The Nixon method was quickly adopted by the Reagan White House. At their eight-fifteen morning strategy meeting, Jim Baker, Ed Meese, and Mike Deaver would decide on the day’s story line; they would pass the word to Gergen and press spokesman Larry Speakes. The broad lines of the Reagan presidency are familiar: The president wants less government, more money for defense, military aid for Nicaraguan rebels; the president will veto the congressional budget (though he has rarely done so); the president will accept a tax increase only “as a last resort” (though he signed tax increases three years in a row).
Those are the big themes, but day in and day out, White House imagemakers fine-tune them, or they labor to deflect embarrassing stories. Often the official story line is directed at shaping how reporters cast White House stories. For example, when the White House was putting together the Reagan antidrug package in September 1986, Larry Speakes scolded reporters for highlighting mandatory drug testing for about one million federal employes. The mandatory tests had stirred up a hornet’s nest. Speakes wanted testing played down as “just one part of a six-part package,” to reduce public resistance to Reagan’s plan.
Sometimes the story line surfaces almost casually, belying its careful plotting. My colleague, Steven Weisman of The New York Times, uncovered one such episode in September 1984, after Walter Mondale upstaged President Reagan by announcing that he would meet with then–Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. (In nearly four years, Reagan had not yet met any top Soviet official.) Reagan’s top White House staff considered the story-line options: Should the president suggest that Mondale was meddling in affairs of state? Should criticism be leaked by some official anonymously? They wanted to knock Mondale, without looking petty. They decided on the line that the president had “no problem” with the Gromyko-Mondale meeting. It was a two-edged tactic: to show that Reagan was above partisan pettiness, but to implant a kernel of doubt about the propriety of Mondale’s move by injecting the notion of a “problem.” When reporters asked the expected question, Speakes replied offhandedly, “We don’t have any problems with it.” Later, President Reagan himself was asked and replied: “I have no problem with that at all.”18 The echoes were hardly as casual as they were made to sound.
Putting Spin on the Story Line
Setting the story line is the easy part; selling it and protecting it are much harder, especially when the president is prone to trip over carefully crafted media strategies with a loose tongue, as Reagan often did. Three things can trash the White House story line: hotter, competitive news from elsewhere; independent-minded White House reporters who refuse to buy the White House slant on presidential news; and self-inflicted wounds—the administration’s own snafus.
Far more than earlier administrations, the Reagan White House sought to impose tight discipline on other agencies. It did not want the Transportation Department taking a softer line on the air traffic controllers’ strike than the president took; or the Commerce Department slashing at Japanese trade practices when Reagan was privately wooing Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone. The sheer sprawling reach of the federal octopus makes controlling its tentacles hard. The aggressive, fragmented Washington press corps poses a challenge to centralized control.
Reporting in Washington is largely organized on a “beat system” (like a policeman’s patrol beat), because reporters must specialize in specific policy fields, or individual agencies, to keep abreast of developments. Usually, networks, newspapers, or news agencies assign one or two reporters to each of the main beats: the White House, Pentagon, State Department, Congress, Labor Department, Federal Reserve Board, and so on. All agencies have policy axes to grind, often at White House expense, and they feed the word to their beat reporters. At budget time, for example, the Pentagon will leak word of some new Soviet missile test or naval deployment, to justify a bigger budget. The Department of Health and Human Services will privately provide reporters a blueprint for a catastrophic health insurance plan to try to force President Reagan to endorse it.
To impose discipline, Reagan’s White House press office instituted daily conference calls with press secretaries of other executive agencies—one conference on domestic issues, and one on foreign policy. Reagan’s video managers grabbed good news for the president to announce and often made other agencies handle the bad news. White House spokesmen also one-upped other agencies by holding earlier daily briefings. Normally, major government agencies brief the press around noon, but at the Reagan White House, a dozen or so top reporters would gather in Larry Speakes’s office around 9:15 A.M. for coffee and news tips. At first, these were “background” or “guidance” sessions—meaning that Speakes was not to be quoted, but he would give reporters the president’s schedule, say which events would be open to press coverage, tell whether the president would make important remarks, and indicate where action might develop in other agencies or Congress. For the networks, this was valuable for deciding where to deploy their camera crews. Then, teams of cameramen, soundmen, reporters, and producers need warning to get to breaking news. With his tips, Speakes could steer the networks to items the White House wanted on the nightly news.
Eventually, Speakes made his 9:15 A.M. session an on-the-record briefing. By making the first comments on major overnight news and foreign developments, he could shape the Washington slant on the news before Congress or other agencies could react. “We jumped the gun on everyone,” one White House press aide boasted. “We were stealing the thunder from State and Defense.”
For TV coverage, the cards are stacked in favor of the White House. The beat system makes individual reporters vulnerable to government manipulation. It produces an institution-based press: cliques of reporters whose professional success depends greatly on the news generated by the beat or the institution they cover. Some reporters follow a news story such as aid to the Nicaraguan contras or the antidrug war wherever major developments lead. But more commonly, reporters work the angle that develops in their assigned agency, making them captives of the institution they cover and helping the White House to sell its story line, especially to TV networks.
“The president is the only nationally elected politician, and we’re the national news media,” explained Ed Fouhy, who has worked as a bureau chief or leading producer in Washington for ABC, CBS, and NBC. “On a slow news day at the White House, The New York Times can go [for big news] to the governor of New York and the mayor of New York City. But the networks have nowhere else to go. The president is our mayor. Congress is so tied up in its procedure that it’s very hard to get access for the kind of pictures you need. And the Supreme Court doesn’t allow anything [live TV coverage]. At the White House, you have your best correspondent, you’ve got all the logistical problems solved, and it’s going to look like news, no matter what happens.”19
The second rule of White House video merchants (after controlling the stage) is to minimize press editing of the White House story line. To get Reagan’s message out to the country in pure form, Reagan’s P.R. men sought to bypass the White House press corps. One technique was to play host periodically to regional broadcasters and editors, more awed by the presidential presence than White House regulars are and more inclined to take the spoon-fed story line. Another technique was to computerize the story line for mass marketing. In 1983, the Reagan team sent out ten thousand notices to newspapers, radio and television stations, and Republican organizations, telling them how to plug in electronically to prepackaged press statements and radio tapes—unedited by the networks. With Pat Buchanan as the driving force, the White House later beamed videotapes of uncut, unedited presidential appearances to nine hundred television stations via satellite uplinks owned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Republican party, or Conus, a private system. The goal was to have television anchors and producers in Dallas, Chicago, and Atlanta take the White House version rather than a network news package. “You can reach a huge audience with material which is shaped by the government rather than by the people in New Yo
rk with the networks,” David Gergen explained.
Moreover, for all its distaste for the controlled Soviet press, the Reagan White House toyed with setting up its own press agency. Evidently oblivious to parallels with Tass, the official Soviet news agency, Reagan backers proposed starting a government wire service to distribute government press releases. Gergen vetoed the idea. “I did not think it was appropriate to have a government wire service,” Gergen said. “I think this is dangerous.”20
But Gergen was famous for his “spin patrol”—a late effort by White House video managers to get a favorable slant in network news coverage. Normally, reporters spray out telephone calls to news sources during the day, probing for fresh angles, disagreements, difficulties, hidden costs, or covert actions. From such calls, Reagan’s media men could sense when news was developing unfavorably, and they would telephone reporters on deadline to put the White House “spin” on the news.
“He’d [Gergen] always call me up about six o’clock, five-fifty—usually in response to a call from me,” Sam Donaldson, ABC’s senior White House correspondent told me. “He’d want to tell me the White House view of something, and I’d invariably have to say, ‘David, I’ve already tracked my [news] piece. I mean, if I start tearing up the piece now, I’m probably not going to make air.’ But he always knew that I would get in something of what he said. And also he knew that by making it so late, what I would have to do usually is get the White House version, to some extent, in my ‘end piece.’ He knew that the end pieces that sum up the story are the last impact that the viewer gets. You know, Reagan says something, and Tip O’Neill says something, and you [the viewer] see something, and then I come on and say, ‘And so tonight it’s clear, what the White House is attempting to do is …’ Well, Gergen is pretty sharp. He knew that he would have an impact ‘cause I’d feel constrained to sort of say, ‘And so tonight, what seems clear is that the White House is going to do such and so, although a senior official said late today, “No, we’re going to do it the other way.” Thank you.’ ”21
“The reporters respond to that,” Gergen said, defending his practice. “They like it. They need it. And you could get them to change their feed.”22
The most lethal threat to the Reagan image game was loose talk in the White House, especially from the president. For getting the networks to do your bidding requires enormous internal discipline to hold the focus. The established story line was often upstaged by stories of internal feuding, or more likely, slips of the presidential tongue.
Reagan became famous for stepping on his own policy line with ad-libs. That is why his staff carefully plotted, coached, and rehearsed his statements and restricted his press conferences. In May 1986, for example, Reagan spoke to a visiting group about his budget priorities. But answering a question, he remarked that hunger in America was caused not by lack of money or food-distribution problems, but by a “lack of knowledge” among the poor about where to obtain help. His budget push got lost; his comments about the ignorance of hungry people became the headline, making Reagan look callous.
On other occasions, Reagan upset the image-game plan with serious misstatements. In early 1986, he tried to sway Congress on military aid for Nicaraguan rebels by claiming that Pope John Paul II was “urging us to continue our efforts in Central America.” The Vatican immediately denied that the Pope backed Reagan’s contra policy; Reagan’s misleading gambit boomeranged. After the hijacking of the Achille Lauro luxury liner in October 1985, the president goofed badly by telling reporters that it would be “all right” to have the ship’s hijackers turned over to the Palestine Liberation Organization so that “they can bring them to justice.” Reagan was virtually granting the PLO the legitimacy of a government—something his administration had refused to do for nearly six years. Within hours, Reagan had to backtrack and call for a trial by an established Western government.
What is probably Reagan’s most costly blooper came in August 1984, during a microphone test for one of his Saturday radio broadcasts. Instead of the standard 5-4-3-2-1, the president, intending a joke and thinking he was speaking in private, said: “My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.” Network technical crews heard his remarks and the story quickly got into print. The Allies erupted, and it took an energetic diplomatic campaign to calm them. The episode also cost Reagan with American voters; his private polls showed a dip of several points, shrinking Reagan’s lead over Mondale to its narrowest margin in the 1984 campaign.
One amusing story-line foul-up was caused by Caspar Weinberger’s napping during a White House P.R. operation. In March 1986, White House strategists built a drumbeat of media pressure to win Congressional support for $100 million in aid to Nicaraguan contras. Every day they fabricated a new media event: Reagan made speeches, met with contra leaders, huddled with congressional allies. To demonstrate graphically that Nicaragua was funneling arms to Marxist rebels in El Salvador, Reagan’s video managers decided to publicize an American M-16 rifle, lost in Vietnam and sent through Cuba to Nicaragua and then into El Salvador, where it was recaptured. To generate press interest, this M-16 was put on display at the State Department, and Reagan went there to speak. Moving Reagan even a few blocks helps attract TV coverage, because TV likes movement to convey the impression that something is happening.
“You can usually get greater credibility by taking certain events out of the White House,” William Henkel explained. “Sometimes to elevate something, give it stature, just that little technique of taking the president five or ten minutes out of the White House creates an event.”23
The Washington Times on Friday, March 14, produced what the White House wanted—a headline: REAGAN OFFERS CAPTURED ARMS AS PROOF. United Press International carried the guts of the White House story line; it had the president, “with a bristling display of the deadly tools of Central American conflict as his backdrop,” warning Congress of the danger of “anti-American Communist dictatorships” in the region.
Television ran Reagan’s show-and-tell session—except that Weinberger, in the audience, spoiled the show by nodding off while the president was speaking. As the cameras zoomed in on Weinberger’s drooping head, NBC’s Chris Wallace narrated: “While Mr. Reagan called the display an eye-opener, Secretary Weinberger fought a losing battle trying to do just that.”
Weinberger killed Reagan’s pitch with a yawn, for the picture of his catnap overrode Reagan’s spoken message.
The Visual Beats the Verbal
In the image game, the essence is not words, but pictures. The Reagan imagemakers followed the rule framed by Bob Haldeman, the advertising man who was Nixon’s chief of staff, the governing principle for politics in the television era: The visual wins over the verbal; the eye predominates over the ear; sight beats sound. As one Reagan official laughingly said to me, “What are you going to believe, the facts or your eyes?”
Reagan’s video managers, like scores of other political strategists and media consultants, operate on the principle that pictures prevail over commentary—the “eyes” always win.
Lesley Stahl of CBS, a top network reporter proud of her critical independence, told me how this point was driven home to her after airing a very tough commentary on the 1984 campaign. It was a four-and-a-half-minute piece that ran on October 4, during the campaign homestretch, analyzing how Reagan strategists used video forays “to create amnesia” about Reagan’s political record. Her piece was so blunt about Reagan’s techniques, Stahl told me, that she braced for a violent reaction from Reagan’s video managers.
“How does Ronald Reagan use television?” Stahl’s script asked.
“Brilliantly. He’s been criticized as the rich man’s President, but the TV pictures say it isn’t so. At 73, Mr. Reagan could have an age problem. But the TV pictures say it isn’t so. Americans want to feel proud of their country again, and of their President. And the TV pictures say you can. The orchestra
tion of television coverage absorbs the White House. Their goal? To emphasize the President’s greatest asset, which, his aides say, is his personality. They provide pictures of him looking like a leader. Confident, with his Marlboro man walk. A good family man.
“They also aim to erase the negatives. Mr. Reagan tried to counter the memory of an unpopular issue with a carefully chosen backdrop that actually contradicts the President’s policy. Look at the handicapped Olympics, or the opening ceremony of an old-age home. No hint that he tried to cut the budgets for the disabled and for federally subsidized housing for the elderly.… Another technique for distancing the President from bad news—have him disappear, as he did the day he pulled the Marines out of Lebanon. He flew off to his California ranch, leaving others to hand out the announcement. There are few visual reminders linking the President to the tragic bombing of the Marine headquarters in Beirut. But two days later, the invasion of Grenada succeeded, and the White House offered television a variety of scenes associating the President with the joy and the triumph.…
“President Reagan is accused of running a campaign in which he highlights the images and hides from the issues. But there’s no evidence that the charges will hurt him because when people see the President on television, he makes them feel good, about America, about themselves, and about him.”24
Stahl’s producers created a montage of Reagan video vignettes to illustrate her piece: Reagan cutting the ribbon at an old-folks home; greeting handicapped athletes in wheelchairs; giving a hug to Olympic gold-medal winner Mary Lou Retton; touring a cave saved by an environmental project; receiving a birthday cake and a kiss from Nancy; pumping iron and tossing a football with his Secret Service guards; mingling with black inner-city children and white kids in the suburbs; relaxing on his ranch in faded jeans; talking with midwestern farmers in an open field; paying tribute at Normandy to American G.I.’s who had died in the World War II landing in Europe; bathing in a sea of jubilant, flag-waving Reagan partisans while red-white-and-blue balloons floated toward the sky.
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