Talking Back

by Andrea Mitchell

  All this was done without most political reporters even noticing. We were paying attention instead to the thousands of Democratic field-workers who had flooded into Ohio from blue states where Kerry didn’t need them. But the Republican effort effectively neutralized the extensive field operations by those 527 groups, especially in Ohio, which gave George Bush his electoral margin of victory. At a Harvard conference after the election, Zack Exley, online communications director for Kerry-Edwards, said, “The right is beating the left at what used to be our game: grassroots politics, real democracy.” Exley admitted that his campaign did not harness the energy of the volunteers it recruited and deploy them effectively. Perhaps Exley had in mind that the Republicans were able to tap into local volunteers to spread their message. The Democrats relied instead on importing volunteers from “blue” states who often failed to connect with “red” state voters.

  That August night at the dinner for Betty and Jerry Ford, I knew the vice president was telling me something important, but I didn’t realize how critical it would be. Sitting in the heart of the Capitol, I found the gathering especially poignant. For years, the Fords had been returning every summer for a reunion of their former Cabinet and White House staff. Given their declining health, the trip had now become too strenuous. We toasted the president’s service, and his ninety-first birthday, knowing he was unlikely to return to Washington.

  Holding the dinner at the Capitol was especially appropriate. Ford had always loved Congress more than any other institution he served, and said he considered himself “a man of the people’s house.” This accidental president, who had done so much to restore our nation’s honor and dignity, still regretted not having become speaker of the House of Representatives.

  We had spent a weekend at the Fords’, along with the Cheneys, earlier that summer while attending an annual political and economic conference hosted by the former president. Alan’s term as Fed chairman was about to expire at midnight that night, and the Senate had just voted to reconfirm him for a fifth time. We were waiting to find out whether the president had signed the legislation at Camp David so that Alan could be sworn in. Late Saturday afternoon, word came from the White House that it was official. Alan took the oath of office that evening, standing in front of the fieldstone fireplace at the Fords’ home in Beaver Creek, Colorado. Dick Cheney administered the oath, and I held the Bible. The setting could not have been more meaningful, since it was Jerry Ford who had first given Alan the opportunity to go into government service exactly thirty years earlier.

  Ford had become president suddenly, in the poisonous aftermath of Watergate, but it strikes me that that was still a gentler time in our country’s politics. Today, the breakneck speed of communication gives us volumes of information, but also coarsens our political discourse. In the years since Jerry Ford was president, the rapid pace of radio and cable talk shows has contributed to a chorus of opinion. The faster we talk, the harder it is to listen. I sometimes wonder how much the harsh way we express our opinions has contributed to the sense that we are divided, perhaps even more than the colors on the electoral map do.

  In a nation of people increasingly informed by talk show rant on the right and the left, facts are incinerated in a blaze of rumor and accusation. If the accumulated charges burn brightly enough, the resulting smoke obscures any real truths. Lost in the haze of left-and right-wing polemics is real journalism. As the line between reporting and opinion becomes blurred, so do the definitions that used to be the touchstones of my profession. Recent scandals have sullied traditional news organizations, along with their imitators. Who can be surprised that readers and viewers are confused? Michael Moore creates entertaining films, but he is not a journalist. In the traditional sense, neither are talk show hosts like Bill O’Reilly, nor Al Franken, and certainly not Armstrong Williams, with his pay-to-play ethics, who secretly took money from the federal government to promote the Bush administration’s programs. And with the proliferation of so many broadcast channels and twenty-four-hour cable news, individual programs can differentiate themselves only by being edgier than the competition. The morphing of television interview programs into verbal food fights is now nearly universal. For an anxious nation in a post-9/11 world, the media have become an echo chamber, reinforcing our misconceptions and exaggerating our differences, real and imagined.

  We had come a long way since NBC took away my assignment as a Today show political analyst in 1992 to avoid confusing viewers who would see me reporting from the White House lawn. In those days, network executives said a White House correspondent should not also do political analysis. No longer. In the 2004 campaign, my dual roles—covering the news while at the same time analyzing events on our cable shows—were a careful balancing act, especially when surrounded by some of the most opinionated men in television. Fortunately, Chris Matthews was also sensitive to my plight, and steered me through the difficult moments.

  Augmenting the chattering classes in the 2004 presidential election was a flood of political advertising—$1.6 billion worth. After all the money that was spent, what did voters in six battleground states remember when asked by Election Day pollsters? Only three television ads, all produced for the benefit of George Bush: the Swift Boat Veterans campaign; “Ashley’s Story,” showing the president comforting the daughter of a 9/11 victim; and “Wolves,” a metaphor for the terror threat. People responded emotionally to these powerful video images, even while saying they were paying close attention to the issues. In fact, three-quarters of Americans said they were fully engaged and interested in the election, a sharp increase from previous presidential years. This first election since the attacks on New York and Washington revolved around how much confidence Americans had in who would better protect the nation from terror threats.

  To report and analyze the outcome of this national debate, on election night in 2004 our broadcast and cable teams were arrayed on the ice rink in front of NBC, renamed Democracy Plaza for the occasion. The entire square block was gussied up with an electoral map painted on the ice and streamers on the face of the GE Building at Rockefeller Plaza to signify the rising electoral vote count. We had lights, cameras, and plenty of action. It was a truly splendid display. Surrounded by a festive crowd of New Yorkers, we were celebrating democracy with a street fair. We broadcast for twelve hours, sneaking M&M’s for quick sugar hits, and poring over the numbers for clues to the future direction of our nation.

  Our election analysts had warned us that the outcome would be too close to call, despite an inaccurate first wave of exit polls early in the afternoon indicating that John Kerry would win. We were also working under new guidelines NBC had developed after the terrible mistakes all the networks had made four years earlier when calling the Bush-Gore race in 2000. Four years later, we were not going to project the winner until a candidate had accumulated a majority of the electoral votes available. Throughout the night we watched the numbers flow in, calling sources during commercial breaks to compare notes on what they were hearing from the field. With the election so evenly divided, neither a Bush nor Kerry win would have surprised me. By early morning it was clear that Ohio would decide the outcome. Bush had more votes, but we delayed “calling” the state for several more hours since the returns were still being tallied. Finally, the signals from the Kerry campaign were clear. Despite the continuing count in Ohio, Kerry’s advisors told us they would not be able to close the gap even if they were to win all of the disputed ballots outstanding. George Bush had been reelected. The final exit polls painted a portrait of an electorate so intensely partisan that most people had decided relatively early and stuck by their choices. In a striking departure from other years, no more than 6 percent of the voters made up their minds during the last few days—compared to 12 percent normally.

  At five-thirty a.m., I got off the air and crossed the plaza to watch Tom Brokaw’s election night farewell. We’d all been together for so many years that there were few dry eyes as he told our viewers that
it was nothing short of “awe-inspiring” to sit at that desk and share information with them on how our nation peacefully, if emotionally, decides our elections.

  With Tom’s decision to step down from the anchor desk, I thought about the arc of my own career. When that bell rings, I still spring into action in the middle of the night. After all these years, I still love the chase for news. I want to know why people behave as they do, and why they choose one leader over another. What makes one state red, and another blue? Or, do the news media overgeneralize, overlooking several shades of color within states to fit a preconceived narrative framework? I also wonder whether the country is really that sharply divided, or, as I suspect, are people simply viewing the same world through slightly different prisms? The electoral map shows a sea of red except for the coasts, but the true margins within each state are close enough that we are not really living in such a sharply polarized nation. Nor is a divided America a new political phenomenon. We’ve seen bitter disputes since the first days of our history, starting with the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, and later between the North and South. Today, despite all that’s written about deep divisions, most voters think of themselves as somewhere in the middle. It’s the political class, not the majority of voters, that have become more sharply ideological.

  Once again, I learned that for all its satisfactions, and they are numerous, the demands of this profession are relentless. On that morning after the election, after briefly taking time to change clothes and eat breakfast, I came back to the outdoor set at Rockefeller Plaza. Replacing the all-night election team, Don Imus and his merry band were now holding forth, broadcasting Imus in the Morning, the popular radio program now simulcast on MSNBC. Don, Charles McCord, and Bernard McGuirk are irreverent, smart, and, occasionally, wickedly mean. Appearing on Imus in the Morning is challenging enough after a good night’s sleep. It’s downright dangerous after working all night. I was so tired that as I left the stage, I tripped, fell down the stairs, and landed unceremoniously on the sidewalk. With both my dignity and knee badly bruised, I limped upstairs to find an ice pack and start thinking about that night’s assignment for Nightly News, a report on how the Democrats were reevaluating after losing their second consecutive bid for the White House.

  The defeat extended beyond the presidency. The Democrats, who until 1994 had dominated the House of Representatives for nearly a half century, were now reduced to their smallest number of congressional seats in fifty years, and held only twenty-two governorships. The morning after losing their bid for the White House, what kind of post mortem were they conducting? Were they examining why, according to the polls, so many rural voters found Democrats too smug, too urban, and too elite? And what role did “moral values” actually play in determining how people voted?

  Except for John Kennedy, in modern times only Southern Democrats have been able to bridge America’s cultural divide and build support in enough diverse constituencies to win the White House. Howard Dean was so desperate to appeal to Southern whites, he once said he wanted to be the candidate “for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.” He didn’t even realize how offensive that would be to large numbers of other voters.

  Did Democrats really lose because only voters in red states understand moral values? I think not, but that is certainly the impression many pundits communicated to their viewers. Yes, 22 percent of voters said that they reached their decision based on “moral values.” But whose values? The question asked by postelection pollsters was open-ended and subjective. Individual voters could have been defining “moral values” very differently. Were they really delivering a verdict against gay marriage, or did they see moral values instead as a commitment to patriotism, family, and neighborhood? Or were some defining their vote according to another possible meaning of “moral,” as a protest against the deployment of troops in Iraq? It is very hard to say, but neither red states nor blue states have a monopoly on family values or patriotic fervor. This is as true since 9/11 as it was before. Interpreting voters’ motivation is a cautionary exercise for pundits and party strategists.

  What 9/11 did affect were the issues on which people voted. In the first national election since the attacks, 34 percent of voters said they based their decision on either Iraq or fear of terrorism. They told pollsters they were motivated by anxiety for securing their homes from attack and, perhaps, more broadly defined concerns about national security. What the postelection instant analysis often overlooked was that clearing the national security bar was as big a hurdle for Democrats as proving they could master the language of God, guns, and NASCAR.

  When Nightly News ended on November 3, the night after the election, I went back to the hotel to finally get some sleep. All I could think of was getting home the next morning, but my love for breaking news was about to be tested. At five a.m., the assignment desk woke me up. Yasser Arafat had taken a turn for the worse. I felt like saying, Why is that my problem? There are moments on this job when you are so tired, it’s hard even to answer the bell. This was one of them.

  The Today show needed me right away. As soon as I was off the air, my producer, Libby Leist, and I hurried to the airport, again trying to get home. This time, the call from the desk came just as we were boarding the plane. The word from the Paris hospital was that Arafat did not have much time left. They wanted me to get off the shuttle and head back to the studios in case he died during the next few minutes.

  I persuaded them that it was a short flight, and I would be far more useful back in Washington. They agreed I could fly home, as long as I stayed on the air phone with the producer in the control room for the entire flight. The phone bill came to $238. When I landed an hour later, the president was about to hold a news conference. NBC had set up a live camera near the ticket counter at Reagan National airport so I could be hooked up for our special reports.

  Back in the Washington bureau, I worked on an Arafat story for Nightly News. All I could think about was that the show would be over by seven p.m. and I’d finally see Alan. The call from the head of our news operation came midafternoon: Arafat could die at any moment. They wanted me to leave right away for the Middle East, to help cover his funeral.

  I had interviewed Arafat many times over the years, in Ramallah and in Washington. At times, he had yelled at me, in two languages, and I had “talked back” as best I could. At the height of his power, he was awarded a share of the Nobel Peace prize for signing an historic treaty on the White House lawn. A decade later, the Palestinian leader was under siege in his West Bank headquarters, with Israeli guns pointed at his head. He and Israel’s prime minister, Ariel Sharon, were two aging enemies, locked in a lifelong feud.

  I thought back to the years when Arafat was held prisoner in his own headquarters, in Ramallah. I’d gone to Israel with Colin Powell in April 2002 when he had tried to negotiate a cease-fire. On his first day in Jerusalem, a female terrorist had set off a bomb in a crowded market, killing herself and six Israelis and wounding scores more. When the bomb exploded we were only a few blocks away, about to lift off for an aerial tour of Israel’s tense border with Lebanon. Powell ordered his helicopter to divert to first survey the terror scene; we watched emergency vehicles rushing to rescue victims. The attack strengthened Sharon’s resistance to Powell’s arguments that Israel pull back from the West Bank.

  Two days later, the secretary of state drove to Ramallah to try to make peace, taking a road cratered by Israeli tanks and artillery fire to reach Yasser Arafat’s nearly demolished headquarters. We rode in armored vehicles and were instructed on how to abandon the motorcade and run if we came under attack. When we got to Arafat’s besieged headquarters I volunteered to be the pool reporter representing the networks inside. The two men met for three hours. Arafat and his men had been holed up in a few small rooms with fetid air, bad food, and little sleep. I wondered what his bodyguards were taking to stay awake. What were the chances one of them would get jumpy, fire a gun, and set off a three-way shoot-out
among Powell’s security force, the Israeli army on the doorstep, and the Fatah militia guarding Arafat?

  All of these memories were flooding over me as I tried to figure out how to get to Ramallah in time for the Palestinian leader’s death. I hadn’t been home in weeks and now had to finish Nightly News and get on another plane. Libby helped get my things together, and Alan raced home so we could at least see each other on the way to the airport. In New York, Brian Williams was getting the same summons. He would be anchoring our live coverage of the funeral.

  After a twelve-hour layover in Frankfurt, I got to Israel and met Brian at our NBC bureau on November 5, three days after the election. We had dropped everything to get there in time; now the deathwatch over Arafat dragged on for ten more days.

  True to form, the call that Arafat had died came in the middle of the night, when I had only just fallen asleep. A desk editor in Washington tried to wake me up. I had no idea what she was saying and hung up the phone. The next call was from the control room, patching me in for a live phone report on MSNBC. Before I could explain that I was still half asleep, I found myself on the air. The anchor was Pat Buchanan, the hard-driving former Nixon speechwriter and presidential candidate who had delivered a strong challenge to George W. Bush’s father in New Hampshire in 1992 and actually won the New Hampshire primary four years later.