In 1992 The Pace Quickened, Forever   

The campaign all but created media whiplash.

The biggest surprise entry in the 1992 presidential campaign was not Ross Perot or Pat Buchanan but Larry King, who nosed out Rush Limbaugh and Geraldo Rivera for the honor. Even Jimmy Durante ("Everybody wants to get into the act") would have been taken aback. Halfway through the campaign, journalists who once used typewriters were feeling as outmoded as typewriters.

But by the end, the press (if this paper and electronic amoeba may be viewed as one entity) played its critical role reasonably well, at least by this measure: No one who wanted to be informed about the candidates or the issues had any excuse not to be.

Based on any one week, we might have concluded that the reporting was trendy and shallow. It could be described, with some reason, as pro-Bush, pro-Clinton, pro-Perot or anti-everybody. It was not only that events in any one week made it seem that way; the journalists themselves produced those themes in trying to report the music and not just the notes.

Bush was up, Clinton was up, Bush was down, Clinton was down, Perot was up, Clinton was up again, Perot was out, Bush was down, Clinton was staying up, Perot was back, Bush was down, Perot was down, and, in the stretch it was...

Did it all really happen, or did the journalists just think so? Yes or maybe. The coverage became the campaign, and the campaign became the coverage. And like the candidates themselves, the coverage should be judged not by a week's performance but by all of it.

This year's spectacle argues for lengthy campaigns, contrary to past conventional wisdom that a year is too long. Jerry Brown and Pat Buchanan marched to different drummers; they were in the floodlights long enough for the voters to consider (or reconsider) them. People had time to avoid snap judgments about the Gennifer Flowers and Vietnam draft factors, as well as the broken "read-my-lips" promise.

People may have munched on the day's events only one or two days a week, but the passage of months enabled them to digest their thoughts about Ross Perot's durability, the meaning of the deficit and the presidential stature of the candidates.

The campaign was not only long but, in the media, faster than ever. The total tonnage of explosives set a record. The 1992 coverage was to 1960's as World War II was to the battle of Tippecanoe. This affected the campaigners and the coverage in ways that now need thorough examination.

In responding to attacks, the campaign staffs and the candidates all but created media whiplash. The Clinton team, especially, was not only swift and agile but extremely disciplined and anticipatory. A Bush ad attacking Clinton on taxes was met within hours by counterattacks and a leap beyond them to throw Bush back onto the defensive; so an exchange that once would have stretched over days or weeks was ended within hours, with the artillery already wheeled to fire in another direction.

Rapid-fire polls also quickened the pace. As the smoke still lay on the field after these artillery exchanges, the pollsters assessed the damage, often in news stories that appeared overnight.

In '92 the boys on the bus turned out to be the boys and girls on a tornado of faxes, laptops, bauds, modems and manic media manipulators. They deserve a rest, and so do we. l