Word: barber
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After so unsatisfactory a campaign, someone has to be at fault. Why not the press? After all, as James David Barber, a political scientist at Duke University, argues: "Journalists are the new kingmakers." Far from being puffed up at the honor, journalists are apt to reply: "Who, me? Thanks but no thanks." They, too, are wondering, like card players with a poor hand, "Who dealt this mess...
...which Paula Hawkins, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Florida, answers: "You never win an election on issues. The only people who want to be specific are editors and journalists. The people out there are tired of someone who has all the answers." Only half kiddingly, Barber would even "forbid a candidate to discuss what he would do if elected," remembering F.D.R.'s promise in 1932 to balance the budget and Nixon as the exemplar of law-and-order. So what is left? Creating a favorable impression of what you would be like in office. That...
Candidates learned to schedule as few press conferences as possible, and to have some rehearsed ad lib ready for the cameras as they stepped from a plane. Thus bypassed, reporters badgered the candidates, "hoping," in Barber's words, "for some bit of quotable idiocy, usually making do with some hypothetical clash," and concentrated on gaffes...
...responsibility of the press, in Barber's view, is to plumb a candidate's background and his knowledge of the facts, the press did that job well with Reagan. He was not so much unknown as too simply perceived. The press had to get past Reagan's aw-shucks actor's persona and also avoid another parody-the straw-filled scarecrow wild man the Carter people created. Reporting gave the voters a plausible portrait of a 9-to-5 executive, only passably informed, given to exaggerated remarks but cautious in action, who wants complicated problems reduced...
...Barber said he is preparing a report based on information from sources at the hospitals in Italy and Israel where Cline performed his operations...