In the autumn of the 1896 presidential campaign, 750,000 citizens converged on Canton, Ohio, where Republican candidate William McKinley waited to receive them on his front porch. They came from the towns of New England, the rural hamlets in the South and the industrial centers of the Midwest to hear McKinley speak a few words and to shake his hand. On McKinley’s lawn, a handful of reporters gathered each day with pads and pencils to record his remarks and make notes for the stories they would send to their papers. The atmosphere was relaxed, the pace was slow. McKinley never had to venture farther than his own front porch.

Presidential campaigns are different now. People no longer come to the candidate’s home. Instead, the candidate comes to the homes of the people; his picture and message are beamed into millions of bedrooms and kitchens. The note pad and pencil are gone, replaced by computers and phone lines, video cameras and satellites. But the most important thing has not changed. This year, as every four years from the beginning of the republic, candidate and press will be joined, often suspiciously, sometimes in hostility, but always from necessity as essential partners in the quadrennial dance of democracy.

There is no democracy without elections. And there can be no elections without the press. Together, the candidate and those who report his actions and words make possible the citizen choice that is the heartbeat of freedom. "Every Four Years" is a journey into the front lines of the ongoing battle between the candidates who would be president and the journalists who cover their campaigns, as they each strive to tell the story as they want it told.

In a modern campaign, "the man seeks the office"

The hordes of visitors to McKinley’s house that distant autumn left a path of destruction in their wake as they carried off blades of grass, pieces of the fence that surrounded the lawn, parts of the posts that held up the porch. The porch and the lawn were eventually restored, but unbeknownst to the politicians of the time, the sun had already set on the gentlemanly tradition of the front-porch campaign. When Democratic challenger William Jennings Bryan decided in 1896 to stump the country on his own behalf, traveling thousands of miles to deliver rousing speeches to frenzied crowds, he challenged the reigning idea that had governed campaigns for more than a century the idea that "the office should seek the man rather than the man seek the office." The modern campaign was born and with it, a new form of coverage as the reporters themselves left the front porch to join Bryan on the road in search of anecdotes, character and personality.

In response to Bryan’s trailblazing move, Republican National Committee Chairman Mark Hanna, considered the first of the great campaign managers, countered with an unprecedented move of his own. He shook down bankers and industrialists for large sums of money to create a tremendous war chest for McKinley totaling $3.5 million, larger by far than any war chest in previous campaigns. "There are two things important in politics," Hanna once said. "The first is money and I can’t remember what the second one is." With the funds at his disposal, he distributed more than 100 million pamphlets and documents glorifying McKinley. He furnished material to newspapers across the land. "He has advertised McKinley," Theodore Roosevelt observed, "as if he were a patent medicine." At the same time, he orchestrated an intensely negative campaign against Bryan, accusing him of endangering American institutions, persuading businesses to put notices in workers’ pay envelopes warning them that they would lose their jobs if Bryan were elected, and distributing broadsides that predicted the secession of the Eastern states if the "unsound money man" got into power.

The vitriolic campaigning was not one-sided, however. Though the unabashed bias of the 19th century party organs in which each candidate was a conquering hero in the newspapers of his own party and a knave in the opposition press had gradually been diminished with the rise of independent newspapers and the big city press, publisher William Randolph Hearst threw his powerful newspaper empire squarely behind Bryan, abandoning any pretense of objectivity or impartiality. The office of The Journal served as a headquarters for Bryan’s eastern campaign, with Hearst promising readers he would match dollar for dollar every contribution they made to the Democratic Party. A series of daily cartoons was inaugurated portraying Hanna as a gross, potbellied puppeteer, a bloated ventriloquist with dollar signs on his face who spoke through his dummy, McKinley. Bryan’s activities were reported on the front page; McKinley was consigned to page 10. Yet, in the end, the McKinley-Hanna combination proved too powerful for Hearst and Bryan. With nearly 80% of the eligible voters casting ballots in the election, McKinley won the election by a large margin.

Roosevelt learns to grab headlines

If William Jennings Bryan invented the art of modern campaigning, Theodore Roosevelt mastered it. In 1900, when Bryan once again challenged McKinley, Hanna sent McKinley’s running mate, Roosevelt, on a grueling campaign tour to offset Bryan’s energetic appeal. "I am as strong as a bull moose," Roosevelt told Hanna, "and you can use me to the limit." With great exuberance, Roosevelt crisscrossed the country. According to his biographer, Edmund Morris, he delivered 673 speeches in 24 states, speaking an average of 20,000 words a day. So spirited were his speeches that one listener wondered if he had been drinking. "Oh, no," came the reply, "he needs no whiskey to make him feel that way — he intoxicates himself by his own enthusiasm."

When Roosevelt succeeded to the presidency with McKinley’s assassination in 1901, he became the first president to actively influence news coverage by cultivating shoe-leather reporters, summoning them to his office for conversations, sharing anecdotes, gossip and personal insights. He was the first president, reporter Mark Sullivan observed, " to realize and adapt himself to the relative ebbing of the power of the editorial compared to the news dispatch and the cartoon, the first to have a technique for getting the advantage of the headline." Believing that publicity was the lifeblood of the presidency, he deliberately timed his most dramatic statements for the slowest news day, Sunday, knowing his words and comments would fill the news columns on Monday morning.

By 1904, when he ran on his own for president, newspapers were making increasing use of photographs and developing more human interest stories to reach a wider readership. The sensational press and the new style of reporting played perfectly into the hands of the ever-colorful Roosevelt who was always ready to share a story about his family, delighting reporters with his incessant activity and his combative remarks. When he said "speak softly and carry a big stick," Sullivan observed, he inspired countless cartoons picturing him as "a mighty fighter swinging a hundred variations of a war club against the dragon railroads." When he called for "a square deal," plutocrats were pictured cowering with fear in front of an all-powerful Roosevelt, his big teeth bared in combat, his eyes glaring behind thick-lensed glasses. When the story was told that he had refused to shoot a young bear on a hunting trip, he gave birth to a new toy bear called "the teddy bear."

The new style of campaign coverage caught Democratic challenger Alton Parker in its wake. Having been given easy access to Roosevelt and his family, reporters followed Parker everywhere trying to snap interesting pictures, even to the extent of following him to the Hudson River during his morning skinny-dip. Parker complained bitterly, holding to the more traditional view that campaigns should be dignified affairs, but in the new age of personal publicity his protests were in vain. Roosevelt continued to dominate the campaign coverage, and on Election Day he was rewarded with an overwhelming victory.

Candidates adapt to the "moving platform"

In 1908, Roosevelt hand-picked his successor, William Howard Taft, and remained his chief adviser through the campaign. Concerned about the public image of the 350-pound Taft, he advised him never to be photographed horseback riding because "it was dangerous for him and cruel to the horse." Roosevelt also suggested that Taft stop playing golf because it was seen by workingmen as "a dude’s game." But Taft, who loved golf too much to stop, was able to convince reporters to keep his playing out of the papers. At the start of the campaign, Taft was reluctant to take to the stump against Bryan, who was running for president for the third time. But with Roosevelt’s coaching, he gradually became more relaxed and even began to enjoy the campaign. His victory in November was a victory for Roosevelt as much as for himself.

By 1912, when Taft ran for a second term against Democrat Woodrow Wilson, Roosevelt had turned against his former vice president. Entering the campaign as a third-party candidate on the Progressive ticket, the energetic Roosevelt once again dominated the campaign coverage. Perhaps the most dramatic moment in the campaign occurred in Milwaukee in October when Roosevelt was shot in the chest by a would-be assassin as he was about to deliver a speech. The bullet, passing first through his metal eyeglass case and the thick manuscript pages of the speech which he had in his pocket, came to rest just short of his right lung, an inch from his heart. But Roosevelt insisted on delivering his speech. "Friends, I have been shot. The bullet is in me now so that I cannot make a very long speech. But I will try my best." He then proceeded to speak spontaneously for nearly an hour, thoroughly captivating both his audience and the press, before being taken to the hospital.

At the outset of the 1912 campaign, Wilson had hoped he could avoid traveling around the country making speeches. He wanted to elevate the discourse, to discuss the issues clearly and rationally, which was impossible to do while delivering stump speeches from the rear platform of a train. "I like a platform that stays put," he said. Indeed, as his biographer August Heckscher observed, "engineers of those days paid little attention to the candidate whose special car might be attached to the rear of one of their trains," for they would often take off while the candidate was " in the middle of an argument or even in the middle of a sentence." But the tradition of touring the land was too firmly established, and Wilson soon found himself on an extended tour, forever frustrated by the conditions that forced him to shout his speech above the din of the crowd as reporters strained to record his words.

Enter press secretaries, press conferences

Wilson pioneered the creation of the modern press secretary with Joseph Tumulty, whose job it was to deal with reporters and limit press intrusions on the candidate’s privacy. Thus began, historian David Stebenne argues, "a formal contest with the press for control over how the candidate’s campaign and its message were to be communicated, a struggle that has gone on, in one form or another, ever since."

As president, Wilson further formalized his relations with the press by establishing regular press conferences. The conferences were rather staid affairs, with reporters required to submit written questions in advance and forbidden to quote the president. He was "evasive to the point of deception," Heckscher reports, and "he seemed reluctant to acknowledge that the reporters had names or particular personalities." A frustrated reporter later recalled that Wilson "gave the impression that he was matching his wits against ours, with the object of being able to make responses which seemed to answer the questions, but which imparted little or nothing in the way of information."

When Wilson ran for a second term against Charles Evans Hughes in 1916, he tried to revive the front-porch tradition, telling reporters that he thought "it was a sort of impropriety for the President to campaign." The record was there for all to see, and he didn’t feel he had to comment on it. Nor could he figure out a way to campaign that didn’t "more or less offend good taste." But so accustomed had the press become to traveling campaigns that Wilson felt compelled to leave his beloved home at Shadow Lawn and take to the road.

The election was close, so close that The New York Times wrongly conceded victory to Hughes. A legendary newsroom story holds that as it finally became clear late in the night that Wilson would win, a reporter called on Hughes at his hotel to get his reaction. "The President-elect has retired," the reporter was told, "and cannot be disturbed." "Well," said the reporter, "when the President-elect wakes up in the morning, tell him he isn’t President-elect anymore."

The decade of the ‘20s witnessed an increasing objectivity and independence on the part of the big-city press, evidenced by a clear separation of news and editorial commentary and an attempt to give equal space to each candidate. "Even stiff party organs have come to pride themselves on holding the scales even in their news columns," The New York Times reported. "This is a great advance from the days when it was considered almost treachery to your own party to give the views of the other a decent hearing."

"Sell" the president’s wife

The ‘20s also witnessed the first attempts to "sell" the president’s wife in a systematic way. In 1920, with women able to vote in a presidential election for the first time, the Republican National Committee employed Florence Harding, the wife of nominee Warren Harding, to appeal to women voters. In Florence Harding, the Republican publicity men found an enthusiastic and creative partner. According to Mrs. Harding’s biographer, Carl Anthony, it was her idea to create photo-ops that would let the American people see the Hardings as "just folks." In previous campaigns, the wives of candidates had posed as mere props standing behind their husbands, surrounded by children. But Mrs. Harding took a more aggressive stance with the photographers, creating images in which she would smile and gesticulate animatedly, gathering visiting dignitaries by her side, surrounded by banners proclaiming: "We are boosters of Mrs. Harding." When 3,000 people journeyed to Marion, Ohio, to hear Harding’s acceptance speech on his front porch, a series of pictures was staged to show the daily life of the Hardings, beginning with "hauling Old Glory to the masthead" of the flagpole, which had been transplanted from McKinley’s home for the occasion to intentionally echo McKinley’s successful campaign.

"Mrs. Harding is the only candidate’s wife who came more than half way to meet newspaper reporters," The New York Times reported. "She was not afraid of them." On the contrary, she cultivated them unremittingly. "I love the newspaper fraternity," she said. "I’d tell them where to get a story and they’d get it and never mention me. I trusted them often and they never betrayed me."

Indeed, the newspapermen played a critical role in Harding’s eventual victory over Democratic nominee James Cox by refusing to print widely circulating stories known to them in some detail about Harding’s indiscreet relationships with several women, including Carrie Phillips. The stories, which included charges of an illegitimate child, became so widespread that Republican leaders feared that the women might talk. To preclude this possibility, Anthony writes, Republican publicity director Al Lasker personally visited Carrie Phillips, providing her with a payment of $25,000, a monthly stipend and an all-expenses-paid trip to the Orient for the remainder of the campaign on the condition, which she accepted, that she never discuss her long relationship with the nominee.

Pictures mold "public relations"

As picture magazines surged in popularity and newsreels accompanied movies in theaters, the staged photo-op became a central element in President Calvin Coolidge’s 1924 campaign against Democrat John Davis and Progressive Robert La Follette. In the weeks before the election, supporters of Coolidge worried that his austere, nonsmiling personality was hurting his chances for victory. To counteract Alice Roosevelt Longworth’s widely quoted quip that Coolidge was so sour that he must have been "weaned on a pickle," Republican leaders turned to Edward Bernays, "the father of public relations," who had orchestrated Lucky Strike’s successful campaign to get women to smoke with a series of ads showing debutantes on street corners lighting up cigarettes, which he called "torches of freedom." Bernays later recalled in his memoirs that in racking his brain for ways to lighten Coolidge’s dour image, he decided to bring a troupe of Broadway performers, including the celebrated singer Al Jolson, to the White House share a breakfast of pancakes with Coolidge. As the performers lined up to shake Coolidge’s hand, Bernays hoped to snap a picture of Coolidge smiling or even laughing. But to Bernays’ consternation, the president never once smiled, " he shook each hand perfunctorily, no movement of any kind agitated his deadpan face." Only when the group adjourned to the White House lawn where Jolson sang a special song for the president with a catchy refrain did the president manage a slight smile. And when the guests joined in the refrain, he almost laughed: "Keep Coolidge. Keep Coolidge. And have no fears for four more years. He’s never asleep. Still waters run deep."

The newspapers loved the event. The New York Times carried the story on its front page with a headline that provided just the spin that Bernays wanted. "Actors Eat Cakes with the Coolidges. President Nearly Laughs." The article described the event as "one of the gayest incidents in the campaign." Every other paper, Bernays’ biographer Larry Tye reports, followed suit. The New York World reported that "it took a group of New York actors three minutes to accomplish with Calvin Coolidge what society leaders had attempted and failed, what traditionally was impossible, at least in public, and what even the Senate could not make him do. They forced him to show his teeth, open his mouth and laugh." Years later Bernays took credit for the change in image that brought about Coolidge’s resounding victory three weeks after the celebrated incident. On the night of the victory, Coolidge was captured one more time with a broad smile, though reporters noted that "a few moments after the snapshot the President’s countenance lapsed back into its customary rigid severity."

Reporters climb aboard FDR’s train

As candidates continued to cross the country, special arrangements were made for reporters to travel on the candidate’s train, bringing the press and the candidate into closer proximity than ever before. In 1928, when Democrat Al Smith ran against Republican Herbert Hoover, Smith’s campaign outfitted his "Ballyhoo Train" with a unique Pullman car designed as a city room, complete with 34 typewriters bolted down to tables, a darkroom for developing pictures, facilities for sending telegraphs and copy boys to carry copy from one end of the train to the other. Four years later, Franklin Roosevelt’s train, "The Roosevelt Special," was even more elaborate, equipped with nearly a dozen cars, including a dining car; a lounge car; sleeping cars; two cars for cameramen, radio announcers and representatives of the telegraph companies; and a separate car for the newspapermen where, late at night, reporters and campaign advisers would gather together, regaling one another with tales, their voices frequently breaking out into explosive laughs.

Roosevelt’s advisers had initially argued against the idea of his crisscrossing the country, preferring a front-porch campaign that would allow him to keep his paralysis hidden and protect him from the risk of an embarrassing fall in public, followed by humiliating news footage. But Roosevelt was determined to prove to both the press and the voters that he was able to take up the burdens of the presidency. Overruling his advisers, he embarked on a 13,000-mile journey from the East Coast to the West and back again. It was a brilliant strategy, for it allowed Roosevelt to obtain firsthand information on the suffering of the people as the nation entered its third year of depression, while at the same time giving him an opportunity to project his contagious warmth, vitality and confidence to the millions of people who came to see him.

The intimacy of the traveling conditions on the train allowed Roosevelt to develop an unusually close relationship with the newspapermen. In contrast to Wilson’s distant demeanor toward the press, Roosevelt regularly sat down with reporters, calling them by their first names, teasing them about their hangovers, taking their questions directly without written submissions, explaining his policies, exuding warmth and accessibility. Once when a correspondent narrowly missed getting on Roosevelt’s train, the president covered up for him by writing his copy until he could catch up. His open attitude helped to explain the paradox that, although 80 to 85% of the newspaper publishers strongly opposed Roosevelt, he enjoyed excellent relations with the working reporters, and his coverage in his first campaign was generally full and fair. "By the brilliant but simple trick of making news and being news," historian Arthur Schlesinger observed, "Roosevelt outwitted the open hostility of the publishers and converted the press into one of the most effective channels of his public leadership."

Indeed, when Roosevelt became president, he was protected by the press in ways that his successors could never imagine. There was an unspoken code of honor on the part of the White House photographers that the president was never to be photographed looking crippled. In 12 years, only one picture of the president in his wheelchair is known to have appeared in print. No newsreel ever captured him being lifted into or out of his car, though reporters and photographers had seen this happen dozens of times. If, as occasionally happened, one of the members of the press corps sought to violate the code by sneaking a picture of the president looking helpless, one of the older photographers would "accidentally" block the shot or gently knock the camera to the ground.

The most dramatic test of this policy of restraint on the part of the press came in 1936 at the Democratic National Convention. On the way to the podium, as Roosevelt was moving down the aisle on the arms of two strong men, he reached out to shake a supporter’s hands and lost his balance. His braces snapped, he fell to the ground, the pages of his speech scattered on the floor. "Clean me up," he said to the people surrounding him as he brushed off the dirt, relocked his braces and was helped to his feet. Minutes later, he was behind the podium delivering his masterful "rendezvous with destiny" speech. No photograph was taken of his fall nor did the accounts in the newspaper mention the mishap.

By 1936, however, as it became clear that Roosevelt’s New Deal had fundamentally altered the relationship of the government to the people, rearranging the balance of power between capital and labor, the hostility of the business community and the bulk of the publishers reached unprecedented heights. So opposed to FDR were the Hearst papers, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune for example, that reporters, according to historian Betty Houchin Winfield, were "stopped from writing anything that even suggested the possibility of Roosevelt’s reelection."

Newspapers meet the power of radio

In 1940, a group of powerful newspapers, including the Cowles family papers, the Henry Luce empire and The New York Herald Tribune managed to turn a little-known Republican businessman, Wendell Willkie, into a "media star" of such magnitude that he pulled off a surprise coup by winning the Republican nomination for president. Willkie had no political experience. He had no organization. He had never been a candidate before. He had been a Democrat for most of his life. Yet, with the help of the media, his candidacy took on a life of its own, developing an unstoppable momentum, The Washington Post observed, "like nothing a Republican gathering has seen before."

Yet, when November came, it was Roosevelt who once again captured the votes of a majority of his fellow citizens, winning an unprecedented third term. The key to his success in reaching the people over the heads of hostile newspapers can be found in his mastery of the new medium of the radio. "The radio and the boy came to maturity together," Russell Buhite and David Levy observed in their volume of Roosevelt’s fireside chats. "Roosevelt understood the essence of the medium better than any major political figure." He understood that radio demanded a new style of oratory in contrast to the dramatic rhetoric suitable when speaking to a large crowd. In his mind’s eye, he pictured his audience as small groups of people seated around a fireside, listening to an informal conversation using simple words and everyday analogies. "You felt he was talking to you," correspondent Richard Strout recalled, "not to fifty million others but to you personally."

Unlike modern presidents, who deliver weekly radio addresses and appear on television as often as they can, Roosevelt only delivered a fireside chat when he had something important to say, deliberately timing his speeches to shape, educate and move public opinion forward at critical moments. During his 12 years as president, he delivered some 30 fireside chats, averaging two or three a year — and only one during a presidential campaign. Yet each fireside chat commanded a huge audience — more than 70% of the home audience. To understand the magnitude of that figure, one need only realize that America’s top-ranking comedy shows — Jack Benny, Bob Hope, "Fibber McGee and Molly," "Amos ‘n’ Andy" — were currently garnering what were considered fabulous ratings of 30 to 35%. Novelist Saul Bellow recalls walking down the street while Roosevelt was speaking. Through lit windows, families could be seen sitting at their kitchen tables or gathered in their parlors listening to the radio. Drivers had pulled over and turned on their radios to listen. "Everywhere the same voice. You could follow without missing a single word as you strolled by."

Missing the news of a president’s illness

Throughout Roosevelt’s presidency, the rule of thumb for press coverage remained simple: the private behavior of public figures remained private unless it had a direct bearing on their public responsibilities. Though, for example, reporters knew that Roosevelt enjoyed a close relationship with Princess Martha of Norway, the only references they made were oblique, such as mentioning Martha’s well-turned ankle, black hose or high heels. "At least the reporters extended the same courtesies to Roosevelt’s opponents," political analyst Larry Sabato has noted. "Journalists in 1940 never reported that Republican presidential nominee Wendell Willkie had for many years openly kept a mistress, with whom he was in almost daily communication while on the campaign trail." In the old days, columnist Jack Germond observed, reporters used code words to hint at impropriety. "A politician who was a notorious drunk would be described as somebody with a reputation for excessive conviviality. Everybody knew except the reader."

While the old rule of thumb protecting private lives may strike us as a far better standard than today’s "anything goes" rule, problems arose during the 1944 campaign when reporters failed to give the public an accurate understanding of Roosevelt’s ill health. In the spring of 1944, Roosevelt was diagnosed with advanced congestive heart failure; his damaged heart was no longer able to pump effectively. Left untreated, Roosevelt was unlikely to survive for more than a year. His illness made him look much older than he was. His color was bad. Rumors surfaced that he was ill, but in these days before the full flowering of investigative reporting, there was no hard evidence to counteract the continually positive (and deceptive) reports that the president’s doctor, Ross McIntire, regularly gave to the press. "The president’s health is perfectly OK," McIntire insisted in October. "There are absolutely no organic difficulties at all. The stories that he is in bad health are understandable around election time, but they are not true."

Still, the rumors persisted to the point where Roosevelt’s pollster, Elmo Roper, advised him that worry over his health was having a negative impact on the campaign. The only counterattack, Roosevelt decided, was to campaign as vigorously as possible so that the people could make up their own minds. With a strength of will that compensated for his physical weakness, Roosevelt undertook a marathon campaign swing through the boroughs of New York City in an open Packard on a raw day when a cold rain was falling, the tail end of a hurricane. The rain drenched his suit, splattered his glasses and ran down his cheeks, but the president never stopped smiling and the crowds went wild. In between appearances he slipped into an apartment so that he could change his clothes and enjoy a few stiff bourbons. He then returned to greet the huge crowds that met him at every stop. Flashing his best smile, he appeared to enjoy every minute. It seemed almost as if Roosevelt had absorbed some of the strength and vitality of the thousands of people who had stood in the drenching rain for hours waiting for him. "Their enthusiasm for him and his feeling of being at one with them," his wife Eleanor observed, "seemed to give him an amount of exhilaration and energy and strength that nothing else did." But his high spirits in the face of the people who loved him could not arrest the downward slide of his illness. Less than six months later, a totally unprepared public had to face the shocking news that their president had collapsed and died.

By trial and error, polling grows

From the ‘40s on, polling would play an increasingly significant role in campaigns, both in shaping the activities of those who would be president and in determining the kind of coverage reporters gave to various candidates. After the notorious Literary Digest poll in 1936 that confidently predicted that Republican Alf Landon would beat Franklin Roosevelt in what turned out to be one of the most lopsided Democratic victories in history, polling became increasingly sophisticated, turning to scientific selection rather than massive mailings to reach an appropriate sample. Yet, 1948 turned out to be another embarrassing year in the history of polling, for all the polls mistakenly predicted that Thomas Dewey would wallop Harry Truman. And the mistaken polls affected the attitudes of the reporters as well, for even though they saw with their own eyes the huge crowds that enthusiastically greeted Truman all along the route of his whistle-stop tour, they let the polls, rather than their own instincts and judgment, dictate their predictions.

The story of the Newsweek poll is particularly revealing. Since the mid-1930s, before every presidential and congressional election, Newsweek had taken a poll of 50 of the nation’s best-known political reporters. The group had correctly forecast the winner every single year and had come even closer than the national polls in predicting the percentages of the victories. Due out in mid-October, the poll was, according to Truman biographer David McCullough, the subject of much speculation on Truman’s train since many of the reporters participating in it were traveling with Truman on his cross-country tour. Early one morning, knowing the issue was to appear that day, Truman’s aide Clark Clifford slipped off the train to get an advance copy. When Clifford opened the magazine, he discovered to his dismay that not a single reporter thought that Truman would win. The vote was 50 for Dewey, 0 for Truman. The average of the forecasts gave Dewey a sweeping 376 electoral votes with only 116 going to Truman. When Clifford returned to the train, he hid the magazine in his coat, not wanting Truman to see it. But Truman knew immediately what was going on. "What does it say?" he asked Clifford. "I saw you get off and go into the station. I think you probably went in there to see if they had a copy of Newsweek magazine. I think it is possible that you may have it under your jacket there, the way you’re holding your arm." Sheepishly, Clifford handed over the magazine. Truman read the poll but never flinched, his expression suggesting that there was nothing to worry about. "I know every one of these fellows," he mused. "There isn’t one of them has enough sense to pound sand in a rat hole."

The morning after his upset victory, Truman happily held up before the cameras a copy of the Chicago Daily Tribune with its now-celebrated headline, "Dewey Defeats Truman." And the Tribune was not alone. The New York Times had predicted a huge Dewey victory as had nearly every other paper. Several of the mistakes were costly. Life magazine, according to author Stephen Bates, had already sent its President Dewey cover to press. "The magazine paid a half million dollars to change it. Stewart and Joseph Alsop had sent out a column advising president-elect Dewey to restructure the State Department. And former Cabinet member Harold L. Ickes’ column authoritatively explained why Truman had lost."

The magnitude of the miscalculation caused much soul-seaching among the press. New York Times political reporter James Reston later recalled that he was so ashamed that he wrote a letter of apology to his paper, "and the Times was so embarrassed that it actually printed it." In the letter he tried to understand what had happened. "Before we in the newspaper business spend all our time and energy analyzing Governor Dewey’s failure in this election, maybe we ought to try to analyze our own failure. For that failure is almost as spectacular as the President’s victory, and the quicker we admit it the better off we’ll be. In a way our failure was not unlike Mr. Dewey’s, we overestimated the tangibles and underestimated the intangibles. Just as he was too isolated with other politicians, so we were too isolated with other reporters, and we, too, were far too impressed by the tidy statistics of the polls."

Television begins its rise

The decade of the ‘50s witnessed the emergence of television as a primary player in the coverage of presidential campaigns. Though its true impact would not be felt until the end of the decade, when nearly 90% of American families owned television sets, Richard Nixon’s celebrated "Checkers" speech in 1952 provided an early indication of the sweeping power of the new medium and its ability to change the rules of engagement between candidates and journalists. After it was revealed in newspapers in September that Nixon enjoyed a "secret rich men’s trust fund" that was purportedly allowing him to live in style beyond his salary, Eisenhower’s advisers recommended that Nixon be dropped from the vice-presidential slot on the ticket. Eisenhower decided instead that Nixon go on nationwide television to explain himself and then, depending upon the reaction, Eisenhower would decide what to do. Though Nixon was on the edge of tears when he began his broadcast, he delivered a masterly speech, a perfect blend of fact and sentiment. He detailed everything he owned. "Pat doesn’t have a mink coat, but she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat," he said. There was, however, one gift he did accept. "It was a little cocker spaniel dog, in a crate, that [was] sent all the way from Texas our little girl named it Checkers and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we’re going to keep him." The reaction was overwhelmingly positive. Telegrams and money poured in. When Nixon reached his next campaign stop, Eisenhower was waiting for him, a smile on his face. "You’re my boy," he said.

Television commercials first made their appearance in Eisenhower’s 1952 campaign in the form of a series of "man in the street" questions that Eisenhower answered, all of which, both questions and answers, had been carefully staged in advance. Though the ads were exceedingly primitive compared to what would come in the decades ahead, Eisenhower’s opponent, Democrat Adlai Stevenson, commented four years later that the ads had a dangerous impact on the electoral system. "The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process," he argued. Though Stevenson was a superb speaker, perhaps the best of his generation, his intellect and learning faded in the light of Eisenhower’s genial manner and fabulous smile.

Conventions begin their fall

The emergence of the presidential primary in 1956 as a corridor to the nomination marked the beginning of the end of the convention as the decisive nominating mechanism, and with this shift came a fundamental increase in the power of journalists who now assumed the central role of screening and often winnowing potential candidates. Though primaries had been established at the turn of the century, they had remained largely decorative until Estes Kefauver, whose celebrity had been forged as a result of televised hearings on crime, used the primary system to challenge Stevenson, the presumptive nominee. Kefauver, author Theodore White argued, "should be recorded as the godfather of the American presidential primary system. He was also the first man to recognize how, in the dawning age of television … a ‘down-home boy’ could use the primaries to appeal to ordinary people over the heads of their anonymous ‘bosses.’ " Yet, in 1956, editors still considered the New Hampshire primary a relatively minor story. White recalls sitting in Kefauver’s uncrowded hotel room, a bottle of bourbon between them, when the first reports of the Tennessee senator’s upset victory came through. Though few newspapers had sent reporters to the scene, Kefauver’s triumph forced Stevenson to compete in future primaries and set the stage for a revolution in the nominating system.

As the number of states holding primaries expanded each year and the cost of television time rose exponentially, Mark Hanna’s old adage about the central role of money in campaigns took on a new meaning. Without question, lack of money could bring a campaign to a halt. In 1960, the final days of the West Virginia primary, Democrat Hubert Humphrey was in such desperate need of money that he had to write out a personal check of his own for his last television appearance. It was not an easy choice for Humphrey, for the money had been set aside for his daughter’s upcoming wedding. In the end, however, John Kennedy’s well-financed campaign in West Virginia proved victorious. Humphrey’s quest for the nomination was finished. As Kennedy flew off in his private plane, Humphrey headed for his rented bus only to find that he’d been given a ticket for illegal parking. It was the end of his campaign, Theodore White observed, "the end of a long year of planning and hope. The Presidential image had evaporated."

Medium is the message in Kennedy-Nixon debates

In the general election campaign that year, television took on an even more central role when Kennedy and Republican nominee Richard Nixon agreed to a series of four televised debates. The first debate, watched by what was then a huge audience of 60 million, was decisive. Though listeners on the radio considered the debate a draw or even slightly inclined in Nixon’s favor, the camera showed something quite different. While Kennedy appeared tanned and relaxed, Nixon looked pale. Sweat appeared on his brow and cheeks, his facial muscles tensed as he answered questions, his lips seemed at time to form a smile completely unrelated to his words. To those who viewed the debate on television, Kennedy was the clear winner. "That night," New York Times columnist Russell Baker later wrote, "television replaced newspapers as the most important communications medium in American politics. After that, the Bill Lawrences of the press would gradually yield the stage to technicians of the electronic arts until we came to a time when it no longer mattered how newspapers treated you as long as you could handle yourself well on camera."

The full power of television became even more apparent four years later in the contest between Democrat Lyndon Johnson and Republican Barry Goldwater. While Goldwater’s conservative supporters were delighted with the Republican Convention, the image that carried to the country beyond the hall proved devastating to Goldwater’s chances. When Nelson Rockefeller stood to address the delegates, his voice was drowned out by a chorus of menacing shouts and boos, creating an intolerant impression of the party that was only reinforced by Goldwater’s defiant acceptance speech. "I would remind you that extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." Goldwater later understood how detrimental the televised images had been. "If I had a pint of brains," he said, "I should have known in San Francisco that I had won the nomination but lost the election right there."

1964 was also the year of the notorious "daisy ad," considered the father of modern negative advertising. In the ad, sponsored by the Democrats, a small girl with wind-tossed hair plucked the petals from a daisy, counting each discarded petal, one, two, three, while an adult masculine voice recited the far-more-ominous countdown to a nuclear explosion, 10, nine, eight. In the final scene, the field of flowers is replaced by a mushroom cloud. Though Goldwater is never mentioned, the image was a clear reference to Goldwater’s casual statements about the use of nuclear power. The spot produced such an outpouring of protest in the press that the Democrats agreed to take it off the air, but the intended damage had already been done.

The devastation Goldwater had suffered as a result of the 1964 convention was visited upon the Democrats in 1968 when the live television coverage of the violent disturbances in the streets of Chicago eclipsed the proceedings in the hall, providing a jarring background to Humphrey’s "Happy Warrior" speech. "Few who watched will forget the raucous Democratic Convention of 1968," New York Times columnist Tom Wicker later observed, "where police and National Guardsmen battled with demonstrators in the streets — shocking scenes of which were intercut, on the nation’s home screens, with routine shots of the presidential nomination and acceptance speech of Hubert H. Humphrey. That was perhaps the last truly unstaged (for television) convention, and, not coincidentally, the last to attract and hold wide public interest and high ratings."

The choice: Use TV, or be used by it

While Humphrey’s campaign was ravaged by television, Nixon’s campaign made masterful use of the new medium. By the mid-1960s, surveys showed that most Americans were getting their news from television. "The broadcast media," Tom Wicker observed, "had taken over the front page function of newspapers. The network evening-news broadcasts were illustrated front pages, compact and convenient, tuned to by most of the nation." Having learned from his past mistakes, Nixon found out, Timothy Crouse observed in "The Boys on the Bus," that he could "undermine reporters in subtle ways. He discovered that he could use television to get around the press. He could isolate himself from the press with no dire consequences to his political well-being." Nixon spent much of his time and money creating staged events for television, including scripted town meetings with questions and answers prepared ahead of time. "The idea was to have him in the middle of a group of people answering questions live," Joe McGinniss reported in "The Selling of the President." "There would be a studio audience to cheer Nixon’s answers and make it seem to home viewers that enthusiasm for his candidacy was all but uncontrollable." According to Nixon strategist Roger Ailes, the audience was a key part of the television show, and there was no reason to allow the press on the set, for if you let them in, they would see Nixon’s people telling the audience to applaud and to mob Nixon at the end, "and that’s all they’d write about."

"If you looked for buttons," Theodore White later wrote, "the bumper stickers, the billboards, and other forms of political graffiti that we had come to associate with past presidential campaigns, you could not find them. Too expensive. Save the money for television."

Media events, pack journalism, feeding frenzies

The shift in campaign travel from trains to planes played into Nixon’s strategy. As jets enabled candidates to touch down at more places for shorter periods than ever before, campaigns were encouraged to create the "pseudo-media event" on the tarmac, designed specifically for the consumption of local television audiences. Trips to the centers of cities became increasingly obsolete. So long as television cameras came to the airport and relayed the candidate’s message to the millions watching evening newscasts, political analyst Larry Sabato observed, "then the downtown rallies even those attended by tens of thousands become superfluous except as showy displays of public enthusiasm." James Reston believed that the transition from train to plane had a negative impact on the quality of reporting. "When I was introduced to political reporting in the presidential campaigns of the forties," he later noted with some wistfulness, "the candidates peddled their wares from the rear end of a railroad train. In those whistle-stopping days . . I regarded all the clatter and excitement as a prodigious adventure. Later on, when the candidates took to the air, the higher and faster we flew the less we knew."

As reporters found themselves for weeks or months at a time trapped on the same plane or bus, Crouse observed, they began to behave "like a pack of hounds sicced on a fox." Comparing notes with the same colleagues night after night, they began to believe "the same rumors, subscribe to the same theories and write the same stories. Even the most independent journalist cannot completely escape the pressures of the pack." After the phenomenal success of Theodore White’s book on the making of the president, pack journalism led reporters to focus more and more on the inner workings of campaign organizations. Concern with "the process" began to take precedence over exposition of the candidates’ positions on issues. The focus shifted, historian David Stebenne observed, from "‘What would this candidate’s victory mean for public policy and for me, the average voter?’ to ‘How is this candidate running his campaign, and what does that say about his likelihood of winning?’ "

Pack journalism also led to what Sabato has felicitously described as the "feeding frenzy," "a spectacle without equal in modern politics," where "the news media, print and broadcast, go after a wounded politician like sharks in a feeding frenzy. The wounds may have been self-inflicted, and the politician may richly deserve his or her fate, but the journalists now take center stage in the process, creating the news as much as reporting it, changing both the shape of the election year politics and the contours of government."

The election year of 1972 provided two feeding frenzies where journalists raced to cover the same embarrassing subjects. The first occurred when Edmund Muskie, the early favorite for the Democratic nomination, spoke out strongly against publisher William Loeb, who had accused his wife of alcoholism. Standing outside during a snowstorm, it appeared to the Washington Post’s David Broder that there were "tears streaming down his face," as he spoke. Muskie’s aides vehemently denied that he had been crying, arguing that what looked like tears were simply melting snow. In later years Broder would acknowledge that the tears might indeed have been melting snow, but once the story was set in motion it could not be called back. The collapse of Muskie’s composure on that snowy day, whether real or imagined, created a feeding frenzy that led to a collapse of his support and his eventual defeat. The second feeding frenzy began after it was revealed to the press that Thomas Eagleton, George McGovern’s choice for vice president, had been hospitalized for depression on several occasions and had received electroshock therapy. So intense and so damaging was the coverage in the days that followed the revelation that McGovern felt compelled to drop Eagleton from the ticket.

Two years later, after revelations by the press about the Watergate scandal contributed to President Nixon’s resignation, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two Washington Post reporters responsible for breaking the story, were elevated to celebrity status, creating new role models for young journalists. "Watergate transformed journalism," Sabato observed. Skepticism turned to cynicism while "the healthy adversarial relationships" that naturally existed between the press and politicians were "sharpened to a razor’s edge." From here on, Crouse argued, "the press screened the candidates, usurping the party’s old function. By reporting a man’s political strengths, they made him a front runner; by mentioning his weaknesses and liabilities, they cut him down. Teddy White even in his wildest flights of megalomania, had never allowed himself this kind of power."

During the 1976 election between President Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, another feeding frenzy occurred when the Democratic candidate revealed in an interview with Playboy that he had "committed adultery" in his heart many times by looking "on a lot of women with lust." The curious confession subjected Carter to widespread ridicule and opened the door for the press to talk about the personal morals of political candidates.

With Carter’s position in the polls slipping against a surging President Ford, the televised debates, the first since 1960, took on an added importance. Most analysts believed that Ford won the first debate, but he stumbled in the second when New York Times columnist Max Frankel asked him a question about the Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration," the president maintained. Frankel initially tried to help him out, giving him a chance to clarify his misstatement. "Did I understand you to say, sir, that the Russians are not using Eastern Europe as their own sphere of influence?" But Ford barreled on, insisting that neither the Yugoslavians nor the Rumanians, for example, considered themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. Frankel commented later on the dramatic moment. "Our job was to inform the readers, not to entrap the president. That is why it came as second nature to me to throw a lifeline to President Ford after his catastrophic gaffe. Ford’s rhetorical liberation of all Eastern Europe invited ridicule that may well have cost him a very close election."

The art of packaging a candidate

As television assumed the central role in campaigns, a new breed of media consultants replaced the old pros the ward bosses, the nuts and bolts guys, the smart operators. The new pros were the men and women who were experts in creating commercials, buying time and shaping images. And to the extent that the news media developed an increasing sophistication about the role of these media manipulators, campaign managers tended to close the press off from easy access to the candidates, trusting that public attitudes would be shaped more by patriotic pictures and televised images than by reporters’ words. In 1980, Ronald Reagan’s team brought the art of packaging to near perfection. "This is an eerie campaign," Elizabeth Drew wrote. "It’s not just that Reagan is cordoned off and protected from the press; it’s a question of why his aides feel he must be protected from the normal give and take of political life of what it is that they are afraid will be revealed. They behave as if they were a group of trainers who have a beautiful race horse on their hands one that must be given constant care."

In 1984, in an attempt to regain control of the coverage, CBS News correspondent Lesley Stahl put together a story for the evening news on the "orchestration of television coverage" in the Reagan campaign. While the piece showed images of Reagan handing out medals to handicapped athletes and cutting the ribbon on a new nursing home, surrounded by the American flag and by cheering crowds, the voice-over pointed out that the Reagan administration had consistently cut budgets for the disabled and for nursing home construction. Stahl worried that her piece was so tough that she might be frozen out of the White House, but after it ran, Reagan aide Dick Darman called her and complimented her on a great story. "Didn’t you hear what I said?" a perplexed Stahl asked. "Nobody heard what you said," Darman replied. "You guys in televisionland haven’t figured it out, have you? When the pictures are powerful and emotional, they override if not completely drown out the sound. Lesley, I mean it, nobody heard you."

The quality of campaign coverage reached several new lows in 1988. The old standards protecting private lives totally collapsed. Misleading ads were allowed to saturate the airwaves without adequate investigation for factual accuracy, horse-race journalism pushed important issues aside, and minor gaffes were blown way out of proportion. At the same time, the campaigns themselves were guilty of trivializing the political dialogue, producing vapid events, playing to fears and appealing to white racism. On Election Day, only 50% of the eligible voters came to the polls, the lowest turnout in more than 60 years. "More people than ever before," Elizabeth Drew wrote, "told pollsters that they were unhappy about the Presidential campaign, and the candidates."

Gary Hart’s challenge: "Follow me around"

The dramatic events that led to the demise of the old rule of thumb regarding the private lives of candidates began when Democratic candidate Gary Hart, responding to rumors about his womanizing, issued a direct challenge to New York Times reporter E.J. Dionne. "Follow me around. I don’t care. I’m serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They’d be very bored." The Miami Herald did indeed put a tail on Hart in the spring of 1987 and reported that he had spent the night with a young woman named Donna Rice. Stories of additional affairs began to circulate; at a press conference Washington Post reporter Paul Taylor asked a question no reporter had ever publicly asked a candidate before: Have you ever committed adultery? Though Hart argued that the question was unfair, when a picture of him and Rice on a boat unfortunately called "Monkey Business" surfaced, the frenzy increased to the point where Hart felt he had to bow out of the race. The whole system, he complained, "reduces the press of this nation to hunters and presidential candidates being hunted."

A number of journalists agreed. "When I read about the Miami Herald story on Gary Hart, I felt degraded in my profession," New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis wrote at the time. "Is that what journalism is about, hiding in a van outside a politician’s home? The loss of respect for privacy has exacted a terrible price in American politics. When anyone who runs for president knows that intimate details of his or her life will be shouted to the world, what sensitive person would run? The way we choose our presidents is a national disgrace." Lewis’ colleague at the Times, Abe Rosenthal, expressed a similar sentiment. "I did not become a newspaperman to hide outside a politician’s house trying to find out whether he was in bed with somebody."

While negative ads had become a staple of presidential campaigns since the airing of the "daisy ad," the Willie Horton ad run by the Bush campaign in 1988 proved to be a turning point in the relationship of campaigns and reporters. The Bush team came up with the idea for the ad after focus groups revealed a passionate reaction to the story of Willie Horton, an imprisoned black convict who had raped a white woman while on a furlough program approved by Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, Bush’s Democratic opponent. A private group, Americans for Bush, launched the first commercial, "Weekend Passes," accompanied by menacing police photographs of Horton. After the ad was broadcast Bush campaign officials denied responsibility, but The New York Times ran a front page story revealing that the ad had been filmed by former employees of Bush media director Roger Ailes. Though some reporters and columnists criticized the ad the Times’ Anthony Lewis wrote that the "dirty little secret of the Bush campaign was its strategic appeal to white racism" the media response was less forceful than the outcry that had forced the "daisy ad" off the air. Undeterred, the Bush campaign flooded communities with bumper stickers and flyers using Horton’s name and released another ad on the same Willie Horton theme. Against a visual image of a stream of white, black and Hispanic men filing through a revolving door, the ad accused Dukakis of creating "a revolving-door prison policy."

The focus on law and order became a central theme in the second debate between Dukakis and Bush. The first question went to Dukakis. He was asked if he would alter his position against the death penalty if his wife were raped and murdered. Projecting absolutely no emotion, he proceeded to speak about the death penalty as if he were reading from a policy paper. "When he answered by talking policy," his campaign manager Susan Estrich later said, "I knew we had lost the election." Pollster Lou Harris said the furlough ad and the attacks on Dukakis’ opposition to the death penalty had influenced voters more than anything in the campaign. Through it all, Willie Horton had become perhaps the best-known criminal in America. On the day that Bush was inaugurated as president, Newsday ran an interview with Horton in which he complained, "Bush used me to win."

Media launches "coverage of the coverage"

In 1992, as reporters looked back on their failure to analyze more fully the deceptive nature of the Bush ads, they were determined to do better. At the same time, many television journalists felt that they had been taken in by the Bush campaign when they covered clearly staged media events, including Bush’s visit to a flag factory, as news stories, without informing the public about the contrived symbolism. A period of self-analysis and self-criticism followed. A new type of campaign reportage emerged, which historian David Stebenne has called "coverage of the coverage." As a result, many newspapers and television stations created vastly improved "ad-watches," which subjected candidates’ ads to investigation, distinguishing facts from opinions, uncovering lies and exaggerations, providing "an accuracy scorecard." The ad watches, author Darrell West argues, "had a big impact on candidates. Reporters’ scrutiny forced candidates to document their claims more carefully. This led some presidential aspirants to include factual citations directly on the screen, reminiscent of footnotes in a term paper."

If the news media learned from mistakes of the past, so did the candidates. Having witnessed what happened to Dukakis when he failed to counter the negative attacks of the Bush campaign, the Clinton team created a "war room" in 1992, with an instant capacity to respond forcefully whenever Clinton was under attack. The war room proved essential when allegations surfaced that he had had an extramarital affair. The allegations first appeared in print when a supermarket tabloid, the Star, published an interview with former nightclub singer Gennifer Flowers, in which she alleged that she had had a 12-year affair with Clinton. Clinton denied the allegations at first, but when the issue kept dogging him, he decided to fight back. Appearing on CBS’ "60 Minutes" with his wife Hillary at his side, he acknowledged "wrongdoing," and admitted "causing pain in my marriage," but refused to admit to the specific allegations. He accused the press of reveling in a "game of gotcha," and then allowed Hillary to take center stage. "I love him, and I respect him and honor what he’s been through and what we’ve been through together," she insisted. "And you know, if that’s not enough for people, than heck, don’t vote for him." The offensive worked. In the days that followed, though audio tapes were released capturing extremely suggestive conversations between Flowers and Clinton, the issue ultimately lost traction.

Clinton was fortunate. As Gary Hart later pointed out, the country had already been inoculated to infidelity scandals in his own race. "I somehow carried away the burden of the scandal," he explained. What is more, the press was concerned about trivializing the campaign after the criticism they had endured for their coverage four years earlier. The people had made it clear, Elizabeth Drew argued, that they wouldn’t put up with a rerun of 1988. They insisted, at a time when the economy was in trouble, that both the candidates and the press stay on the issues.

Everything from MTV to the old bus

During the 1992 campaign, candidates turned to alternative media outlets to reach voters. Clinton appeared on MTV while third-party candidate Ross Perot announced his candidacy on "Larry King Live." Perot’s unorthodox campaign posed a difficult challenge for reporters. Backed by his own fortune, he was able to purchase large blocks of television time where he spoke directly to the camera, while insulating himself from both the press and from ordinary voters. Still, even as new trends emerged, old trends persisted. Polls continued to dominate both campaigns and reporting, debates continued to play a central role and ads continued to flood the television screens. Indeed, during the general election, Clinton returned to an even older style of campaigning when he embarked on an ambitious bus trip that carried him to hundreds of small villages and towns, capturing the imagination of both the news media and the people.

In 1996, the pace of both the campaigns and the coverage accelerated still further as the numbers of primaries continued to increase along with the numbers of reporters covering the primaries. What is more, as the 24-hour news cycle became the industry standard, Philip Seib argues in "Campaigns and Conscience," the "Old News," consisting primarily of "national daily newspapers, the television networks, the news magazines and the wire services those who have, quite literally, mediated between politicians and the public for decades," faced increasing competition from the "New News," which "by contrast, dispenses with mediation," encompassing "cable TV, call-in shows, electronic town-meetings, and 800 telephone numbers." The changing technology makes it possible for stories to "break" more quickly and spread more widely than ever before; the spotlight of publicity creates instant celebrities, opening the door for little-known candidates to become contenders in a matter of months or for front-runners to become pariahs in a matter of weeks or even days.

"There are so many great things about CNN," humorist Al Franken quipped. "If something important happens, CNN will show it over and over again … like when Bob Dole fell down at a campaign rally." Franken was jesting, for Dole’s fall from a stage in California was certainly not an important event in the 1996 campaign. In fact, he was not hurt at all; yet the fall was the subject of ubiquitous news coverage for days. In contrast to the restraint used when Franklin Roosevelt fell at the Democratic National Convention in 1936, the cameras captured every angle of the fall, while reporters used the mishap as a way of underlining the age issue. Just before Dole fell, he had mistakenly referred to the Los Angeles Dodgers as the Brooklyn Dodgers, a gaffe that allowed reporters to provide a subtext for their stories. "The implication here is that Dole is too feeble to stand on his feet and too foggy to know what decade he’s in," a reporter for Cleveland’s Plain Dealer wrote. "It is a metaphor," Fred Barnes insisted in a roundtable discussion on "Late Edition." "Remember when Jimmy Carter got all exhausted and had to drop out of that marathon and those pictures? George Bush throwing up on the Japanese prime minister? Now Bob Dole takes a fall. It’s suggestive." Yet, as it turned out, the fall had nothing at all to do with Dole’s age. The planners of the event had placed a decorative railing at the edge of the stage without attaching it to the platform. When Dole leaned on the railing to talk to a supporter, it gave way and he fell four feet to the ground. The suggestive implications of the fall were simply the ruminations of too many reporters and too many talking heads filling up too much time in too many outlets.

"Presidents and press: Who uses whom?"

At century’s end, the struggle between the candidates and the news media continues. As the style of campaigning has changed over the decades, so has the form of coverage. At the turn of the last century, campaigns moved to the speed of the steam engine and the linotype press. A candidate relied on city bosses, party leaders and partisan newspapers to carry his message to the people, secure his nomination at his party’s convention and drum out the vote for him on Election Day. The citizens were actively involved in both campaigns and elections. Campaign buttons, hats and banners were everywhere to be seen. More than eight in 10 eligible voters went to the polls on Election Day. Yet only a fraction of the public white males over 21 years of age were allowed to vote.

The 20th century witnessed a substantial opening of the electoral process as direct primaries replaced party conventions as the chief means of nominating candidates and as women, blacks and 18-year-olds were accorded the right to vote. As primaries replaced conventions, first newspapers, then radio, then television, replaced the parties as the central screening mechanisms through which citizens got information about the candidates. Over the years, the coverage of campaigns has become less partisan, more sophisticated, more analytical, more willing to look below the surface, more capable of holding candidates accountable. There is greater diversity among both the candidates and the members of the media. On the less positive side, coverage has become more titillating, more frenzied and less restrained, while campaigns have become more negative, more manipulative and less substantive.

Yet, perhaps most troubling of all, the percentage of eligible voters who actually go to the polls has declined precipitously. The party bonds that once tied citizens to their politicians have loosened. The attention span has diminished. For too many citizens, politics has become a spectator sport rather than a participant game. The challenge for both the candidates and the news media in the century to come is to find ways, while still fussing at each other as they always will, to stimulate more interest and deeper involvement in more people. For in the end, both the candidates and the reporters need each other. "Presidents and press who uses whom?," New York Times columnist Max Frankel asks. "The truth is we use each other at every important turn." And this is how it should be in a democracy. "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise," Winston Churchill observed. "Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

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Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin is guest curator of the Newseum’s latest special exhibition, Every Four Years, which opens in Arlington, Va., and New York in February. Visit the Newseum’s Web site, www.newseum.org, for more information.