In case you're too young to remember, Dukakis was savaged in the press for the way he answered Shaw's question. With a heavy sigh (Bush had been pummeling him over his opposition to the death penalty), Dukakis explained all the reasons why he opposed the death penalty. He did not raise his fists to sky and scream, "Kitty!!! No!!!" Nor did he say, "Well, now that you put it that way, I guess I'll discard the principle I've held my entire time in public life. Fry the bastard!" Nor did he punch Shaw in the mouth, though he certainly would have been justified. Instead, he answered the question in a manner appropriate to someone who wanted to be president of the United States. Simon tells us what happened next:
In the press room, the murmurs over Shaw's question now turned to mutters over Dukakis' answer. "He's through." "That's all she wrote." "Get the hook!"Journalists then proceeded to say to the public, guess what -- just as we've been saying for months, Dukakis is too cold-blooded and passionless to be president. We were right all along. "A man who shows not the flicker of shock or anger at a truly brutal question about the hypothetical rape and murder of his wife," wrote David Broder at the time, "is not a man who can convey the feelings he undoubtedly has about flag, country, or creator."The reporters sensed it instantly. Even though the 90-minute debate was only seconds old, they felt it was already over for Dukakis. He had not been warm. He had not been likable. He had not shown emotion. He had merely shown principle.
Afterwards, his aides would try explain that he had been sick. He had seen two doctors before the debate. He had a fever, a virus. He wasn't himself.
But while he may have been sick, he was himself. That was the problem.
But Shaw wasn't trying to tease out the reasons Dukakis opposed the death penalty. His question was the worst kind of "gotcha," something with no policy content whatsoever. Its goal, and what it achieved so spectacularly, was to provide the "decisive moment" that would cast into sharp relief the character flaw that reporters had already decided was Dukakis' Achilles heel.
But according to Simon, here's how Shaw described it afterward: "I was just doing my job, asking that question � I thought of Murrow taking on McCarthy. That was the essence of what I wanted to be: Fearless, not afraid of the scorching bite of public criticism. I'm not afraid of being disliked. I'm not afraid of being criticized. In that debate, I did the right thing. I know I did. I know it."
Let's clarify something. Edward R. Murrow took on powerful people who were doing wrong. Bernard Shaw came up with a zinger question to put a candidate in an uncomfortable position, one tiny step above "Have you stopped beating your wife?" Shaw wasn't some kind of modern-day Murrow, he was a hack, the embodiment of everything that's wrong with how presidential campaigns are covered.
There's an unbroken line between Shaw, and Kit Seelye and Ceci Connolly making up lies Al Gore never told, and Jodi Wilgoren musing on John Kerry's windsurfing, and Maureen DowdJohn Edwards' haircut, and on and on and on into this campaign and the next and the next. It's not about substance, and it isn't even about "character." It's about finding what reporters think is the worst thing about a candidate, and picking and picking at it until their evident belief that it should disqualify him from the presidency becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's nothing to be proud of, and if Bernard Shaw thinks there's some parallel between his brand of questioning and what Edward R. Murrow did, he's truly deluded.
UPDATE: Over at my personal blog, I have an update to this post, explaining another example of reporters sabotaging the candidacy of a presidential front-runner they don�t happen to like. In this episode, David Broder and Lou Cannon admit to their crime.
--Paul Waldman