No Wonder They're Cynical   

In today's spin-happy political campaigns, it's more crucial than ever for journalists to dig beneath the surface to illuminate the records and the character of the candidates.

It has become an accepted fact of life, like the sky is blue and days are 24 hours long: journalists, particularly those who cover national politics, are cynical.

If that's the case, it's no wonder.

Vust look at the early days of the battle for the Republican presidential nomination:

l Steve Forbes campaigns as a benign preppy robot, while running a brutal series of negative ads.

l Lamar Alexander, a former governor and Cabinet official, runs as an "outsider," complete with red flannel shirt and the inevitable walk across the state. (Memo to Common Cause: When you reform campaigns, don't forget to ban veteran politicians from campaigning in casual clothes and walking across states.)

láBob Dole, the noted populist, reads the Buchanan poll numbers and promptly launches attacks on corporate America. Bob Dole! You know the milennium is nigh when a showcase event in the Republican Olympics is bidness bashing.

And who will the winner run against? Bill Clinton, a man who has tried on more political identities than Dennis Rodman has hair colors. You don't like this budget? Okay, how about this one? Whatever hobgoblins haunt this president, consistency, foolish or otherwise, isn't one of them.

Confronted with this tableau, who wouldn't be cynical? And who could accept the latest in a dizzying series of permutations as the real thing?

We'll stipulate that in covering recent campaigns journalists have not always covered themselves with distinction. Feeding frenzies, proliferating polls and tabloid titillation have been all too common. In an excellent AJR cover piece last month, Jim McCartney showed how the press has repeatedly missed major stories.

But to blame journalists struggling to make sense of this gumbo for much of the disgust many Americans feel for the political process is a little like issuing an all points bulletin for the mechanic who tuned up Charles Manson's car.

It would probably require a lobotomy to remove the cynicism from the brain of any sentient journalist watching this spectacle. In covering it, however, it's essential to retreat from cynicism to the healthy skepticism that has always been the cornerstone of good journalism. It would do the electorate no favors to cover campaigns C-SPAN style, simply recording utterly disingenuous pronouncements with a straight face, providing no context or truth-squadding.

Much has been made of the need to focus more on issues and less on sideshows, and that's certainly a healthy impulse. When a Steve Forbes comes along with a flat tax wonder drug to cure all of the nation's ills, rigorous analysis is desperately needed. As McCartney pointed out, the media failed to make clear the absurdity of Ronald Reagan's threat to cut taxes, increase defense spending and balance the budget all at once.

But covering issues is just the beginning. It doesn't take Bob Woodward to discover that once they are elected, politicians often act far differently from the way they campaigned.

òometimes it's because they never really meant what they were saying. Sometimes it's because they cave in the face of public opinion or political opposition. Sometimes it's because circumstances change dramatically, mandating a new approach.

And often, of course, they encounter situations that were entirely unanticipated during the campaign.

That's why it's so important for the media to present full-blooded pictures of the candidates, to find out as much as possible about them on and off the job.

Do they get things done? Do their records support their claims? Are they creative problem-solvers? How do they act under pressure? Do they mean what they say? Can we trust them?

In recent years the "character issue" has often meant covering bimbo eruptions. But truly understanding the character of a candidate requires going much deeper.

iainting these portraits is difficult, painstaking, time-consuming work. It is worth every second of it.

ýne of the most criticized villains in critiques of contemporary political reporting is "inside baseball." Certainly stories of interest only to a handful of chardonnay sippers inside the dreaded Beltway (and to the people writing them) aren't of much value. But sometimes insider stories have a broader significance and, when done right, can be very informative to readers.

When Bill Clinton is getting his wisdom from Triangulatin' Dick Morris, the veteran GOP operative, that can tell you a lot about where he's heading.

As for another bête noir, "horse race" coverage, there is no doubt the world would be a better place if the number of stories built around the latest poll results plummeted.

üow for the good news. Perhaps the only happy legacy of the awful George Bush/Lee Atwater/Willie Horton campaign was the "ad watch," in which print and broadcast news organizations sort out fact and fiction in candidates' TV spots. With so much mud being aired this year, it's clear how important it is to closely monitor television advertising.

This is not likely to do much to lower the cynicism quotient of either the journalists or the public. But it certainly helps in getting at the truth. l