The Audacity of Hope

Still, I was reminded of what my veteran colleagues already knew—that every
statement I made would be subject to scrutiny, dissected by every manner of pundit,
interpreted in ways over which I had no control, and combed through for a potential
error, misstatement, omission, or contradiction that might be filed away by the
opposition party and appear in an unpleasant TV ad somewhere down the road. In an
environment in which a single ill-considered remark can generate more bad publicity
than years of ill-considered policies, it should have come as no surprise to me that on
Capitol Hill jokes got screened, irony became suspect, spontaneity was frowned upon,
and passion was considered downright dangerous. I started to wonder how long it took
for a politician to internalize all this; how long before the committee of scribes and
editors and censors took residence in your head; how long before even the “candid”
moments became scripted, so that you choked up or expressed outrage only on cue.
How long before you started sounding like a politician?
There was another lesson to be learned: As soon as Ms. Noonan’s column hit, it went
racing across the Internet, appearing on every right-wing website as proof of what an
arrogant, shallow boob I was (just the quote Ms. Noonan selected, and not the essay
itself, generally made an appearance on these sites). In that sense, the episode hinted at a
more subtle and corrosive aspect of modern media—how a particular narrative, repeated
over and over again and hurled through cyberspace at the speed of light, eventually
becomes a hard particle of reality; how political caricatures and nuggets of conventional
wisdom lodge themselves in our brain without us ever taking the time to examine them.
For example, it’s hard to find any mention of Democrats these days that doesn’t suggest
we are “weak” and “don’t stand for anything.” Republicans, on the other hand, are
“strong” (if a little mean), and Bush is “decisive” no matter how often he changes his
mind. A vote or speech by Hillary Clinton that runs against type is immediately labeled
calculating; the same move by John McCain burnishes his maverick credentials. “By
law,” according to one caustic observer, my name in any article must be preceded by the
words “rising star”—although Noonan’s piece lays the groundwork for a different if
equally familiar story line: the cautionary tale of a young man who comes to
Washington, loses his head with all the publicity, and ultimately becomes either
calculating or partisan (unless he can somehow manage to move decisively into the
maverick camp).
Of course, the PR machinery of politicians and their parties helps feed these narratives,
and over the last few election cycles, at least, Republicans have been far better at such
“messaging” than the Democrats have been (a cliché that, unfortunately for us
Democrats, really is true). The spin works, though, precisely because the media itself
are hospitable to spin. Every reporter in Washington is working under pressures
imposed by editors and producers, who in turn are answering to publishers or network
executives, who in turn are poring over last week’s ratings or last year’s circulation
figures and trying to survive the growing preference for PlayStation and reality TV. To
make the deadline, to maintain market share and feed the cable news beast, reporters
start to move in packs, working off the same news releases, the same set pieces, the
same stock figures. Meanwhile, for busy and therefore casual news consumers, a wellworn
narrative is not entirely unwelcome. It makes few demands on our thought or
time; it’s quick and easy to digest. Accepting spin is easier on everybody.