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campaign watch
The Baiting of 'Beta' Al
by Christopher Hanson
Christopher Hanson is a contributing editor of CJR.
A print journalist for twenty years, he teaches media ethics at the University
of Maryland.
Consider
what makes big news in the 2000 presidential campaign:
- Governor George W. Bush slipped through Yale with gentleman's
Cs, according to a purloined transcript, and in a "pop quiz" sprung
by a reporter could not name such leaders as the prime minister of India. On
this evidence, Newsweek questioned whether W. has the candlepower to be president.
- Senator John McCain, an alumnus of Annapolis and the Hanoi Hilton, sometimes loses his temper. This revelation, carried in hundreds of news accounts last fall, led reporters to question whether McCain has what it takes to be commander in chief (although accomplished presidents from George Washington to Harry Truman had explosive tempers).
- Former Senator Bill Bradley, who cut his teeth in the high-living world of professional sports, has an addiction. After some deep digging, Wall Street Journal reporter John Harwood uncovered Bradley's drug of choice: Hall's Vitamin C Supplement Drops a "crutch" that he uses to ease chronic dry mouth. That condition detailed in a twenty-seven-paragraph front-page No vember 23 feature on Bradley's oral fixation might be a sign of inner fears, Harwood suggested. Bradley might be suffering from "Globus Hystericus, a condition in which anxiety causes one's larynx to tighten." Is a candidate with that kind of weakness really up to the presidency?
- Al Gore is a "born beta" male, fit to follow but not to lead so lacking in commanding qualities that his campaign paid a "secret guru" $15,000 a month to teach him how to achieve "alpha male" status and thus be a real man.
This is "character reporting" at the turn of the millennium. The strong post-cold war economy has blunted old issues and placed an unprecedented premium on reporting candidate personalities, backgrounds, and head-shrinking profiles. Reporters evidently have concluded that playing watchdog in post-Monica America means particularly probing for weaknesses of character that might make a candidate unfit for office. If glaring examples of personal flaws a la Bill Clinton are not in evidence, then smaller ones will have to do. In short, election coverage often reads like Wood ward and Bernstein had teamed up with psycho-journalist Gail Sheehy. A study of the results by psychiatrist Oliver Sacks might be titled: The Journalist Who Mistook His Beat For a Couch.
The story of Al Gore as "beta" male is an especially revealing example of the genre, its appeal as well as its limitations. Before discussing this Gore coverage in detail, however, a little background is in order on his unlikely mystery consultant feminist author Naomi Wolf. After publishing three controversial books on sex, gender roles, and society, Wolf who is married to New York Times editor and former Clinton speechwriter David Shipley became a political trend writer for George magazine in 1997. In that capacity, she offered up some decidedly offbeat ideas. For instance, Wolf suggested that politicians might want to start reaching out to members of Alcoholics Anonymous and other twelve-step programs because recovering addicts comprise a ready-made grass-roots organization. Wolf also extolled Al Gore as a misunderstood visionary in her George column. Although she had not yet met the vice president, Wolf declared in a June 1998 piece that he had an appealing eccentricity that orthodox political pressures had forced him to hide. "Gore should let his defenses down and allow his inner oddness out," wrote Wolf, adding that beneath his staid exterior is a "Blakean" who sees "connections between things where others see separateness."
Proof perhaps of at least the Gore campaign's inner oddness, this column drew an appreciative call from a Gore 2000 staffer. Then followed a meeting with Gore himself, a job offer, salary negotiations, and an extraordinary $15,000-a-month deal, which began in January 1999. Both her relationship with the campaign and the terms of her engagement were kept strictly under wraps in part, says Wolf, because of the awkwardness inherent in a transition from independent journalist to political handmaiden. In fact, Wolf did not leave George immediately, publishing a few more columns while on the Gore gravy train but avoiding direct references to her new boss. In one such piece, strangely enough, she extolled the Virgin Mary in terms that could apply to Gore ("engaged geopolitical citizen," "policy wonk") while pronouncing "male leadership . . . a hollow totem." Wolf clearly faced a conflict of interest: was she touting the Mother of God or the Father of the Internet? She resolved the dilemma by dropping the George column in April but continued to keep her campaign role hush-hush.
The Wolf story came howling to life just before Halloween, however, when Time magazine's Karen Tumulty and Michael Duffy exposed the high-priced arrangement. ("Wolf . . . has emerged as one of the most curious forces inside the ever more curious Gore operation.") The New York Times and The Washington Post weighed in with front-page follow-ups, the latter quoting ex-Clinton adviser Dick Morris's speculation that Wolf was responsible for Gore's arresting shift from navy blue to earth tones in his fashion palette. Dozens of reporters and columnists soon joined a growing and derisive Wolf-pack.
Wolf's intellectual pretentiousness was an inviting target. In a campaign year thus far notable for its lack of color, humor, or spark, reporters no doubt found the opportunity to needle Wolf and the Gore campaign irresistible. Consider this exchange from the November 7 ABC News This Morning:
George Will: Well, this is about . . . how Al Gore's mind works. You say that, deep inside, he's a Blakean.' . . . Tell us what it means for Al Gore to be a Blakean.
Wolf: I can't believe I'm pleased but I can't believe, at this early in the morning, on this show we're talking about nineteenth century romantic and mystical poets.
Will: We're not illiterate.
Wolf: Pardon me?
Will: We're very literate . . . .
Cokie Roberts: Tiger, tiger, burning bright.' We can do Blake.
Surprisingly, however, reporters seem to have lost what should have been a clear scent and never moved in for the kill on the two most substantive controversies raised by Wolf's involvement in the Gore campaign. First, what did Wolf do to justify an annual wage of some $180,000 (which, as many stories noted, is more than the vice president himself makes)? Weeks after the story broke, no reporter had managed to put in print how much time Wolf was spending per month on the Gore campaign and what, exactly, it was that she had done for all that dough.
The second obvious legitimate news angle was whether Gore agreed with the controversial views his consultant had espoused in her published writings. Some of those views did make their way into the news coverage. The Washington Post's Ceci Connolly, for instance, stressed that Wolf "argues that the best way to strike a balance between abstinence and sexual intercourse is to teach teenagers sexual gradualism' or masturbation, mutual masturbation, and oral sex. It is, Wolf wrote, as sensible as teaching kids to drive.'" Judging by the coverage, however, no reporters appear to have asked Gore whether he agrees that sex ed. should be like driver's ed. For that matter, the vice president never had to answer whether he agrees with Wolf that "male leadership is a hollow totem," that gay marriage's unprecedented joining of "social equals" highlights "the existing corruptions within straight marriage," or that Janet Reno owes her political success to an understanding that women who "handle the butch' areas of government . . . cannot afford to be perceived as being too heterosexual."
W hat threw the watchdogs off the scent of sex and fiscal foolishness? The diversion's roots can be found in one intriguing sentence in the original Time account: "Wolf has argued internally that Gore is a Beta male,' who needs to take on the Alpha male' in the Oval Office before the public will see him as the top dog." These scientific buzzwords about submission and domination lit up the trail. Here was the path to psychological revelation, hence the focus of much follow-up coverage and commentary.
The reporters went off to track Gore's crazed and fruitless pursuit of Alphaness. The New York Times's Katharine Q. Seelye stressed that theme in a wry front-page October 31 piece (adviser pushes gore to be leader of the pack). Not so good-natured were other reporters and commentators in news outlets from the New York Post to the Los Angeles Times. They bared their fangs and tore into Gore's image as a leader. "When a man has to pony up a fortune to a woman to teach him how to be a man, that definitely takes the edge off his top-dogginess," wrote col umnist Maur een Dowd. "Real men don't pay, Al," echoed conservative columnist Mag gie Gal lagher. The Washington Post's Tony Korn heiser derided Gore for hiring a "nag" to help him work through being "horribly conflicted and confused" about his masculinity. The classic mental patient thinks he is Prince Albert, but the trouble with this one-time heir apparent was that he did not or so went the media diagnosis.
Much of this Wolf coverage hyped the notion that Gore was a "beta" wimp being programmed by Wolf to display unnatural "alpha" combativeness. Syndicated columnist Mary McGrory, for instance, was among those asserting that Wolf's $15,000 a month was solely for aggressiveness coaching.
Other pieces suggested that Gore was a marionette in Wolf's skillful hands. She was his "Secret Guru . . . a mystery consultant, a mad genius . . . and outspoken advocate of female sexual power" (Time). She was a wielder of "behind-the-scenes influence" whose "tentacles stretch far" inside the campaign (The Washington Post, November 1, page one). What emerged in the coverage was a picture of Wolf as Gore's own mad monk, a New Age Rasputin. She controlled the candidate's ward robe. When she com manded Gore to wear brown suits to seem more ap proach able, he "complied" (Rich ard Cohen column, The Washington Post, Novem- ber 2).
Wolf also controlled the candidate's mouth, the coverage im plied. When she told Gore to snarl at Clinton in a show of independence, he came to heel and expressed disappointment at the private conduct of the chief executive (Time).
This collective press portrait of the Gore-Wolf relationship would be substantially more enlightening and useful to the electorate if it were heavier on confirmed substance and lighter on assertion. Neither McGrory nor any other journalist actually demonstrated that Wolf's salary was strictly for "alpha" coaching. The only duties that Wolf herself would confirm included work on outreach to women and younger voters and Wolf dismissed as "pure imagination" the idea that she was paid to perform a macho makeover.
D espite frequent references to Wolf's fashion advising, none of the articles demonstrated that Wolf had anything to do with Gore's new Mr. Earth Tone look. Wolf denies ever giving Gore a single word of style guidance. She does acknowledge being among the aides reminding Gore that he needs to separate himself from Clinton to sell himself as a leader. But of course that advice given to all vice presidents seeking the Oval Office does not make Gore her lap dog. As Time acknowledged, Gore himself feels strongly about his need for distance from a Rabelasian boss.
Political "hired guns" are, of course, fair game and have become a staple in presidential campaign reportage. The Wolf coverage suggests, however, that there is an old-fashioned technique that journalists might revive in covering political handlers: document their influence rather than merely asserting it.
Another hoary approach might be dusted off as well define your terms. The need for clarity is especially acute when you are using a concept like "alpha male," which comes from studies of social organization among elephants, elk, chimpanzees, and the like. Such a term should be introduced into political discourse only with extreme caution rather than with the Wolf-pack's headlong abandon. News accounts used the term scores of times during Naomi November, but with little clarity. Only science writer Nicholas Wade (The New York Times, November 7) pointed out that, according to zoologists, the alpha male is the one who pushes other males aside to monopolize access to females for mating. As recent history suggests, this is not a trait that many Americans want in their presidents. It is certainly not a trait that Wolf by any logic would be pushing Gore to acquire. Wade's article was illustrated by a photo of King Kong clutching Fay Wray, with the caption: "This is not Al Gore."
Wade aside, one has no idea after reading these Wolf pieces what the writers mean by an "alpha" as opposed to a "beta" politician. McGrory tells us, for instance, that Wolf was hired "to make Gore more like Clinton that is, more of an alpha. Gore was a born beta." But she doesn't tell us of what Clinton's alphadom consists. Does it lie in being assertive and self-confident? Gore who ran for president at thirty-nine and won several primaries is surely that as well. McGrory gives us a somewhat clearer indication of what Gore's betadom supposedly amounts to: "a painful public search for himself." But might not the same be said for Clinton? His personal journey over the past two years has been painful to say the least.
With scarcely more precision, The Washington Post's Richard Cohen tells us that Clinton is the alpha dog, while Gore's betaness came through in his handling of the Wolf affair:
An alpha male would not have hidden her. An alpha male would not have been afraid to be up front, maybe introducing her to the press and saying in effect I'll take your best punch. And an alpha candidate would have realized that Wolf's presence on the payroll was going to leak . . . . Mostly, though, an alpha candidate would not need Wolf at all. He would . . . be led by conviction, out of a solid sense of who he is.
But wait a minute. If we were to substitute Dick Morris for Naomi Wolf in the above passage, wouldn't it apply to Clinton, the supposed "alpha"? During his reelection effort, after all, Clinton hid his consultant Morris, who had a bad-boy reputation. Clinton did not realize that Morris's role was going to leak. And Clinton definitely needed such a handler to chart his sail-trimming course to the right. So what gives? Is Clinton a "beta" or is he an "alpha"? Or is he some other creature entirely?
And the same applies to Al Gore, who, despite the recent psycho-journalistic frenzy, remains a puzzle inside an enigma, wrapped in a brown suit. Dogging Wolf did not provide the key to his inner self. Perhaps the press pack should shift tactics and investigate his usage of Hall's Vitamin C Supplement Drops.
