Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.insight From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: THE LAST WORD Date: Mon, 26 Oct 92 11:27:05 EST Message-ID: \SE THE LAST WORD \HD Reporters Should Cover Campaigns Like Horse Races \BY Richard Starr \CR INSIGHT I can't count the number of times I've heard that reporters on the campaign trail are too focused on the "horse race" aspects of the presidential contest. And I expect to hear it even more, now that the pesky little mule from Texarkana has complicated the betting. Most of the complaining comes from that stable of distinguished, long-faced journalists who get trotted out every four years for PBS panel discussions. They always seem to reach the same conclusion: Political reporters are obsessed with "handicapping" the presidential race, putting a spin on the weekly polls, guessing who's up, who's down and by how much. I've reached a different conclusion: The guys and gals who preach this little sermon don't know the difference between a filly and a gelding. They think a pacer is either an Indiana basketball player or a fat little car AMC made in the seventies. They think "first past the post" is a political science term, describing electoral systems where there are no runoffs. "Front-runner," "neck and neck" and "fast out of the gate" are nifty little turns of phrase they picked up somewhere by osmosis. Sad but true - what the "horse race" cliche reveals is an entire generation of elite journalists ignorant of horse racing. They have appropriated the racetrack metaphors that an earlier generation of reporters came by honestly, in long liquid afternoons betting on the ponies. As if this weren't sin enough, they call their own feeble attempts to interpret poll numbers "handicapping," inadvertently maligning the professionals who give odds on real horses, and tend to be far better informed on their area of expertise than your average campaign reporter. Full disclosure: Besides reading lots of Damon Runyon, my own horse-racing experience amounts to one afternoon at the track in lovely Charles Town, W. Va. But one afternoon is enough to figure out that the people who do this sort of thing regularly are extraordinarily well-informed (or rich enough to burn gobs of money). They know the horses, the jockeys and the owners. They can trace bloodlines back generations. They can give you complete histories for a given animal - how it races on wet tracks and dry, on hot days and cool nights; whether it has an even temper or is high-strung; if it has managed to hold leads or come from behind. Best of all, real handicappers are able to translate all this information into profits for themselves and losses for neophytes like me. Unlike their political cousins, if they get things wrong on a regular basis they go broke. The horse-race critique, in short, is backward. Campaign reporters could learn a great deal from real handicappers. If you doubt this, those of you in horse country should check out the racing page of your local paper, where you'll find more raw facts and useful information per column inch than in any section of the paper. What would better political handicapping look like? Well, it would concentrate on providing as much useful information as possible to voters before they place their bets on Election Day. Useful information, it goes without saying, is not the sanitized position-paper prose that the campaigns churn out specifying their positions on "the issues." Rather, it's information that helps you guess what the next administration will be likely to do, or not do. One place to find such information is in the records and paper trails of the campaign advisers, who have been less thoroughly scrutinized than the candidates. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, did some excellent reporting in two articles last month on Derek Shearer, the left-most economic adviser to Bill Clinton and a close friend of the candidate's for more than 20 years. Now a professor of public policy, Shearer helped Tom Hayden organize Santa Monica's rent control campaign in the early eighties; with his wife, then mayor of the city, he played a large role in a city government whose anti business bent earned it the nickname the People's Republic of Santa Monica. Though Shearer never called himself a socialist, this seems to have been simply because "socialism has a bad name in America," as the Journal's op-ed article quoted him. The news article in the Journal bent over backward to place Shearer's views and influence in the fairest possible light. After describing his advocacy of large-scale federal intervention in the economy, it quotes him as saying, "I changed my mind about a lot of that, frankly." It further points out that Shearer is only one adviser among many and something of the odd man out among the economic advisers. More revealing even than the articles - which allow for the possibility that Clinton, out of friendship, listens to someone he disagrees with - was the hysterical reaction they provoked. Richard Holbrooke, a managing director of Shearson Lehman Bros., Carter State Department official and candidate for the Clinton Cabinet, accused the Journal of returning to "the era of McCarthy." The Journal had "condemned" Clinton "by association with Mr. Shearer's alleged views." Holbrooke's complaint about "guilt by association" is another cliche ripe for the garbage heap. The commonsensical notion that a man is known by the company he keeps did not cease being true because Joseph McCarthy confused such hearsay for the sort of evidence that passes muster in a trial. Reporters intimidated by Holbrooke-style bluster are advised to start keeping company with racetrack touts, who can smell good information a mile away. +++ This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM