“What did he say?”
“Nothing. He just whistled. And everybody knew.”
Knew what, I did not ask. I would have liked to have seen that. It sounded like a visual image of the hooker code at Delrios. I was sorry I missed it.
“So what was the reaction?”
After all, this was the same room that had gone crazy when President Summers announced he wasn’t running six months ago.
“That’s the funny thing,” said Carl. “Nobody reacted. It was like a fart in church. You didn’t know whether to laugh out loud or feel sorry for the guy who cut it.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of that. But I remembered that I had a designated driver—as if I needed any encouragement—and ordered another shot. When Ralph came over to pour it, our faces couldn’t have been more than a foot apart. He looked at me like he was reading my face. Neither of us spoke. He poured. I drank.
• • •
When I finally stumbled out of Delrios it was midnight. I needed to get up in a few hours and bear witness to the reaction of my stink bomb. Like I had after Maher, and the final debate at the Reagan Library, I was again leading both Drudge and now Huffpo, too. On one I was a savior. On the other I was a cocksucker. You can figure out which. I agreed with the latter. But both had the grainy picture posted outside the Fort Harrison Hotel.
Wednesday and Thursday were a blur. On both days, there were a bunch of TV cameras in studio capturing Stan Powers as he preached to his flock of I-4 followers who held in their hands the next presidency of the United States. God help us.
The Tobias family had in fact been on vacation all week in Martha’s Vineyard. Presumably that was where Susan had called me from on Monday, which seemed like an eternity ago. Now, Tobias had scheduled an emergency Friday press conference from Boston where he would respond to an unrelenting media that wanted answers to the issues I had raised in my Tampa speech. In the meantime, there was a loop of the family on the beach at Chappaquiddick that had been surreptitiously recorded by boat, which made me want to throw up. Some talk hosts made a connection to Ted Kennedy and said that Tobias’ presidential aspirations had also ended on the tiny island. On the right there was speculation that Tobias would even leave the race, something I am sure had been the intention of the Haskel camp. Vic Baron, having lost the primary and been passed over for the vice presidency, was presumed to be the instigator of the Dump Tobias campaign.
My audience was loving every minute of it.
“God bless you, Stan, for exposing this Martian,” one guy actually said.
The calls came in one after another on the morning of Margaret Haskel’s acceptance speech. I just blew through them and kept my thoughts—and embarrassment—to myself. Rod practically had a boner. Alex looked defeated.
And then, suddenly, I made up my mind.
“Don’t book any guests for the final half-hour tomorrow,” I told her as I walked out of the studio on Thursday.
“Okay. Don’t forget that CSPAN is televising the entire program tomorrow,” she reminded me.
“Right,” I said.
It would be perfect. In addition to the steady parade of TV journalists from across the country who wanted to justify their trip to Tampa by recording Stan Powers as he held court, CSPAN was going to broadcast the entire final hour of Morning Power on Friday morning right after Margaret Haskel accepted the nomination. That reminder only made me more anxious to go home and prepare the next day’s program. I knew now what I was going to do.
Steve Bernson was waiting for me in the hallway outside the studio. So too was Don Fortini. I had messages from Jules DelGado and Phil Dean. But I hurried past them all and peeled out of the garage without giving a wave to my fishing buddy. In the rearview mirror I thought I saw him standing motionless. I stepped on the gas.
My iPhone didn’t stop ringing or vibrating, but I responded to no one. I was a man on a mission. Funny, I often struggled to come up with a closing monologue about the politics of the day, but this time, the words flowed with remarkable ease. And for once, delivering them was going to feel good. I wrote through the afternoon and into the evening. The only question in my mind was whether I would have the chance to do what I wanted. I needed Alex to make it happen. That night, I didn’t even watch Margaret Haskel accept her party’s nod. I no longer cared what she said. I was too busy worrying about what I was going to say.
Come Friday morning, the convention was finally over. Delegates were rushing to catch flights. Journalists were filing their wrap-up pieces. The general election was on. And Tobias was scheduled to speak from his interrupted vacation that afternoon. I spent the first three hours interviewing a combination of conservative journalists and Republican officeholders who were anxious to frame the contrast for the general election. Taking their cues from me, each was sure to work in a mention of religion.
Finally, at 8:30 Friday morning, the control room was down to three people. Rod, Alex, and a cameraman from CSPAN. All morning I’d been banking on the fact that Rod’s body clock would remain consistent. When he stood at the final break to go take a piss, I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I gave Alex the order.
“Lock the door,” I said.
She was temporarily dumbfounded.
“Lock the door,” I said again.
But a moment later, she did as she was told.
There was only one way into the studio and it was now sealed.
The guy from CSPAN didn’t have a clue what was going on, but he kept his camera shot locked. If I’d been thinking clearly at the time I’d have realized that CSPAN doesn’t take commercial breaks, so my instructions to Alex had just been televised nationwide—which I later learned, sent off shockwaves in the Twitterverse. Anyone who was watching had just heard my command. A whisper down the lane of “hey watch this” took over.
As far as I knew, there was no way to kill the signal. The “on air” light came on, and I was ready to roll. I had 18 minutes to get the job done until we needed to break.
CHAPTER 17
“Welcome back to Morning Power,” I began. “You’re tuned to WRGT. And my name is Stanislaw Pawlowski.
“That’s a mouthful, right? Not exactly the sort of name that rolls off the tongue for morning radio. No wonder I was just ‘Stan’ in Pittsburgh before I came to Tampa/St. Pete. But I’m already getting ahead of myself.
“You know, I am often asked, how did you get into talk radio?
“Well, you might say it’s always been my calling.
“And I don’t mean because of any deep-seated love of the news and politics.
“I’m thinking about my childhood, growing up in Ft. Myers.
“I’m thinking about Saturday mornings sitting in a beanbag chair in our rec room just off the lanai, where I’d watch pro wrestling on a TV that had no clicker to change channels.
“This was before cable. We had only about six channels on our TV, split between something called VHF and something called UHF. What I remember is that UHF had worse reception and there was always snow on the TV screen, but it had something else. It had pro wrestling, or ‘rasslin’,’ as we used to call it.
“This wasn’t like the modern crap with the thumping music, chicks in thongs and pyrotechnics. And it was long before they staged big events and put them on pay-per-view
“This was a different era, the age of the ‘Living Legend,’ Bruno Sammartino. Haystacks Calhoon. George ‘The Animal’ Steele. And my favorite, ‘Chief’ Jay Strongbow.
“There were good guys and bad guys and no in-between. Everything was black and white. You knew the bad guys because they often carried what were called ‘foreign objects’ in their trunks and they had managers. Characters like ‘The Grand Wizard of Wrestling,’ ‘Classy’ Freddie Blassie, and ‘The Captain,’ Lou Albano.
“I loved this stuff and always rooted for the good guys. We all did. The only time I was ever confused about who was which came one Saturday morning when two good guys—Pedro Morales and Bruno Sammartino—were
in a tag team title match against ‘Professor’ Toru Tanaka and Mr. Fuji. During the bout, Tanaka and Fuji rubbed salt in the eyes of Sammartino and Morales. The good guys couldn’t see. They got confused. And while blinded from the salt, they started to fight each other while Tanaka and Fuji just stood and watched. Sammartino and Morales then had such a bitter rivalry that they had to settle their differences in a grudge match in front of a huge crowd at Shea Stadium.
“My friends and I would take turns acting out all the parts of our favorite wrestlers. I would imitate Chief Jay Strongbow’s war dance. These are some of the happiest memories of my childhood.
“And look at me now. I’m in the media equivalent of pro wrestling!
“We purport to be a news station, but this is really all about entertainment. Not just WRGT, but all of talk radio, and almost all of cable TV news. In everything we discuss, one side is virtuous, the other is evil. And the outcome of every debate has been predetermined based on the alignment of the political parties. Just like rasslin’. Only, back then, adults knew that wrestling was fake and treated it accordingly. The problem is that today, the media equivalent is treated like it’s serious debate. Too many of you are mistaking this form of entertainment for reality. And worse, so do the politicians. And when politicians take their cues from the rasslin’ in the modern media, we’re all screwed because we get polarization, and the nation suffers.
“I’m sick of it. I’m embarrassed about the role I have played in it. And I don’t want any part in it anymore.
“We will never be able to change Washington unless we first realize what is really causing the problem.
“We are! When in a world with so much choice as to where we get our news and information, we take ours in the form of entertainment delivered only by the likeminded, we close our minds to real discussion and debate. And so do those we elect.
“Only when politicians stop taking their cues from a guy like me and instead start responding to their real constituents are things going to get better.
“It hasn’t always been like this. When I was getting started in the radio business, spinning records at a 5,000-watt daytimer on Saturday mornings, talk was different. Ideology didn’t matter. Personality did. You didn’t need to pass any litmus tests to get on the air, you needed to be able to carry on a conversation. Guys like Frank Sellers used to do just that. When I was growing up, my parents listened to talk radio. There was a station in Ft. Myers that had a real hodgepodge of a lineup. There was a guy doing mornings who was a libertarian before anyone had heard of Ron Paul. There was a guy who was an acerbic liberal. There was a conservative who was better known for his command of the English language than his politics. But the guy my parents really liked to listen to was named Bernie Herman. Bernie was on from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. and his moniker, or what you’d today call his ‘brand,’ was the ‘Gentleman of Broadcasting.’ Imagine that. The Gentleman of Broadcasting would come on at 10 p.m. and talk until after midnight and he billed himself as a guy you could count on to act with decency and respect.
“How far do you think you’d get in this business today if you walked into a radio station and told the program director you were the Gentleman of Broadcasting? Nowhere.
“It all changed in the ’90s and I know why. Before the Internet, before Fox, before Drudge, you conservatives didn’t have a clubhouse. The media consisted of the New York Times, Washington Post and the big three networks, and each was run by a bunch of liberals. I get that. I don’t fault the logic. Or the need for an alternative.
“So you established a beachhead in talk radio. And when, in the midst of the first Gulf War, a guy in Sacramento named Rush Limbaugh offered what you were looking for, you ate it up and you wanted more. And radio stations across the nation took note and they wanted Rush and a stable of his imitators. And it worked. And do you know why it worked? Not because Rush was a political expert. Hell, he didn’t even vote. And not because he was an election soothsayer. It worked because the man is a gifted entertainer. His worst political critics have never given him the credit he deserves for his ability to keep an audience entertained for three hours a day working with no more than a daily newspaper!
“Then Fox did the same thing on TV.
“And together with the Internet, conservatives now had places to call home.
“Then the predictable happened. Liberals took note and decided they should do the same thing. They tried and failed on radio with Air America. There was never the need for a liberal clubhouse in radio because their audience always had NPR! On cable TV, they succeeded with MSNBC. It took them a while before they got it right, but Keith Olbermann was the first to emulate from the left what Limbaugh and Fox did from the right. Again, it was all about entertainment. Suddenly, CNN, lacking personality or perspective, faded into third place in prime time.
“Sure, people still tune into CNN for breaking news, but once they understand what’s happened, they want someone with whom they are politically comfortable to explain the significance and tell them how they should feel. And that explanation, in order to be self-sustaining, is dependent on disagreement.
“Civility has gone out the window. Conflict is the order of the day.
“And look where it has gotten us.
“Nothing is easily solved in Washington. Our politicians on both sides of the aisle create more obstacles than they remove.
“Every issue becomes an ordeal.
“Compromise is the new C-word.
“And we are left with ongoing polarization. Meanwhile, we act surprised about the inability of elected officials to get anything done. And we wonder aloud, ‘Where does this polarization come from?’
“Certainly not from the vast majority of voters.
“Survey after survey has shown that Americans would rather have a politician who seeks compromise than someone who sticks to their own principles. But you’d never know that listening to our conversations on radio and TV, or watching Republican and Democratic politicians.
“Perhaps that’s why more and more Americans refuse to identify themselves with either of the major parties. They’d rather regard themselves as Independents than Republicans or Democrats.
“But as Americans become less ideological, our politicians have become more partisan.
“You want to know why things are so screwed up?
“You want to know where this polarization comes from?
“I can explain it to you in four steps.
“First, you have hyper-partisan districts. Nate Silver at the New York Times spelled it out years ago. He pointed out that in the early ’90s, there were about 100 members of the House of Representatives elected out of swing districts (which he defined as districts in which the presidential vote was within five percentage points of the national tally). Today? We have just 35.
“That means that out of 435 races, 400 are virtually predetermined by party affiliation. At the same time that competitive districts have diminished, landslide districts—those in which the presidential margin diverged from the national outcome by 20 or more points—have roughly doubled.
“So, more and more members of Congress are now being elected from hyper-partisan districts, and therefore, face no backlash from their own constituents when they are unwilling to compromise.
“Second, there is the effect of closed primaries. When those hyper-partisan districts are located in states with closed primaries—that is, nominating contests open only to party members—the voters who reliably turn out in these relatively low-turnout elections are those who are ideologically driven. Who do they vote for? The most conservative or most liberal candidates, who then end up getting their party’s nomination. The more centrist, middle-of-the-road candidates never stand a chance. You combine hyper-partisan districts with closed primaries and you have the backdrop for an enormous ideological divide.
“Think about this: For the last four decades, the National Journal has sought to categorize the ideological leanings of every member of the House
and Senate. When the Journal recently analyzed the voting records of members of Congress, it found that we have the highest level of polarization in the 40 or so years they have been doing this research. Every Senate Democrat had a voting record more liberal than every Senate Republican. And every Republican was more conservative than every Democrat. And the House was similarly divided.
“Maybe you think that’s to be expected, but it hasn’t always been like this. In the early 1980s, on Ronald Reagan’s watch, the National Journal calculated that roughly 60 percent of the Senate was comprised of moderates who regularly voted across party lines. Back then, there was a group of moderate Republicans who met on a regular basis. They called themselves the ‘Wednesday Lunch Club.’ They had nearly two dozen members. Names like Packwood, Heinz, Specter and Hatfield. Weicker, Kassebaum, Danforth, Percy and Chaffee. Stafford, Simpson, Warner, Gorton, Dole and Stevens. Today, there would be no one at the meeting!
“Third, we can’t overlook the effect of money. Fundraising is the next big contributor to the polarization we face. In the past, candidates elected to Congress actually moved to Washington and lived there. But today, a typical member residence is a flophouse on Capitol Hill that they share with an ideological twin and sleep in only two or three nights a week. Nobody truly lives in Washington, moves his or her family there, enrolls children in a D.C. school, or—most importantly—socializes with colleagues. Elected officials today can’t afford the luxury of spending time together and building working relationships with each other, because they’ve got to get back home and raise money for upcoming elections in which their success is virtually assured. It becomes far easier to demonize a political opponent when your only frame of reference is that person’s ideological makeup, and you don’t know the members of their family, or their true character, or the localized priorities of their constituents. What we need to do is figure out how to get the money out of politics, tell elected officials if they want the job they need to stay in Washington and actually do it, and encourage them to have a cocktail with someone from across the aisle while they are there!
Talk Page 24
