You couldn’t show a more
deliberate contrast on how Theodore White and Jules Witcover view covering
politics then in the opening segments of what would be the last campaign each
officially covered for their readers.
In the 1972 edition
of The Making of the President White chooses to open his book with a prologue
called ‘The Making of the Post-War World’ . The first twelve pages of his book deal
with one of the most historical moments in the twentieth century: Richard Nixon’s
visit to Communist China and his meetings with Chou En-Lai and Mao Tse-Tung.
Nixon was the first President to visit Communist China and it was the standard
of what he referred to as ‘détente’, a policy that was the first thaw in the
Cold War and one that the conservative wing of Nixon’s own party as well as
many Democrats, considered a betrayal. White does acknowledge the significance
of what may come. He tells us that as he writes the book: two former cabinet
members await trial as well as the beginning of the pursuit of Watergate which
he covers extensively in the volume. But he makes it very clear that what he
considers important is how much the world before him has changed since end of
World War II and that there was, as of yet, no new system to replace it. He recognizes
the collapse of the ideals of the Great Society and the end of the liberal
order that started under FDR. And only at the conclusion does he deal with how
the Presidential election ended: how Richard Nixon would defeat George McGovern
by a margin of nearly 3 to 2 in the popular vote.
By contrast consider
the opening of Witcover’s last volume (co-written with Jack Germond) Mad as
Hell: Revolt at the Ballot Box, 1992. Witcover chooses to start his
narrative in the second Presidential debate, a town hall meeting involving George
H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot. He deals with the nature of the debates
and how, yet again, they have resulted in name calling and character debasement.
For him the most significant problem of 1992 has nothing to do with the various
problems facing society (some of which I’ll touch on below) but on how out of
touch Bush seems to be with the American public. And what he considers most
important is that infamous moment while he was being asked a question Bush glanced
at his watch, apparently bored with the whole process.
To be clear politics
had changed immensely in the twenty years that had passed between these volumes
and Witcover’s approach reflected a change in the media. But it’s hard not to
notice that the tonal difference. White in the prologue is trying to paint a
grand picture, not merely of the political landscape but the global one and the
American one. None of that is apparent in Witcover’s prologue – or indeed much
of the volume that is to follow. Witcover’s view is limited only to seeing
everything through a political lens. White is trying to see a much larger narrative
before him. Witcover views the entire process with cynicism and barely veiled
contempt. White remains objective and tries to shows respect for the Presidency
even considering the scandal before it.
And
most importantly is that concept of objectivity. White clearly is – he deals
not only with the horrible scandal that will befall Nixon but everything
involving him with a neutral tone and looks at McGovern’s problems in the same
lens. In a way you could argue Witcover is objective as well, considering that
he treats both the Democrats and Republicans the same – he clearly loathes them
both equally. He shows the same contempt for the political consultants, anchormen,
chief of staff and almost every aspect of the process involved. There’s an
irony in that at one point Witcover remarks about Bush’s inability to have a
greater vision; Witcover clearly has a front row seat to nearly as big a change
as White was observing – and all he can focus on is how this affects the
political landscape.
Witcover clearly has
access to so many of the biggest political insiders in the Bush administration.
And lest we forget during Bush’s term the world was changing even more significantly
then during the era that White covers in his final book. The Berlin Wall comes
down and not long after the Soviet Union collapses, ending the Cold War. There
are the riots at Tiananmen Square in China that the government clamps down on
before live TV. The beating of Rodney King and the acquittal of the LAPD
inspires mass rioting in LA. And there’s Sadam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait
that leads to the first Gulf War.
Witcover remarks on
all of these significant events only through the lens of the Bush White House
and only to show his contempt for how Bush handled it. As I wrote in my first
article on Witcover there was a view that Bush was unsuited to be President in
1976. Twelve years later he managed to win the White House anyway. Witcover covered
the rise and fall of Bush as extensively as White covered Nixon but where as
White remained objective about the most polarizing figure in politics to that
point Witcover never stops being contemptuous of him and everything he does. I
don’t know what personal feelings Witcover has towards the 41st
President but in his writing everything that happens in the world is just a
reflection on Bush and how badly he handles it. His dialogues with China, his recognition
of Gorbachev’s resignation, even the riots in LA (which get a grand total of
four pages) are only there to show how badly Bush is lacking. White would have
devoted several pages on each one of these in order to explain the significance
of them. Witcover only sees them as a mirror in which he can show how horrible
the President is. Even everything involving Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas barely
seems to matter to White. He acknowledges that the Senate is an ‘old boy’s club’
but he looks at the ‘Year of The Women’ which was to follow with something very
close to the sexist patronizing that unfolded.
But Witcover has
little use for Democrats either. It’s not just that he has very little respect
for Bill Clinton (he’s another Southern governor and Witcover’s views clearly
haven’t changed since Jimmy Carter wouldn’t give him and his reporters the
benefit of letting him trap them into contradictions) but he doesn’t have any
real use for the Democratic challengers during this period. He doesn’t think
much of Paul Tsongas or Jerry Brown and his opinion of Douglas Wilder (the
first African-American elected Governor) is that his decision to run for
President is premature. “There is no evidence the electorate in general was
prepared to accept a black nominee,” he tells us with all sincerity. You really
wonder whether he’s speaking for himself in that sense.
White had his own
prejudices to be sure – he viewed Adam Clayton Powell, the first African-American
Congressman as something of a thug – but whatever opinions he had on the
candidates running for office he did his best to keep them to himself or at the
very least, only talk about it in regard to their campaigns. He always had a
great respect for Hubert Humphrey – in his final book America in Search of
Itself, he makes it clear Humphrey would have been a great President – but he
also understood the mood of the electorate. In his final book he acknowledges
Humphrey will likely be considered one of the greatest Senators in history
(true) but that by 1972 the young still viewed him as LBJ’s Vice President and
a man of the establishment (also true). He never quite liked George Wallace but
he acknowledged the phenomena and was more than willing to give him the benefit
of being smarter than he appeared. And when it came to George McGovern he was
more than fair. He was impressed by many things in his character and his
organization but he also thought that there were flaws in both that were going
to undercut him with the electorate.
Witcover by contrast doesn’t
even bother to hide his contempt for everyone in the Bush White House; you’d
think they were far worse than the men in Nixon’s administration who were about
to go to jail. It’s not just Atwater who he views with loathing – though in his
opinion Atwater’s crimes are not negative and racist campaigning but the way he
‘transparently pandered to the right’ to make Bush acceptable to them. Sununu
is contemptuous, Jack Kemp a fool, Pat Buchanan a buffoon. Witcover has a real
story here – the way the conservative wing of the party has decided to make it
very clear how any deviance from Republican policy is betrayal – but he only
sees it as a flaw of Bush himself, rather than the entire party. Witcover has a
very clear problem for not only seeing the forest for the trees; he doesn’t
even see the trees that well.
As far as Witcover is
concerned the reason that George H.W. Bush lost was because he reneged on his
pledge: “no new taxes” which caused the conservatives to turn on him, leading
to Buchanan’s primary challenge. But not even the economy itself really
interests Witcover that much: for him the very concept of Carville’s famous
slogan – ‘it’s the economy stupid’ – is just an excuse for the vote that led to
Clinton’s election and not an iconic note in political history.
There is something
significant in the book which Witcover does note in his final chapter:
As a practical
matter, only a handful of Americans were actually able to talk directly to the
candidates. But the difference was…that people just like themselves were
questioning the candidates – were in fact surrogates for the average voter.
Watching Clinton, Bush and Perot in that Richmond debate, anyone could imagine
being the one asking the questions and influence the process directly. It was
no longer the sole province of journalists, whom they saw as part of the
distant establishment rather than as their agents.
Witcover notes the voter turnout – the largest since 1960 – as significant
yet even then there seems to be a sense of pleasure in Witcover’s announcement
that it pales in comparison to Western democracy. The people don’t care that
much, you can see him thinking. Looking at the paragraph above I wonder if Witcover
viewed this not as a positive step forward but a threat to his own livelihood.
In the mind of
Witcover and Germond, he was part of that ‘distant establishment’ but it’s
clear he didn’t see any connection between his attitude and part in it. As far
as he was concerned all of the candidates involved were just as flawed as when
he started doing his columns and by his view didn’t deserve to worthy of the
Presidency. Did he think that this rebellion was a reaction to how he himself
had been covering politics all these year, that his province as the gatekeeper
was being threatened by the public?
I can’t say. What I
know is that Witcover in all of his volumes views every aspect of the political
process with more cynicism bordering on visceral contempt then Theodore White
ever did. His final pages of the 1972 volume talk not of the failures of Nixon
but rather the fact that this election is one of the most significant because
it offers a true contrast of views of how the government should work. In his opinion
the most significant he lived through were in 1932, when FDR defeated Hoover
and believed in the New Deal, 1936 when FDR’s landslide confirmed its place in
society and 1964 involving Goldwater and Johnson. 1972 was a similar difference
in ideas. He clearly sees that Nixon’s landslide was a complete repudiation of
the past forty years of Democratic Presidents and a groundswell for the new
conservative order, even though it is still not fully formed. He acknowledges
respect for Nixon in their final interview, which took place mere days before
the Senate hearings revealed Magruder and John Dean’s role in planning it. Not long
after Halderman and Ehrlichmann are forced to resign and John Mitchell is
indicted. Yet even then he tries to explain how Nixon rose and fell and even
then shows that even if Watergate is a repudiation of Nixon, the mandate for
what he stood for will not disappear. “The Republican Party is a place where people
vote when they want to go slow and I think they want to go slow now,” White
quotes one of McGovern’s speechwriters. Considering the rise of Ronald Reagan,
it's hard to argue with this basic concept half a century later.
White’s books are
more remarkable because they also offer snapshots into some of the most significant
moments in history. Sometimes White doesn’t know it yet – as in 1960 with the
revelation of the U-2 program – and other times he knows what he’s witnessing.
This is true not just in 1968 but when we see how the Civil Rights Act of 1964
was passed and the fall of the Southern Democrats which White witnessed almost
in real time and in 1972 when we learn the circumstance as to how and why
American went off the gold standard. (Republicans should direct their blame at
Nixon, by the way.) White also goes out of his way to capture both the makeup
of America, using the census data available to him and the patterns of the
electorate and how they were shifting – and in context, the country. It’s clear
reading White that in his books he’s trying to tell a narrative about America
and the race for the Presidency is just the means.
When Witcover picked
up the mantle from White in 1976 he was living through a bigger change in American
politics and world history. But Witcover is fundamentally uninterested in
seeing any of the events that happen in the world – and even America –
throughout anything other than a political lens. That would be forgivable if he
could manage to maintain the tone of neutrality White does. Instead what you
get are hundreds of pages of details of political campaigns which Witcover
views at best as trivial and at worst read as a repudiation of every aspect of
the process, including voting itself. With White you get a sense of respect of
what he’s doing and its significance. With Witcover you get the feel of a
cranky old man who’s fulfilling a book deal he made and doesn’t have the energy
to get out of, so he takes his frustration out on the reader.
Maybe that’s the real
reason why, even though I have and will continue to you use both men’s work as
primary sources for my articles on history, I will always prefer reading White’s
books to Witcover’s. White does seem to care about the process. With Witcover
it seems like he’s always looking at his
watch, counting the minutes until he can move on to something more interesting.
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