FIRlnGLlne JOE KLEIN, ED KOCH, BRENT BOZELL, WALTER ISAACSON

Transcription

1 The copyright laws of the United States (Title 17, U.S. Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. If a user makes a request for, or later uses a photocopy or reproduction (including handwritten copies) for purposes in excess of fair use, that user may be liable for copyright infringement. Users are advised to obtain permission from the copyright owner before any re-use of this material. Use of this material is for private, non-commercial, and educational purposes; additional reprints and further distribution is prohibited. Copies are not for resale. All other rights reserved. For further information, contact Director, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University, Stanford, CA Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. I I j 0 FIRlnGLlne HOST: GUESTS: SUBJECT: WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. JOE KLEIN, ED KOCH, BRENT BOZELL, WALTER ISAACSON "PRESIDENTIAL YEAR: THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE PRESS" PART II FIRING LINE is produced and directed by WARREN STEIBEL. This is a transcript of the FIRING LINE program #2609 / 1098, taped in New York City on August 29, 1996, and telecast later on public television stations. copyright 1996 FIRING LINE Transcripts and videocassettes available through Producers Incorporated for Television, 2700 Cypress Street, Columbia, SC /

2 MR. BUCKLEY: We are gathered for the second hour to discuss the challenge of reporting a presidential contest. To do this we have Walter Isaacson, who is the managing editor of Time magazine, perhaps the primary journalistic cockpit in the country. And we have from Newsweek, Joe Klein, also a prize-winning journalist and author of the not altogether fictitious Primary Colors. Edward Koch was mayor of New York City, congressman, and now writes books and newspaper columns and legal briefs, and discusses public questions on radio and television. Brent Bozell is the chairman of the Media Research Center, which takes on the job of reviewing the reviewers. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? "Who will guard our guardians?" The answer is Brent Bozell. [laughter] We have discussed specific complaints lodged by American conservatives. What I want to focus on in this session is the higher responsibility of journalism to keep in public focus what is no longer newsworthy but continues to be true and relevant. A very recent contender for this kind of treatment is minimum wage legislation. A bill to that effect was passed during the summer and Mr. Clinton took triumphant credit for it in his acceptance speech in Chicago. It is the settled position of the overwhelming majority of economists that legislative passes at a minimum wage are exercises in autohypnosis. A question for Mr. Isaacson: Is it an obligation of the press to continue to confirm that the earth is round if the superstition is seen creeping back that in fact it is flat? MR. ISAACSON: Yes. Every now and then we have to go back to issues. / In fact, one of the things an editor does in a morning meeting is when people say, Well, we've already written about that; we did a cover story on social security, or we did a big story on the minimum wage a year ago; say, Yes, but now it's in the news, now it's relevant; we have to analyze it. Now I think you could find different ways of analyzing a minimum wage increase after a certain number of years as to how hannful it might be, but you can't ignore it. You have to go back to fundamental things that affect people, be it social security, the deficit, taxes, minimum wage; and I think sometimes in our quest to always be new, always be fresh, always find the latest hot story, we forget that sometimes stories that have been with us for awhile, be it race in America, be it the economy, be it class, be it minimum wage, have to be returned to over and over again. I

3 MR. BUCK.LEY: Well, do you tend to think it is a dereliction of the press that since they know it, they assume everybody else knows it; under the circumstances it doesn't bear repeating? MR KLEIN: I think there's been a far greater dereliction this year in terms of reporting on the economy, which is not-the exact opposite of your initial proposition, which is that we have been describing a round world as flat. The New York Times killed an enormous forest in order to do a huge piece on downsizing and on the volatility in the labor market, which most economists say, and economic statistics say is nonexistent. We have a very strong economy. The unemployment rate in Omaha is 2.5 percent. There are television commercials on the air in many cities that I go to, which don't happen to be cities that editors of major newspapers and magazines live in, or editors of television networks. And yet we have insisted on telling the public this year that there's a jobs crisis, that there's downsizing, that there's great volatility and fear, and we are increasing, I think, we are feeding a fear that exists, and we are doing it incredibly irresponsibly. MR. BUCKLEY: Why? MR KLEIN: Why? I think in part- MR. BUCKLEY: Sensation? MR. KLEIN: Brent, you're going to be happy about this. / MR. BOZELL: I'm listening. MR. KLEIN: I think in part it's ideological. I think that there is a need, that there is a sense of incompleteness in the society now. People don't feel happy. And our first reaction is to think that it might be a material unhappiness. MR. BUCKLEY: That "It's the economy, stupid," yes. MR KLEIN: Right. MR. ISAACSON: But also there is a point on this that where we are biased is that we are part of a pretty cushioned elite. 2

4 MR. KLEIN: Right. MR. ISAACSON: We're part of the information age, we make a lot of money, we live in Manhattan or Washington or something, and we feel slightly guilty that we are disconnected to the factory floor in Omaha or the Maytag plant- MR. KOCH: I disagree. MR. BUCKLEY: Mayor Koch? MR. KOCH: I disagree. I happen to think that it is a legitimate issue, downsizing, and I came to this conclusion when I read all of the articles, then talked to people--i'm just a little columnist, I'm not a reporter--but the- MR. ISAACSON: Perhaps you should go out and report, Ed. [laughter) MR. KOCH: But the fact is, that it was summed up when someone said, But look, we only have an unemployment rate of five-and-a-half percent, the lowest in many, many years; and someone said, Yes, and I have four of the jobs, with my wife. In other words, that they are making much less than they made before, and just to continue that, what happens to their mortgages? What happens to the dollars that they have to spend to send their kids to school? People are frightened. You cannot just dismiss the / fact that 40,000 people are laid off by AT&T and IBM and others-- MR. KLEIN: We always report that, but we don't report the new business form--the rate of new business formation in California, which is phenomenal. MR. KOCH: I understand that, and I want you to understand-- I had some correspondence with Milton Friedman, and he said, This is unimportant, he said, because this is the nature of our society. And I have a very high regard for Milton Friedman. He said, We change; that's the way we keep ahead with productivity, why we are better than other countries in this area, because we weed the things that we don't need out, and it will ultimately resort itself-- 3

5 MR. BUCKLEY: Well, we know how it works-- MR KOCH: But it's not fair to the individual who is suffering. MR. KLEIN: The polling data on-- MR. KOCH: That's why Buchanan did so well, because he tapped into that. MR KLEIN: Oh, he did so well? He got about percent of Republican primaries and never anything more than that. He was a minority-- MR. KOCH: My recollection-- MR KLEIN: --of a minority. MR. KOCH: My recollection is he took one of the states. MR KLEIN: Yes, with 30 percent, Ed, in a divided field. MR. KOCH: What difference does it make? You can do that-- MR KLEIN: I mean, there are 30 percent of a very small universe who felt aggrieved. But when you look at the polling, people are as concerned about, the stability of their jobs as they were 25 years ago. Can I tell a quick story? David Bonior, congressman from Macomb County. MR KOCH: You look like him. MR. KLEIN: --a mythic county in American politics-- MR. KOCH: You look like him. [laughter] MR KLEIN: Well, thank you, but I don't think like him. He represents two different interesting political tendencies. He is an economic populist; he is a liberation theology Catholic. He's pro-life. He's one of the few Democrats in public life who is very adamant about his spiritual beliefs. His district is mostly auto workers, Reagan Democrats. And I asked him, 4

6 As you go from door to door when you campaign, what are their problems? Aie they economic or are they spiritual? And he said to me: I go door to door, and in every driveway there's a recreational vehicle and every garage is filled with toys. Now I think that part of the problem here is that we, the media, are a lot more comfortable talking about economic problems than we are talking about spiritual ones, which are by their very nature much more abstract. MR. KOCH: Yes, that's true. MR. BUCKLEY: I think that's absolutely true. MR. BOZELL: But when you talk about economic problems--it goes back, Bill, to your question about a round earth versus the flat earth society- How many times have we heard reporters refer to the Republican agenda as one of cuts of the government? To be precise, because we've counted them, where your magazines are concerned and where The New York Times and The L.A Times are concerned, in it was 1, 116 times that your magazines referred to the Republican budget as "cuts." MR. KOCH: That's accurate. MR. BOZELL: No, it's not a cut. MR. KOCH: Tell me why isn't it accurate? / MR. BOZELL: Because the Republican budget was an increase. It had a complete increase in there. MR. KOCH: But let me-- MR. BOZELL: No, no, let me just make-- MR. BUCKLEY: It was a cut- MR. KOCH: When you say-- MR. BUCKLEY: -over a scheduled increase. 5

7 MR. KOCH: Not only that. When you don't take into consideration increased numbers of people who have to be covered, and the inflationary factor, the fact that you've increased the budget by four percent when it will take an expected eight percent means, in effect, you are cutting the program. MR. BOZELL: No, no. Let me finish. MR. KOCH: No? No? Okay. MR. BOZELL: Let me finish. No. Dan Rather was on Mike Rosen's radio show in Colorado. Mike Rosen, a conservative, asked him that: Why do you continuing referring to these things as cuts when we don't believe that they are cuts, that they are a reduction in the increase. Dan Rather said,.well, you know, Democrats want us to call them cuts, the Republicans want us to call them reductions in increase; we try to do Now how you do on a proposition like that? Either it's one or it's the other. But what he was saying was, whether you advocate the mayor's position or my position, he was saying, We '11 tell the truth half the time. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, what he was saying is it's a semantic conundrum. MR. KLEIN: Right. MR. ISAACSON: It is. / MR. BOZELL: With a huge impact. MR. BUCKLEY: But let me throw this at you. David Rosenbaum, The New York Times--this was about a year-and-a-half ago. One popular misconception is that the Republican tax cuts caused the crippling federal budget deficit. The fact is the large deficits resulted because the government vastly increased what it spent each year, while revenues changed little. My question is: Why was there a popular misconception? MR. ISAACSON: Well, this is-- MR. BUCKLEY: You know, since he knew it. 6

8 MR. ISAACSON: Well, this is something--speaking of trees that have been felled to do debates-over exactly what happened to the Reagan tax cuts. And you are quoting The New York Times, usually part of the conspiracy theory of the liberal media, as saying, No, this is wrong. I think that all of our magazines and all of our papers have spent a lot of time assessing the Reagan tax ruts, the spending increases, the huge deficit, and the growth that came during that period, and trying to assess who gets credit, who gets blame for what. There is no easy answer, but I daresay that the debate-- MR BUCKLEY: You think- MR. ISAACSON: --has been engaged fairly. MR BUCKLEY: You don't think what David Rosenbaum wrote here is apodictic. You think there can be two views? MR. ISAACSON: I think there definitely should be many views of looking at the Reagan tax cut. It was a very complex thing-- MR BUCKLEY: But it's not a- MR. ISAACSON: --and economists and historians will argue it for a long time, and-- MR BUCKLEY: I know. / MR. ISAACSON: --I think it's been covered very fairly. MR BUCKLEY: They can argue to the extent they want to see what all the ripples were-- MR. ISAACSON: Yes. MR. BUCKLEY: --but they can't argue it, as I understand it, on one basic question: Did revenues rise? Now if revenues did rise-- MR ISAACSON: Everybody said they rose, and the deficit rose. 7

9 MR. BUCKLEY: -then you would have to account for the deficit. So the deficit has to on account of a rise in spending. Now you can document the rise in spending. Why should this be a historical project? Rosenbaum, incidentally, was simply writing a news story here. MR. ISAACSON: Right. MR BOZELL: Well, Walter, I don't think there is any dispute that there is a discussion, but it's more on the order of a trial, and what comes out in the paper is the verdict. The verdict is that these were the Reagan deficits. They were never and have never been called the Tip O'Neill deficits. MR. ISAACSON: Well-- MR. BOZELL: It's always been called the Reagan deficits. It was the Reagan taxes. MR. ISAACSON: Ronald Reagan's budgets too and there were deficits, and Reagan MR. KLEIN: But that was their responsibility for not challenging the news. MR. BOZELL: I don't question it for a second. Not for a second. MR. ISAACSON: I mean, there were deficits at the end, so there's no dispute about that point either. I ' MR. BUCKLEY: Yes-- MR. ISAACSON: Huge deficits. MR. BUCKLEY: --you assign the name of whoever was president to what happened during that period. It was Lyndon Johnson's war-- MR. ISAACSON: Exactly. MR. BUCKLEY: So I don't think it's invidious to say Reagan deficits. 8

10 MR. ISAACSON: And the Reagan deficit, that phrase, is maybe shorthand or something. I'm not sure it's invidious, and I do think you have to come to grips with the fact that during that period, because of Congress, because of the president, because of the budgets that Reagan had a lot of influence over, you had huge deficits that I think harmed the economy in the long term and had to be fixed by succeeding presidents. That's a very valid thing to look at and to just say, Oh, it was not Reagan at all; his tax cuts didn't cause these deficits, is to miss the point that during his tenure there were huge deficits. But I think we fairly debate that. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, you-- MR. ISAACSON: I mean, we're not coming out of some bias. MR. BUCKLEY: You turned the point to your polemical convenience. MR. ISAACSON: Well, thank you. [laughter] MR. BUCKLEY: What Rosenbaum said is there was a popular misconception, i.e., they were wrong about it. My question is, Why should people be wrong about something as documentable as this, which I think is just ABC stuff? Everything that you say is interesting in terms of an evaluation of right and wrong, but at the level at which he is talking about, he simply concedes a popular misconception. My question is: Isn't the obligation of the press to say, no, no, the earth is round? / ' MR KLEIN: Yes, but the-- MR BOZELL: And that the Reagan deficit went down in his last two years. MR. ISAACSON: And they did and I think the editorials in our magazine-- MR. KLEIN: One of the reasons why the Reagan deficits went down is one of the least remembered aspects of the Reagan era, which was the Reagan tax increase in 1982, which when adjusted for inflation was the largest tax increase in American history. Bill Clinton's wasn't. Right? 9

11 MR. BUCKLEY: Your point being that without that, the deficit would have been worse. MR KLEIN: Much worse. And it came under control in part because everybody realized after the first year that the markets were going to go crazy if they didn't do something to rectify it. And then they passed TEFRA. MR. ISAACSON: And surely you can't say that Reagan's legacy has not gotten a fair shake, either in popular conception or in the press, be it his legacy on the Cold War or his legacy on the economy. Certainly raising the question of his deficits is a very valid one. MR BUCKLEY: I think politically it has been established that it doesn't pay off to knock-- Bonior may be able to do that in his constituency, but on the whole, it's simply-- As a matter of fact, to quote myself, that warning was given by Bob Strauss in 1984 in an inside meeting of the high potentates of the Democrats, and the very next day Geraldine Ferraro said to the press that President Reagan wasn't a good Christian. So that afternoon, somebody said, Well, Mr. President, what about your not being a good Christian? And he said, Well, the only thing I can do is tum the other cheek. [laughter] And so I accept your point that the survivability of Reagan is manifest. But I do think- MR. ISAACSON: But do you think it's a conspiracy that Bob Strauss / helped generate amongst us or do you think it's because we are actually fair? MR BUCKLEY: No, I think that to the extent that it is polemically convenient to do so, people take the Reagan deficits and go as far as they can to persuade everybody that he was a totally irresponsible-- MR. KOCH: You know, there are people who have an impact on life, and Reagan was one of them, that no matter what they wrote about him--the same with FDR and others who move the country in their direction--exerted extraordinary authority under the system, and you can't destroy them. I never voted for Reagan. I loved him. I really, really did-- MR BUCKLEY: And I'm sure he loved you. [laughter] 10

12 MR KOCH: --admire him. Well, I must say--a brief little story--when he came to see me before the election in 1980 at Gracie Mansion, I said to him, I don't know how it's going to turn out, Governor, but we have a standing offer to every president that when you're in New York that you use Gracie Mansion as the place that you will live in instead of a hotel. MR. BUCKLEY: And with dinner. MR KOCH: Right. And he said, that's fine, that's fine. And then he was elected and then he invited me to the Waldorf Astoria, the tower suite and so forth, and I walked in and I said, Mr. President, you remember I offered you Gracie Mansion and you said that you would probably come. And he said, You're right, but I can't get out of staying here. They put my initials on the towels. [laughter] MR. ISAACSON: You should have invited him to your Greenwich Village apanment- MR. KOCH: So help me, that's an absolutely true story. MR. BUCKLEY: I feel just a little sense of delinquency in getting from you a commitment on this point. So may I try one other guy on you? Robert Samuelson, writing in Newsweek in March, 1993: "Clinton's basic rationale for more government is that investment in America has lagged. Actually, that isn't the case. Business investment has risen in every decade since World War II. In the '80s it averaged 11.5 percent of gross domestic product, up from 10.5 in the '70s, 9.5 in the '60s, and 8.9 in the '50s. Research and development spending jumped dramatically in the '80s. The increase was 52 percent, compared with only 12 percent in the '80s." Now, this is something about which nobody can argue, presumably, unless he's a fake statistician. f ' MR. ISAACSON: No, but you look at Pete Peterson's argument and others who are not part of the liberal media elite and the kind of stuff they said. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, they are. [laughter] 11

13 MR. ISAACSON: Oh. I'll let you and Pete duke that one out. But you know, Peterson and Rudman have been saying that we have problems with investment in this country. MR BOZELL: But look, what I think Bill is driving at is that there are facts and there are facts, and not everything is part of this great amorphous world. While we were talking a minute ago-- MR. BUCKLEY: It's that, yes. MR. BOZELL: --1 was reminded of- MR. BUCKLEY: I'm not saying sufficient, the investment's sufficient, I'm saying it hasn't "lagged" by American standards. That's Samuelson's point. MR BOZELL: The 1990 Deficit Reduction Act--we'll all remember George Bush with "Read my lips," and we'll remember the tax increase of He was lauded by many, many people for finally having the courage, as Eleanor Oift put it, to raise taxes. MR BUCKLEY: As who put it? MR. BOZELL: Eleanor Clift, of Newsweek. --to raise taxes. And you heard that from many different other sources. The interesting thing about the Deficit Reduction Act of 1990 was that--and again, we looked at this from September l through October 30 of that year, in a 45-day period, window, when this debate took place and the act passed- When the Deficit Reduction Act passed, there was not a single report that mentioned the fact that not only did the deficit not get reduced, it got increased by $100 billion with that act. It went from $1.26 trillion, the budget, to $1.3 6 trillion. So by signing it, they increased the deficit by $100 billion, they didn't reduce it., I MR. KLEIN: But that was because of natural increases-- MR. BOZELL: Nobody brought it up. MR. KLEIN: That was because of natural increases-- 12

14 MR. BUCKLEY: Entitlements. MR. KLEIN: --in entitlements. What happened in that act that was very important that did a lot for Bill Ointon in with his budget act was the freezing of discretionary spending, which became the norm which the Congress imposed on Ointon in and is true to this day. Discretionary spending-- MR. BOZELL: But the average-- MR. KLEIN: --has plummeted-- MR. BOZELL: But Joe, the average- MR. KLEIN: --while entitlement spending has gone up. MR. BOZELL: I know, look, you're intelligent, you live and breathe this type of thing. The average person who is far more intelligent than you or I is the type of person who doesn't care about these things, who opens up the newspaper and wants to believe what he's told. What he was told was that the deficit was reduced- MR. KLEIN: Yes. Yes. MR. BOZELL: --and it wasn't. / MR. KOCH: The papers also, the analysts also, fail to make this point: that what Bush did was absolutely correct in the context of bargaining with the Congress. He gave in in the area where they demanded, which was that he agree to the tax increase. They, the Democrats, gave in in the area that he was insistent on, that there be reductions in expenditures. And that's the nature of the legislative process. So to blame him, "Read my lips," and that he betrayed, it's ridiculous, and the press didn't make the point. It wasn't a betrayal. I never saw it as a betrayal. It was part of a negotiated process that every chief executive has to enter into. MR. BUCKLEY: You're giving us a political explanation-- MR. KOCH: Yes. 13

15 MR. BUCKLEY: --which I don't have a problem with abstractly; I think it turned out to be bad politics for him to do so. But what we're talking about here is whether or not there has been a continuing sense of obligation by the press to tell people what in fact happened or whether they are inclined-- MR. KOCH: But I'm saying they didn't tell them what happened at that time. Why it happened. That's what was missing. MR. BUCKLEY: Did Time magazine not tell us that? MR ISAACSON: Well, I don't remember that, whether they did or they didn't. [laughter] MR KLEIN: It's very difficult for us to tell them good news. MR. KOCH: I got my news from TV. [laughter] MR. BUCKLEY: Did you hear that, Mayor Koch? MR. KOCH: No. MR. KLEIN: It's very, very difficult for us to tell them good news. It's very, very difficult for us to take a look at our economy and compare it to economies in the rest of the world, especially in the other advanced, industrial countries, and say, Because we've placed less burden on our businesses in the form of obligations that they have to extend to their workers, we're doing a lot better than any of the other advanced industrial countries. There are problems that we have, but things are going pretty well. And that isn't news, and we go searching around for these other things, like the dislocations and the downsizings, which are peripheral to the main story, which is that our economy has come back in a big way in the '90s precisely because we don't do what the advanced industrial nations of Europe and Japan do, which has placed tremendous economic burdens on their companies. But that's good news and it's hard for us to communicate it. MR BUCKLEY: But Reagan wasn't afraid of communicating good news, was he? 14

16 MR; KLEIN: Even when it wasn't there. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, yes, he believed in the inherent vitality of optimism, i.e., to feel good about your future-spiritual, economic-makes you better. MR. ISAACSON: But Joe's point is fundamentally right. If we have a problem in the press, it's that we tend to find it easier to report negative things or to report problems than we do to say, Here's policy, and as you look back on them, they worked pretty well. MR. BUCKLEY: That's in the nature of things, isn't it? I mean, the Happy 25th Anniversary party doesn't get reported, the divorce at 26 does. MR. KLEIN: But we have an obligation-i think that the best economic piece I've read this summer didn't appear in either of our publications, but in The New Yor"ker, and it was a review of the Ointon economic plan in 1993 and how successful it was because of the way it reassured the bond market and allowed the economy to continue to grow. I thought that was a really good piece of journalism that we should have-- I felt, Wow, why didn't I think of that? MR. BUCKLEY: Now was it journalism in the sense that he discovers something that other people hadn't discovered or simply that he related it well? / MR. KLEIN: I think-- I have not seen it. You kno"", it's somewhere in between those two, Bill. I hadn't seen it expressed quite that way. MR. ISAACSON: There's a bigger economic story even though things are getting better, and why I think there's some anxiety; that's particularly difficult to cover, and I don't think it's an ideological thing, which is, moving from pretty much an industrial age and a corporate structured age in which people have more job security, to an information age in which some people feel less secure, but more jobs are being created. And I think there is an anxiety as people sense not just downsizing, but that the nature of work is changing, the nature of corporate relationships is changing, job stability is changing, and that is basically good for the economy, as Joe said. 15

17 MR. BUCKLEY: Well, do politicians and journalists cope differently with that challenge? MR ISAACSON: Yes, I mean, we cope differently because we are part of the information age and it's an age that helps people who are better educated, more able to move from job to job, more able to manipulate or deal with information, more comfortable in a digital world, that sort of thing, than for the people, you know, back in Louisiana where I come from, who feel somewhat threatened by this new age. We are seeing a pretty seismic shift in our economy from one that makes products to one that handles digital bits and transmits information. Some people are going to feel more comfortable with that change. Journalists feel more comfortable with that change, and journalists have trouble-- MR KLEIN: Speak for yourself. [laughter] MR ISAACSON: Journalists have a little bit of a problem because they feel, Oh, I should try to figure out the anxiety that I don't share, but I have to go out and look for this bad news. MR BUCKLEY: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, gentlemen. We '11 be back. / 16