none of their reporting was original. With conservative media now presenting its side of the political debate, all networks, liberal or conservative, will be more inclined to focus on a return to issues rather than muckraking.
The most discouraging aspect of McCurry’s defense of Clinton through media blame is the subtle attempt to remove personal character from the qualifications required for a president. Rather than complain about the media coverage of Clinton’s scandals, McCurry should have told Princeton students that if we would elect leaders with character and integrity, the media muckrakers would be reporting on “more substantive topics” out of an absence of scandal. Ironically, the very voices McCurry and Clinton want to blame for Clinton’s failed political legacy may never have risen to prominence had Clinton not stained his own presidency. History will show that the Clinton years brought more balance of opinion into the media than existed for several decades previously, not through liberals embracing conservative viewpoints in liberal newspapers or news programs, but through conservatives embracing new forms of media to take their media-repressed views directly to a thirsting audience.
Bill Clinton Mike McCurry Hugh Hewitt Monica Lewinsky Rush Limbaugh conservative media Princeton
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