Major funding for Frontline is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Additional funding is provided by this station and other public television stations nationwide.
The men who would be president and the reporters who cover them.
Those who do not have the name recognition have had a little difficulty attracting the powerful media and its attention.
For more than a year, they've been locked in a campaign for the attention of readers and viewers.
But as voters finally begin to participate, much of it may already be over.
The day after the New Hampshire primary, I fully expect at least three candidates to withdraw.
Tonight on Frontline, the campaign for page one.
From the network of public television stations, a presentation of KCTS Seattle, WNET New York, WPBT Miami, WTVS Detroit, and WGBH Boston.
This is Frontline.
I'm Judy Woodruff in New Hampshire, where the headlines are saying Walter Mondale will win big tomorrow.
Gary Hart could come in second again, and John Glenn may be in trouble.
What's behind those stories and who writes them?
Tonight, a story about a love-hate relationship, the press and the politicians.
They travel together, manipulate, entertain, and infuriate each other.
Why does it matter? Because their relationship defines what the rest of us know,
especially now, the day before this first primary of the 1984 elections.
Tonight, you'll watch some of these reporters work and see how their reporting affects your choices.
Our producer is Sherry Jones, and Frontline's chief correspondent, Richard Reeves, reports.
There are more important things in life than politics, like paying the bills and jogging,
so you may not have noticed that the 1984 presidential campaign actually began in 1982.
Such things are left to a small band of political reporters.
I used to be one of them, and I rejoined that trail this past year.
We'll be traveling along tonight with six of the best, two syndicated columnists,
the men from the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, and NBC News.
And we began that journey last fall here in New Hampshire.
The men who would be president, waiting to make yet another speech in an endless campaign.
They've been on the road for more than a year now, on a journey that's supposed to tell us who they are,
what they believe, what kind of president any one of them would be.
But few of us pay attention. If we know anything, it's from a small group of political reporters.
They're paid to watch.
How the hell can they do it? It is unbelievable.
But they've been doing it since March and April and way back.
They have to really either believe in what they're saying or believe in themselves.
Sometimes it even comes together. It's the same thing.
There may be different actors that we're covering,
but they keep looking and generally they're the same old hacks like us who are out covering the thing.
I mean, we've been around forever.
Running might be fun. Serving would be terrible.
Some people obviously like it, but I don't see why.
I've always just been interested in it, looking at it as theater, kind of, from an aesthetic more than an ethical point of view.
You know, it's not really news that Alan Cranston gets up in the morning and runs down hotel corridors.
That seems absurd to me.
On the other hand, I go down and watch him do it and make a TV spot and show him people that he actually doesn't.
One of the great advantages I have over Bode is I don't have to cover things like that.
I just watch him on television saying, he did it.
Isn't that absurd?
I just envision this every time I hear about Cranston running in the morning in a hotel corridor.
Somebody is going to walk out to get their newspaper and just get knocked for a loop by this guy going by at about 30 miles an hour.
A 69-year-old bald headed man with an orange fringe.
It's all absurd. It's all absurd.
What town are we in?
We're headed to Waldo.
Waldo? All right.
These are the boys on the bus.
For today, a train in Florida.
They cover presidential politics from the start.
They inform and they entertain the nation and themselves.
A 5-year-old Chinese tamale vendor working to keep busy, hurt on job.
It's like a mummy.
He still feels bad. His head and legs still hurt.
He had a wreck on his motorcycle.
I'll even take notes.
Where are we going to do that?
They're an elite crew sent out by the Washington bureaus of the best newspapers in the country to chronicle the transfer of American power.
These guys decide and then they tell the rest of us what matters in a presidential campaign, who to watch, what's important.
How fast was Glenn's space capsule flying?
17,000 miles an hour.
How many miles per second is that?
I wouldn't know that.
We're out here. We're working out.
I do have a calculator.
Wait a minute. 17,000?
You're from the Globe?
Yeah.
I'm Steve Bosque. I work for Channel 10 in Miami.
What I'm interested in is why your paper is interested in train riding.
Well, I like trains.
I'm a sucker for trains. I ride on trains.
It's 4.7. I hit it. I had five. Good.
Where are you?
I'm doing the wrong thing. It's not that I don't calculate fast enough. It's that I did the wrong...
You've got a great job, I think.
Curtis?
Yeah, you too.
Curtis has had actually a pretty uneven run.
I've heard the boys on the bus a couple of times.
I'm sorry to hear that too.
Yeah, by 60.
No, that'll get you two minutes.
I guess we're pretty clear now why you guys aren't science reporters, are we?
We want Glenn! We want Glenn! We want Glenn!
Only the background changes. The faces don't.
It's a Washington-based tribe that migrates from city to city, a small community of correspondents, candidates, and their coat holders.
This night, they camp in New York.
Glenn, everybody who's anybody is here.
Oh, my God!
For Gary Barber, what can I say?
Okay.
I guess he's an ass.
Lots of love.
All right, friends, baby!
We want Glenn! We want Glenn!
In every town, the campaign moves within its own small circle.
Outsiders mostly watch.
This is an insider's game.
It's the oldest established permanent floating crap game in America with a set of rules all its own.
October 1983.
27 men have already paraded before too many meetings to count.
Cattle shows they're called in the trade.
And for months, the stories have said the race is only between the frontrunner Mondale and the astronaut Glenn.
That's it.
The other five may as well be talking to themselves.
As has been said, if they were put there to fight, they were far too few.
This is how the United States chooses its leaders.
It goes on for two years or more.
Each candidate saying the same things to audiences who are hearing them for the first time
and to the same reporters who are not.
Half a year before any votes are cast, the political press is already bored.
So outsiders, the rest of us, read just that.
These are seven boring men with nothing much to say.
The Washington Post editorializes.
It's sort of like trying to remember the names of the seven dwarfs.
They always leave out two, usually bashful and sneezy.
I don't limit my experience to just inside the beltway of Washington.
It comes from all over this country and doing a number of different things that I think are important
not only to deal with the problems of this country,
but also the opportunities that this nation has for the future.
What was your assessment of tonight's debate?
Oh, I'll leave that up to you experts in that area.
Well, I thought it was very interesting. I was glad to participate.
I thought it was a colossal waste of time.
What we had was we had a sort of a two-hour summation of their standard positions on all the issues.
But it didn't... We didn't really learn anything.
The press has heard it all.
They're here to find out who's going to win and to listen for something new.
Well, I think you look for small changes.
The changes are more interesting than the standard line.
And you also look for sort of early warning signs of testing is among the candidates.
But it isn't.
I mean, you have to come to New York and spend two and a half hours in a hot room to do that.
Is creating politics as if it were a horse race or a football match?
This is the leadership and the future of this nation.
It's not a question of who gains some slight tactical advantage over somebody else.
I think it's a first step, the first step in a long process of forcing the candidates
to specifically state their views on some very critical issues.
The reason I ask is because it always has been treated in that fashion.
I think those polls have shown me coming up.
They've shown Mondale and myself virtually even now within the margin of polling error on several fronts.
And, you know, I think I'm doing well.
I'm not taking anything for granted this early.
But what are you doing differently from that focusing on the issues?
Augusta Maine.
They say the last time so many troops came here was with Benedict Arnold 200 years ago.
Now it's for a straw poll.
A meaningless vote devised by state parties to attract the candidates in the national media
and bring in some cash, too.
But reporters package the campaign as drama.
So even if straw polls don't mean much politically, they have dramatic possibilities.
The hero may stumble or fall.
They concentrate on the frontrunner.
He knows the rules of the game, too.
A stumble is a page one story more certainly than any success.
I'm experienced and I'm qualified.
But more than that, as you all know, I'm a real Democrat.
I am. I am.
What I wrote for yesterday's paper was that for only the second time in 208 years,
an event of some national significance was taking place here.
And Walter Mondale seemed almost as anxious about this one
as Benedict Arnold was about the last one.
He had a win here. He knew he had a win here.
Arnold did not succeed, by the way.
He went to Quebec to try to take it from the British at the head of an 1,100-man army
and ended up getting wounded in the knee.
But unlike a politician, he didn't shoot himself there.
Gary Hart decides to skip the straw poll.
So the press decides to skip Hart.
It can be lonely at the bottom.
Hi, how are you?
I'm Gary Hart, running for president. Good to see you.
Just wanted to stop and say hello and leave one of these with you.
Thank you.
I'd like you to keep me in mind as time goes on.
All right.
Okay.
See you, baby.
Yeah.
Right.
Good to see you.
Good to see you.
Sure.
So do it.
Okay.
Okay, take him right through the kitchen.
Dark horses, by definition, have little name recognition or poll numbers or money,
which means no press attention, which means they can't get those other things.
Hart's in New Hampshire.
The reporters are in Maine, where the stars of the drama can campaign wholesale.
Bit players campaign retail, one vote at a time.
I will trade you a Gary Hart t-shirt for a Maplewood School t-shirt.
Well, I've already got one of your things, so you've got to take one of ours.
I'll be back.
That's a present for you.
I'll be back.
Oh, good.
This is who I wanted to see.
Yeah.
Hi, there.
The politics of a presidential nomination are the politics of expectation.
Candidates don't just run against each other.
They run against expectations, usually set by the press.
If they expect you to win big and you don't win by enough, a win may be called a loss.
If nothing's expected, anything might be a win.
The hope for the unexpected is a hope that a boring story can be turned into a better one.
From the very beginning, there hasn't been any reason to think this thing was going to change anything.
The one way it could change something with me, if Mondale did poorly, that would have hurt him.
Everybody knows that Mondale is stronger with party people than Glenn is.
So if he wins a straw poll that demonstrates that, it seems to me it doesn't demonstrate anything.
On the other hand, you know, big's losing.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much.
Feels good, doesn't it?
Thank you, everybody.
Thank you, everybody.
Three weeks later, Florida, on the road to yet another straw poll.
This week, there's a little more conflict in the drama of the frontrunner and the astronaut.
Mondale's called Glenn an anti-democrat, but that's backfired.
The plot is pushed along with word that Mondale has decided to apologize.
He's called Beckel and ordered him to tighten up procedures, and he sent a telegram of apology to Glenn.
Well, what does all that mean?
I don't know.
They're going to be nice to each other for a few days.
And that's no fun at all.
What do you think of Dutch Reagan, pal?
Off the record, I'm pretty pleased with what he's done about the environment.
Driver, what is it that Reagan has done that has got you disturbed here?
I mean, the man's really up there, you know, doing everything he can.
I'm not Republican, I'm Democratic.
I bet you voted for him, though, right?
For who?
Reagan.
The significance of this is that if Mondale should come within seven and a half points of askew,
it will show conclusively that nobody now will have to do flub them.
You've never been on a press bus before, huh?
Lucky, lucky you.
Lucky you.
There's something about a band playing every time you get off a bus.
You begin to think it's all for you.
It's not. They're making a television commercial here.
Ruben Askew is creating his own version of the story to take directly to the voters.
How about an E?
Ladies and gentlemen, Mondale.
That's what broke my spirit.
This better be good.
The story needs some action, and a press conference provides the chance to provoke it.
Mr. Vice President, what impact do you think the film The Right Stuff will have on the campaign of John Glenn and having seen the film?
Haven't seen it, and I'll tell you, I'm glad of one thing, Chuck Yeager is not seeking the presidency.
You make jokes about the president.
Yes, I do.
I wonder if you can elaborate. What impact do you think it will have, sir?
That is the limit of my comment on that tonight.
Mr. Vice President, are you concerned that you had to apologize to Senator Glenn for the letter here?
No, I think I should have done that.
The language used does not reflect my view, and I thought the senator deserved that correction. I regret it.
You don't think he's an anti-democrat Democrat?
No, and I said so. I define an anti-democrat as a Republican.
You don't get to do this job for a major newspaper or network unless you are fairly confident of your own judgments.
My God, that woman's just taking all her clothes off. Just kidding, folks.
I tell you, whenever you come on new, it's like doing anything for the first time.
It's as though it's getting onto a merry-go-round that's been going, and it takes a while to orient yourself.
Especially since this is rather a peculiar merry-go-round, and it's almost like home. This is where I live.
God, don't tell me the diplomat hotel is a home.
We've been around forever. We wandered in a bar last night, and there's Jermon and Don Campbell.
It didn't take long to catch on. We're a living testament that's got a great deal of wisdom involved.
You don't have to be brilliant. The intellectual content and level is minimal.
You just have to have a good, strong liver.
Most of the events are fairly bogus, but they are events. They're taking place, and the politicians are showing up.
The Mondale Glen battle is heating up, and they're both here, and they're both going to speak.
We'll see what they say, and that makes this interesting. The straw poll itself is not very important.
Basically, the barometers are national poll ratings and money in the bank.
Clearly, it's Mondale and Glen. That's your two-man race.
The other guys are going to pitch about it, but until they show me something,
with our limited manpower, if you've got to determine priorities, you've got to look at Mondale and Glen.
That's where the coin of phrase action is. It's not with Fritz Hollings, for God's sake.
Let's talk now about this question of who are the real Democrats.
Because I believe that real Democrats, real Democrats...
Glen actually peaked in the polls months ago, but he's still a star in this drama because the press needs a challenger.
He knows the rules of the game, and he tries to give them what they want.
We conduct our democratic version of a political inquisition during this campaign.
Then, on election day of 1984, we'll be staring at four more years of Ronald Reagan.
Right.
I think Mondale has to answer.
Who's in here listening to that? Who listens to it?
I know somebody.
What does he say? Does he take them on? Does he make peace?
We'll know soon.
Voters of Florida make good sense when they speak, and what you're saying is this.
In 1984, the time has come to put a People's Democrat in the White House as President of the United States.
People's Democrat. Anti-Democrat. Real Democrat.
This stuff means nothing to anyone without a deadline to meet, a column to write, an editor who expects action.
We'll win this election and move this country forward again. Thank you very, very much. Thank you. Thank you.
Hey, Mondale did not hit back hard at all. That's really kind of surprising.
He let the end, because he gave Glenn the lead tomorrow. He gave Glenn tomorrow's lead.
He had it off to him.
I think.
I'm trying to read out of our Democratic Party.
We gotta get that.
Yeah.
And so I say, enough of litmus test. Enough of those who would make this a party of exclusivity.
Enough of those who would make this a party of elitism.
Oh, that's fascinating.
It is to see in the next couple of hours whether Mondale does anything to rebut it before he leaves or not.
It's up to Glenn to carry the fight. Glenn is coming from behind.
Glenn has lots of strengths, and Mondale has lots of weaknesses, but still just on balance.
Glenn is the one who has to be impressive, and he was today.
Now we'll see what they'll fight about next week.
Enough of litmus test. Enough of those who would make this a party of exclusivity.
The campaign trail is like the Oregon Trail. You have to stop where there's water, preferably with scotch,
like the bar at the Sheridan Wayfarer in Manchester, New Hampshire.
This is the political capital of the country for press and candidates a few months every fourth year.
This is it. This is the New Hampshire primary.
The other good thing about it is, you know, not yet, but in February, sometime in February, we'll take over the whole state.
And if you win here, you're on the cover of Time, because they just follow the obvious.
There's going to be an upset. It will be here.
But the candidates are very much aware of how important this is,
and the leading candidate has done a hell of an organizational job here.
And if he loses here, he doesn't deserve to be president of the United States.
Or even Tobago or Grenada, or even Granada.
Anyone who didn't bet that Fritz Mondale is going to be the Democratic nominee would be a damn fool.
What odds would you give?
But on the other hand, anybody who thinks it is a sure thing is just as much of a damn fool.
What odds would you give right now?
Well, short odds at the track is a two to one bet. I think he's probably a two or three to one bet. That's short odds.
See? I told you, he's a bookmaker. That's what his job is.
That's the other thing I'd like to be is a horse player for a living. Wouldn't that be great?
Only in a week when Marines are killed in Beirut and Grenada invaded does the outside world intrude.
Has there been an invasion in the last couple of hours?
Yeah, we've invaded.
Oh, I don't mean the National Press Corps. I mean the United States Army.
Invaded in Idaho.
Idaho, yeah.
I think we have a war a day.
And I had a local radio guy just literally jump me the minute I got out of the van saying,
Senator, what's your response to the briefing this afternoon at the Pentagon where the admiral in charge of our forces
said that they have just discovered 6,000 additional Cuban troops in the hills of Grenada and this proves the Reagan thesis.
I said, well, I've been on airplanes and cars. I'm going to check and find out. I said, 6,000 Cuban troops.
The interesting thing is that all these things he finds out after he goes in.
Cubans! Arms!
And did we shoot a Russian? Is that the latest? Did we shoot a Russian?
It turns out the guy had a next exactly opposite. There were 6,000 American forces.
Somebody said tonight that Reagan had an ex post facto justification for going into Grenada,
except he didn't know what the Russian meant so he couldn't use it.
I think you said that.
What I think this is all about is anger and frustration at the killing of the Marines in Beirut.
I mean, I think that's what it really is.
Weinberger says we're going to retaliate, and clearly that's nonsensical because you can't even find, he can't even identify who did it.
Do you think that we're not going to retaliate because we can't find out who did it?
You don't think we're going to retaliate at all?
I think we may do. We just did one thing.
What do you think the President yesterday said, last night said, that we will?
He'll find somebody and retaliate against him.
No, Weinberger. Weinberger.
Do you think he would have said that if he didn't have an eye on some kind of retaliation?
No.
Reagan said the other night that we will.
Don't we have to get this shit out of somebody, whether they're the right guys or not?
What do you think at the very first moment he had an opportunity?
We are not in a position of giving them ink.
We're in a position of reporting what's going on.
If a guy is a bomb, all part of our job is to ignore them.
That's part of our job.
At the beginning, I think we have to consider them all fair game.
This isn't like the Mondale-Glenn squabble of last week and the few weeks ago,
where they were the story and heart was irrelevant.
This is, we're not talking about an issue where what he has to say is as valid as what any other candidate.
If I have decided that a candidate doesn't deserve any more attention than I give him,
it's not because of the polls, it's because I've been out there,
I've been out in the states and I've heard what people say, I've heard what he's doing,
and I've made a judgment that this guy is just not cutting it.
The press judgment on Hart is that he can't cut it.
What he says about Beirut or Nicaragua is not going to get him or them on page one.
If we believe the Nicaraguan government ought to be overthrown,
the President of the United States ought to say that to the American people,
and we ought to overthrow it openly.
If he cannot sustain that position before the American people or world opinion,
then we shouldn't be trying to do it.
That's my simple point.
A point that on this day no national reporter is there to hear.
But John Glenn, reporters do come to see him.
He's still a central figure in their drama.
They want to know what he thinks on certain issues, but they're not issues of war and peace.
Senator, where do you come down on the question of moving the dates forward in Iowa, Maine, and New Hampshire?
Well, I heard some proposals on that today and I haven't been through it
and understand there's a letter or something that is being prepared.
Covering politics is fun. It's covering government that's worked.
In campaigns, most of the questions are about dates and polls and strategies,
about predictions, about expectations.
How important is winning New Hampshire to you?
You have all the national press right behind you there.
You ought to ask them that, I think.
We're going to attack every country where there might be hostages taken.
We're going to have a lot of Marines and Rangers in a lot of countries.
The Dark Horses, like Cranston, are quick in their response to Grenada and Lebanon.
But as long as Glenn and Mondale are the featured rivals,
they conduct those questions and they still dominate the headlines.
Issues do count in politics, but in the long run, campaigns are the endless short run,
a series of one-night stands.
These forces should be replaced with more neutral U.N. peacekeeping forces.
We have become the object of combat and not the peacekeepers,
and you cannot maintain an American military presence from behind bunkers.
That does not achieve the objective of peace in the region.
I can't wait to see what the media reports on the Channel 11, you know, 11 o'clock news tonight.
It's going to be good. It's a good day for you.
Well, when the reporters get the message that this race is wide open,
that someone like myself has a very good chance, the whole campaign is going to change.
I think today, I really think today, maybe, there was enough national...
Oh, let me tell you something. They were in New York and they were in Boston.
It takes some light years to figure out what's going on. Drives me crazy.
That's the idea today. Like you said, it's a wide open race.
Well, I hope so.
I think today, it really...
The frontrunners aren't really frontrunners.
The question I have is how interested viewers are, readers are,
in these sort of detailed examinations of issues,
and how do you differentiate how eight different candidates stand,
and the fact is that if you start measuring them,
you've really got to have a seismograph to figure out, in many cases,
what the difference is between these people and some of them, what we think are important issues.
I mean, nobody's going to walk through a wall over the domestic content bill.
You know, it's just no big deal.
And there are no issues.
All the issues that have sorted Democrats out in an emotional way,
in an important way, have been settled, like civil rights and Vietnam and things of that kind.
We don't have that kind of issue.
Vietnam was a voting issue, an organizing, mobilizing issue.
In this primary, in Wisconsin and other places in 72, Lebanon is not that right now.
Mondale has going for him the fact that there isn't any cutting issue that cuts against his candidacy.
And Mondale can be silent on Lebanon because politicians and press are in the game together.
Mondale is an extraordinarily cautious candidate, largely, I think, because of where he is in the pack.
I think it leads you to weigh and evaluate every statement you're going to make
because whatever reaction there is to that statement is going to be treated very seriously by the press.
And you're going to see ramifications, ripples in the water from everything you do.
When you're ahead, you have more at stake and you have to be more cautious with your stake.
You've got more to gamble. That's all.
If you're behind 47-0 in the fourth quarter, you throw the long bomb.
That's what they're all doing. That's why it's easy for them all to be tough on Lebanon.
It's fourth quarter and they're behind 47-0.
Late November, the fourth quarter of the campaign of 1983,
the dramatic possibilities of the astronaut and the frontrunner are fading.
There's need for a new twist for conflict, the stuff of page one and the evening news.
I am somebody. I am somebody.
Respect me, protect me, never abate me.
I am somebody.
Mobile, Alabama. Before Jesse Jackson entered the game,
Mondale thought he had all the state's endorsements locked up.
Goodness gracious, great balls of fire.
Jackson has knocked even the frontrunner off page one with moves like a challenge
for the support of Alabama's black leaders.
And now Mondale has come to fight.
I didn't know we had to adhere to the globe standards of dress for this event.
Here we go, here we go. Looks like this is it.
I went and saw the five-minute commercial.
It's fine. It's nice. It's light. It's sweet. It's good. It's not exciting.
It's like Mondale.
It's okay.
The first word he says is, I'm sort of a farm kid.
Mondale, how are you going to do it tomorrow?
I don't know. I hope to do well. I'm asking for their endorsement.
Would a dual endorsement constitute doing well?
I'm asking for an endorsement of my own right.
I'm not giving advice to the conference as to how they should proceed.
Would you care to comment on the Reagan administration's approach to hungry people?
Yes, I want to. Today at the news conference.
Tomorrow I'm going to a soup kitchen here in Mobile.
I think that will symbolize the insensitivity of this administration toward human need in our country.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you very much.
So we've got a good story and we've got good pictures.
Everything kind of going together nicely.
It's a really classic story.
Reporters hustle just as much as candidates for space on page one or for one or two minutes on the nightly news.
Two, two, two, that's your two.
Give me 215, man. Give me 215 if you have to cut it back. Block it at 215. You won't be sorry.
You going down?
Oh, yeah. I'm going to Mondale.
To tell you the truth, I can't wait to see the way the guys who are in line at a legitimate soup kitchen react when the TV crews in Mondale arrive in the limousine and things like that.
I just wondered whether they had to go out this morning and round up some whiners to get in line.
Thank you so much.
Candidates claim that television makes them do things like this. Television says no, it's the candidates doing.
What wine are they serving for lunch?
What wine are they serving?
6 TV cameras?
Yup.
66 print.
In fact, they're partners in a process that can trivialize even the most serious issues.
It's used and be used.
It looks just like United Airlines.
You can order anything tomorrow.
Actually, that's better than an NBC cafeteria.
It does.
You're right.
It's also better than anything we're going to get today.
That's what this guy said, this big guy.
He gets our producer inside and he says, this is a shame.
He said, you people are coming in here to the press, invading our people's privacy, these poor people and so forth.
Rutherford says to him, hey, it wasn't our idea.
Talk it up with Mondale.
Yeah, of course.
I want to say that he got a nice shot of a close-up on the plate with the forks of food.
Goes up right to Mondale.
Raises a shot of Murdo after the food.
That's a nice reveal.
Does he eat it?
Yeah.
Puts it in his mouth.
That's how you spit it out.
That's why he has such big cheeks.
It's all in his cheeks.
He's got it all stored up in there.
You can't walk outside.
That's good.
I feel like he did his own thing.
This stuff is awful.
Take it back again, take it back again.
That's all I ever had.
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
It was a hard decision for me to make this choice to run.
It was a hard decision.
It's dangerous.
It's a tough journey.
It's lonesome.
It's risky.
You have to bear the marks of a lot of criticism and misunderstanding.
But I made the choice.
I made the choice.
And I said in my own way, if you're looking for somebody who will fight for civil rights, here am I.
Send me.
If you're looking for somebody that you know already, here am I.
Send me.
If you're looking for somebody who will motivate your children, here am I.
Send me.
If you're looking for somebody who will lift those boats that are stuck on the bottom, here am I.
Send me.
I've paid my dues.
I've earned your vote.
I am your choice.
Thank you and God bless you.
Stay, stay, stay.
I wish I could get in there and get them on Jackson.
Good job.
Good speech, huh?
Yeah.
Oh, unbelievable speech.
I haven't heard anything like that in years.
Jackson's message was about as blunt as it could be, that this is not just a presidential campaign, it's a crusade.
Hollings, not a chance in the world to win this endorsement, but as sharp of tongue as ever.
He called, huh?
You're kind of tripping over tongue here.
As sharp of tongue as ever.
I'll do it.
You're going to try to do, you know, as soon as they make an announcement, do a stand-up outside.
I don't know, I don't know.
What you basically want me to do is write the body of the spot, right?
When they finish the spot, have that all done, you know, the body of the spot, except for the stand-up.
They announce the thing.
Let's assume for a second that we don't make the announcement, they don't get the announcement.
Then what do we do at the top of the spot?
We don't have a spot then.
I mean, you know, if they don't make the announcement, what are we going to say anyhow?
Television news is history in a hurry.
That means aversion for every possibility.
Today, the Alabama Democratic Conference called it a tie.
It declared to its supporters that either Reverend Jesse Jackson or former Vice President Mondale are acceptable choices for president.
Today, the Alabama Democratic Conference dealt a serious blow to the presidential campaign of Reverend Jesse Jackson
by giving its unequivocal endorsement to former Vice President Walter Mondale.
The Alabama Democratic Conference has just given a major boost to the candidacy of Reverend Jesse Jackson.
In a surprise, the conference picked Jackson over former Vice President Walter Mondale.
Hereabouts in me, I am the best candidate.
I have earned this.
60.
I have earned.
Okay, that's, uh, it's about 20 seconds.
No, really?
Okay, it's 10 seconds on that, and it's 10 seconds on me.
Do you want to just use the last part to get the jail part?
I hate to do that.
God, I'd like to use that.
I guess we're going to get in trouble otherwise.
We'll drop the homing thing if we have to.
But I guess we get in trouble otherwise.
Let's not get in trouble at the top of the spot.
Let's just go ahead and do it.
Two minutes and 15 seconds to tell the story.
Less than an hour left to put it together.
Hello?
End with a half hour till he goes on the air.
There's one result Bode hasn't anticipated.
Holy shit.
Wait, just a hair.
Go.
The Alabama Democratic Conference
found its way out of a very difficult choice today
by endorsing a compromise, a ticket.
Former Vice President Walter Mondale for president,
the Reverend Jesse Jackson for vice president.
January 1984, New Hampshire.
It's finally election year,
but the Boston Globe says the campaign really begins today.
If this is a beginning, lots of conclusions have already been reached.
What we and these new reporters on the trail know about the candidates
is what they got from the boys on the bus.
Not a vote has been cast, but impressions are set.
So are expectations.
The race has been narrowed and defined.
So if this debate, moderated by Ted Koppel and Phil Donahue,
begins a new phase of the campaign,
then it's a good day to consider some questions about the process,
about the press and about the making of a president.
The system that we have is kind of a hodgepodge
which grew and developed on its own,
and it doesn't entirely make sense and it's a little chaotic,
but that's also a pretty good description of this society.
While the candidates will complain about the role of the political press,
the fact is that they, their strategists and their parties,
encourage a system where we are cast in the role of scorekeepers.
In the absence of an election, there's nothing to keep score by,
so they, casting a bout for some way to measure their progress,
turn to the press and say, you guys do it.
But as this part of the campaign ends,
and America is kind of presented with these people,
how much do people really know?
I mean, David Sawyer says that they've got this significant number of people
who think that John Glenn is the governor of Ohio.
That is placed on our shoulders. It's our fault.
And I can't understand that because we've been knocking ourselves out for over a year
explaining what these people are saying and what they stand for.
The fault ultimately lies with the viewers and the readers
who are too damn lazy to find out what these candidates say.
It's a tendency in this campaign among the second tier candidates
to blame the press for not giving them the publicity
that they think would create a national constituency for them.
They know that we're not universally loved,
and so they take a shot at us every once in a while because it's good politics.
Isn't one of the reasons that print people like politics
and like the early part of the process,
the fact that it's one of the things left in journalism that print dominates?
Yeah, I think that's true.
That's right, especially early on.
We do dominate. Till now. Today our domination ceases.
Every place you go, the television cameras and the booms are hanging over conversations.
That inhibits the relationship between reporters and...
One of the weaknesses or flaws in the whole system and in television's role
is this business of trying to make theater critics out of political reporters.
To some extent, that process has succeeded.
We're always writing about who won or who lost
or who said the right thing or the wrong thing.
And performance levels, which doesn't have an awful lot to do
with being an effective president, it seems to me.
I don't know what does, but I don't think that has much to do with it.
It's going to be such a major gangbang when all the media get involved in the thing,
when there are 30, 40 camera crews, the Secret Service, the paid commercials.
Then I think it's tough for the people who begin listening late to sort out the clutter.
The campaign is a lot less fun to cover in the late stages.
The story is better, and it's not just because of Secret Service and television,
although that's part of it.
You're overrun by print reporters who don't know what the hell they're doing
because they haven't been doing it year-round,
and you can't stop and talk to anybody without six people, without gathering a crowd.
And it really is a chore.
If you want to talk to somebody, you've got to get them off in a hotel room or some damn thing.
You've got to arrange an interview or sneak off someplace,
and we'll get on page one more from now on in,
but it won't be quite as much fun in some ways.
This torch passes from Margolis to Bodhi.
Then does the torch pass to Donahue.
Not if I have anything to do with it.
The campaign has been presented as drama for a year now.
The press has created conflict wherever it could.
That almost invites in people who are better at creating conflict.
The lines begin to blur between journalism and show business.
The precision that might be your goal in other programs has to be loosened up here a little bit
so that if you get two candidates going at each other,
don't try to be wonderful and switch it.
Take a two-shot and enjoy it.
And I think that has to be the goal of the cameraman as well.
For half of tomorrow's debate here at Dartmouth College,
the television personality Phil Donahue will field questions from a live audience to the eight Democratic candidates,
just as if they were guests on The Donahue Show,
thereby completing the marriage of entertainment and politics.
Let's go. Let's go.
The time is going.
So we are not going to stand.
This is going to just come right...
If we have any luck at all, the momentum,
Koppel will give us Big Mo and we'll go with it.
You know, if I think we're sort of wooden here and if I'm disappointed in the posturing,
there's a piece of me that would love to go to a break and kick their tires a little bit.
We have eight highly ambitious, verbally skilled males as guests,
most of whom are in debt.
And we're going to actually try and marry an audience of 400 with these people who are on high.
This is it for them.
It'll be interesting.
It will be instructive to see how these men deport themselves in this kind of arena
where there are not time clocks and bells going off.
I think that in itself will be instructive in terms of whether or not we think he should be in the Oval Office.
Terrific.
But pace will be my biggest problem.
It's my biggest problem.
This is going to be fun.
The Democratic presidential debate is being broadcast live.
For 12 million people, it's the first chance to see the candidates for themselves.
For the press, it's a big day that might begin a new act in the drama,
especially if Mondale makes a mistake, a gaffe.
But after Copple's half of the show, there's been no change.
The 350 reporters who will turn these three hours into two minutes of television or two columns of copy
are still facing deadlines with nothing new.
You, ladies and gentlemen, who have been sitting in our audience,
have been sitting there for the most part thinking,
boy, wait till I get at those guys, I'll make them answer the question.
You're about to have your opportunity.
Phil Donahue.
Thank you, Ted.
May I try for one, just a couple of specifics?
Senator, if I understand your position, you would cut off military aid to El Salvador
as executive order immediately upon being inaugurated, is that correct?
That's correct.
Will anybody else join in that position?
Senator McGovern, Mr. Jackson, Senator Cranston, Senator Glenn Demers, why?
I don't want to dump them right now.
Let's try and get these 30,000.
We have death squads, which we've seen the bloated bodies.
It's horrible down there.
And the Archbishop himself has said, our hardware is what's doing it.
Maybe you want to come up here and be a nice candidate.
All the candidates want to discontinue the covert operation in Honduras, true or false?
Yep.
Yes.
Yes.
Everybody.
Phil Donahue, you guys come in with two pictures and one ballgame trying to intimidate.
Now, just slow down.
A minute.
Just a minute.
Just a minute.
Mr. Askew.
Yeah, my name is Mr. Donahue.
I appreciate you remembering that.
Reverend Jackson, in the 60 campaign, people feared because Kennedy was a Catholic.
Do you think it's a fear because you are a minister?
I do not.
Senator Cranston, I noticed that you dyed your hair.
Do you think that that is going to help him win the nomination?
I've worked this out very carefully.
I've worked this out carefully, and I have pledged, and I can achieve it, to reduce the Reagan deficits by more than half.
Let me point out, that's the same vague gobbledygook of nothing we've been hearing all through this campaign.
Let's just get with it.
Is this going to be a Democratic party that promises everything to everybody and runs up $170 billion a year?
Let me finish.
Hold it.
I'll tell you why it is.
It's because your administration gave us 21% interest rates.
Who has the floor here?
17% inflation rates.
Mr. Donahue, who has the floor?
And that's why we lost the White House, and that's why we lost the Senate.
Mr. Bondi.
Wait a minute now.
You said it was free-flowing.
Wait a minute now.
Mr. Donahue, there's just been about a six-minute speech, all of it baloney.
And I don't like to have your six-minute speech.
Our party has made some mistakes, and quarreling between the two of you, as to whose mistakes were the worst,
and who are not going to win the election or govern this country.
No gaff.
No gaff.
Any epiphany today?
Good heavens.
You're a good Irish woman.
But would I criticize Mr. Koppel, Mr. Donahue, the masters of the craft?
No, they didn't ask anything that hasn't been asked before.
You got a winner or loser tonight?
I thought Gary Hart was surprisingly good.
He stuck to the points that he was trying to make.
He could have filled Bondi without being, I thought, vicious or brass.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Excuse me.
Who did you pick as your winner?
Gary Hart?
What did you pick as your winner?
Gary Hart.
You never end his career by putting that on, are you?
Mom, I can't say Jesse Jackson was the winner all the time.
No, no, I don't think it was.
Jesse didn't do anything.
I've said it's finally over.
The boring white guys have gotten to Jesse.
He's just as boring as he is.
I didn't think Mondale art blended themselves any good by jumping up and down.
Mondale didn't lose.
That's all he had to do.
You don't think he lost his temper there when he stood up and said so long?
I heard someone say that anything that Mondale does that shows that he's alive...
That's right.
It did away with the boring and dull.
Furthermore, John Green showed more.
If he didn't look angry.
But I think it was too late.
I mean, Hart stood out from the others.
So who wins? Who wins?
Well, what's your view?
What did you just tell him?
I thought Jackson did himself some good by appearing equal to the other.
Even though he's full of shit.
But nonetheless, he appears to be equal.
What was it exactly that you think he's full of shit about?
You know, I think his foreign policy is cut the defense budget, let the Russians run wild, make up with all the counties...
Well, you're making it up as you go along, Mort.
He doesn't say anything like that.
Wait a minute.
I want you to go on.
But I thought Jackson did himself a lot of good, and the answer is...
I do too.
I think among the also Rams, Hart did himself a lot of good by being, by seeming to have an agenda and being very strong.
What was that?
The agenda. What was the agenda?
Well, he seemed to have an agenda. That's all.
He didn't say it.
He kept saying, I have an agenda.
But he was forceful.
Glenn's people were very worried going into this debate. I mean, they knew what he had to do, whether he was going to be able to carry it off or not, was another question.
You know, the promises, promises stuff.
You know, Glenn was, I don't know, who altered his amphetamine mix, but boy, he was really up to it.
I think it was all time, don't you, that it was at a certain point in the program.
Well, that's right.
You go and you deliver, you try to get yourself to be the network news story, no?
No.
No, don't you think so?
No.
Glenn interjected in the middle of it, the only time he really came alive. He said, quote, some of the, quote, same vague gobbledygook of nothing.
OK.
All right. I want to say I'm analyzing their performance.
And so I'm going to say, you know, Glenn had been passive until he suddenly blurted it out.
There are more reporters now, but the rules won't change.
They'll create new drama from daily events.
They'll tell us when a win is a win and when it's not.
Who's ahead? Who's behind?
They're scorekeepers and bookmakers, yes, but they're more than that.
They often decide what we know about the men who would be president.
They make many of the rules.
Now it's time for us to elect a president.
But what did we have to do with all of this?
What have they been telling us?
What do we really know?
Only about a month remains to the first caucuses.
No more time for the candidates to mince words with one another.
And now it begins to get interesting.
Ken Bodie, NBC News, Hanover, New Hampshire.
You've seen glimpses tonight of a process that is complex, chaotic and sometimes funny.
And even those of us inside the game are ambivalent about our role.
Now that you've seen the way we do our jobs, think about the results of last week's Iowa caucuses.
Hart charged into second place.
Glenn faded to fifth.
Both big stories and big surprises.
But how much of that surprise was due to the way the press covered the story?
What's for sure, once President Reagan's opponent is known,
the campaign for page one will start all over again.
And the strategies, polls and expectations you see in the press
will again be a large part of what you use in making your choices.
I'm Judy Woodruff.
In three weeks on Frontline, the scene, Los Angeles, 1977.
A frightening series of murders by the hillside strangler.
One suspect, an all-American boy.
The kid I knew couldn't have ever hurt anybody or killed anybody.
This one I killed. This was the first one I killed.
The question, is he insane?
I was quite convinced that he was a full-fledged multiple personality.
I believe that he is playing a role and playing a part.
A compelling analysis of the psychology of a killer, the mind of a murderer.
Three weeks from tonight on Frontline.
We'll be right back.
For a transcript of this program, please send $4 to Frontline, Box 322, Boston, Massachusetts, 02134.
Frontline is produced for the Documentary Consortium by WGBH Boston,
which is solely responsible for its content.
Major funding for Frontline was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Major funding for Frontline was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Additional funding was provided by this station and other public television stations nationwide.
For video cassette information about Frontline, write to PBS Video, Box 8092, Washington, DC, 20024.
Thank you.