CHALLENGED: There was no Hannity in the Big Woods!

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2024

The Kennedy / Nixon reporters: American media have come a long way since Labor Day 1960. An observer might even think of the way Laura Ingalls Wilder began her famous first book, Little House in The Big Woods:

WILDER (page 1): Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs.

The great, dark trees of the Big Woods stood all around the house, and beyond them were other trees and beyond them were more trees. As far as a man could go to the north in a day, or a week, or a whole month, there was nothing but woods. There were no houses. There were no roads. There were no people. There were only trees and the wild animals who had their homes among them.

Writing in 1932, Wilder was describing the Wisconsin of the late 1860s—the deeply forested, largely uninhabited Wisconsin of her early childhood and her 1867 birth. 

"There was nothing but woods," she wrote. "There were no houses. There were no roads...There were only trees and wild animals," 

It's a bit like that when we look back to the American media landscape of the early 1960s—to the media landscape within which Candidates Kennedy and Nixon vied for control of the White House. 

There were no national "talk radio" programs. There was no Internet. There was no social media.

There were no "cable news" stations! There was no such thing as the Fox News Channel, or even CNN.

It's as we noted yesterday, based on the reporting by Theodore White in his own famous first book, The Making of The President 1960. Within that limited media landscape, presidential candidates had to struggle, scuffle and strain to gain access to "the cheering mass."

It's as we noted yesterday. On the Friday morning of the Labor Day weekend of 1960, Candidate John F. Kennedy flew from the Washington area on to Maine. He then flew across the country to San Francisco. 

From San Francisco, it was on to Alaska. He then turned his plane back to the east, landing in Detroit on Sunday evening for the formal start, early on the morning of Labor Day, of his White House campaign.

There was no cable news at that time; there was no Internet. A candidate had to fly all around the country, shouting himself hoarse. 

Last week, a vastly different situation prevailed as Candidate Trump sat with the Fox News Channel's Mark Levin to tape a pair of hour-long broadcasts—hour-long programs which aired on Saturday and Sunday nights of this year's Labor Day weekend. 

A vast array of media now stood at a hopeful's command. This profusion has created a challenge to the American political system, but also to us the people—a challenge we the people may not be equipped to negotiate, address or withstand.

The proliferation of media didn't come all at once. As far back as 1992, Candidate Bill Clinton went on Arsenio Hall's late-night TV program to speak directly to millions of people, "over the head of the press."

Last weekend, for better or worse, Candidate Trump took advantage of a similar opportunity. Our systems had come a long way since Candidate Kennedy took that long plane ride to Alaska, followed by that long ride back.

Before we more fully examine what happened on last weekend's airings of Life, Liberty and Levin, it might be worth recalling the portrait Theodore White drew of the men—and presumably, they were all men—who flew around the country with Candidates Kennedy and Nixon back in 1960.

Given the primitive media landscape which prevailed in the big woods of that time, these "forty or fifty men, generally middle-aged," played a highly significant role in the spread of information during the 1960 campaign.  

White's book about that campaign is almost as famous as Wilder's. He described these men, and the role they played in that campaign, in a brief, six-page passage which came fairly late in his book. 

Being one of those men himself, White painted a sympathetic portrait of the conditions they faced as they pursued their role in that important White House campaign. As his portrait started, he pictured those men on those planes:

WHITE (page 333): One must begin any reflection on the press reporting of the 1960 campaign by dissolving the word “press” from mind and replacing it with the picture of forty or fifty men, all veterans of their craft, all proud of their integrity and their calling, most of them having won the right to report the campaign after long careers of merit in their newspapers, magazines, or radio networks—and all of them individuals.

One must see these forty or fifty men, generally middle-aged, rocking groggily off a plane at between one and two in the morning (“Where are we now?” “Do we get our baggage here?” “Hey, where are we sleeping tonight?” “Are they feeding us here or not, do you know?”’), then wearily listening to the worn remarks of the candidate as he greets the greeters, then piling into the bus to be driven half an hour to the hotel (watching for local color as they go), dashing upstairs to the hastily arranged press room (“Are there coffee and sandwiches there?”) and getting the story off. Then to sleep between two and three, to be woken by the hotel clerk (who has been instructed by the advance man that all baggage must be in the lobby at six in the morning); downstairs to fight with the advance men, the staff, the other correspondents for eggs and coffee, before dashing off to hear the breakfast rally...

Borrowing from Langston Hughes, life for those forty or fifty men wasn't "no crystal stair." 

In his evocative portrait, White describes the massive tedium and the persistent indignities involved in covering the 1960 White House campaign. Before he described "what happened, I believe, in the press reporting of the campaign," he offered a further portrait of the journalists in question:

WHITE (page 335): ...The men assigned to cover a Presidential campaign are, normally, the finest in the profession of American journalism—men of seniority and experience, some of them men of deep scholarship and wisdom, all of them full of dignity and a sense of their own importance. Yet for weeks and months they must live like tramps —shaken, rushed, fighting with police at police lines, dirty and unbathed for days on end, herded into buses like schoolboys. Physical care and handling of the correspondents were much alike in both revolving headquarters—the same instantaneous telegraphic and telephonic communications, the same box lunches, the same baggage-laundry-feeding hotel arrangements. But none of this meticulous, logistic care could erase the turbulent reality of reporting, the insane jet-flight quality of the 1960 campaign—or protect the simple individual dignity of men who had to combine the qualities of roustabouts and philosophers under circumstances that inexorably deprived them of the last shreds of dignity.

Who were the people who'd been assigned to report the 1960 campaign for us, the American people, such as we were at the time? White's overall assessment is clear:

In White's account, these forty or fifty men were "all veterans of their craft, all proud of their integrity and their calling." In White's account. most of these men "had won the right to report the campaign after long careers of merit in their newspapers, magazines, or radio networks."

(At that time, "radio networks" were still of great consequence—and that wasn't a reference to the partisan national radio "talk shows" which developed years later.)

According to White, the men who reported this White House campaign were "the finest in the profession of American journalism." They were "men of seniority and experience." Some of them—though apparently not all—were "men of deep scholarship and wisdom, all of them full of dignity," though perhaps with an occasional "sense of their own importance."

It's interesting to see White describe these reporters this way, because—as we noted last week—he goes on to describe astounding journalistic misconduct on the Kennedy plane, as the reporters assigned to cover that candidate began to see themselves as an extension of his campaign. 

("By the last weeks of the campaign, those forty or fifty national correspondents who had followed Kennedy since the beginning of his electoral exertions into the November days had become more than a press corps—they had become his friends and, some of them, his most devoted admirers," White wrote. And yes, it got worse after that.)

For the reporters covering Candidate Nixon, it was a whole different ballgame. Still, they struggled to do their best work, White maintained:

WHITE (page 335-336): What happened, I believe in the press reporting of 1960 was that the sense of dignity of these men, their craftsmen’s pride in their calling, was abused by Mr. Nixon and his staff—and not by accident, but by decision. The brotherhood of the press was considered by Mr. Nixon and his press staff, not a brotherhood, but a conspiracy, and a hostile conspiracy at that; it was as if he accepted them permanently in their uncomfortable and unpleasant campaign role—as vagabonds.

The decision that the press was a conspiracy had been taken long before Mr. Nixon was actually nominated. One of his aides declared to me in June in flat words, “Stuff the bastards. They’re all against Dick anyway. Make them work—we aren’t going to hand out prepared remarks; let them get their pencils out and listen and take notes.” This philosophy was expressed, not only to me, but to any number of members of the brotherhood...

Nor was the hostility between press and the Nixon campaign simply a fruit of this trivial disdain. Predominantly Democratic in orientation, the reporters who followed Nixon were, nonetheless, for the sake of their own careers, anxious to write as well, as vividly, as substantively as possible about him. Yet he held himself aloof; erratically, he would sometimes permit reporters to ride his personal plane and at other times forbid it...Nixon kept to himself, believing (until too late in the campaign) that he could reach the American people over the heads of the press...

White couldn't have known this at the time, but he was sketching a storyline which would prevail right up to the present day—a storyline according to which national journalists were "predominantly Democratic," with many such people seeing themselves as agents of their day's Democratic nominee.

Nothing has ever undermined the power of this enduring portrait—not even the hostile coverage extended to Candidate Gore during Campaign 2000. But even as he described the divergent atmospheres on the two campaign planes, White insisted that his colleagues on the Nixon plane were "anxious to write as well, as vividly, as substantively as possible about him," if only (in some cases) "for the sake of their own careers."

There was no "cable news" in the landscape of that White House campaign. There was no Fox News Channel, not even a CNN.

There was no Sean Hannity in the Big Woods. There was no Morning Joe. 

"Radio networks" still held sway! There were frantic plane rides to Alaska, with other long plane rides back.

The media landscape was very different when Candidate Trump sat down with Mark Levin for the taping of an endless interaction which was scheduled to air on the Labor Day weekend. 

Candidate Trump made no personal appearances on this year's Labor Day. Instead, he had created two hours of air—and his "interview" had been conducted by a type of media figure who had barely existed way back when, in the thinly populated Big Woods of the 1960 campaign.

Levin is an open supporter of Trump, as is his perfect right. That said, a profusion of media now exists—a profusion which presents a serious challenge to our traditional systems. 

Democratic norms are under assault from the inhabitants of today's woods. It isn't clear that we the people will have what it takes to handle this ongoing challenge.

Tomorrow: As aired on the Fox News Channel