The American scene

Misreporting the campaign

Henry Fairlie

Washington, DC For some years, the Jews in the United States, which means in New York in particular, have been growing increasingly sensitive; the tragedy in Munich will not have helped them to feel more secure. With that prompt solicitude for the international Jewish community which presidential candidates display in an election year, both Richard Nixon and George McGovern hastened to express their concern on Wednesday morning; and one immediate result of the action of the Arab terrorists is that the stakes in the bidding for the Jewish vote have now been raised.

At least at the moment, it seems clear that, just as Richard Nixon will attract more support from the blue-collar workers and the "peripheral urban ethnics" than any Republican candidate since 1928, so he will receive a substantial number of the Jewish votes which have for so long been regarded, not only as safely committed to the Democratic Party, but as unusually liberal.

But it is precisely this likelihood which illustrates the danger of attributing all of the difficulties of the Democratic Party this year to George McGovern. He and his staff and his supporters are indeed responsible for many of them; and that of course means he above all. A portrait of him, if one were to attempt it at the moment, would seem unfortunately like one by Picasso; which is the man's profile, and which is his full face, is hard for anyone to tell. He appears to have only a single eye, yet one is uncertain in which direction it is looking; and this is the candidate who was to campaign on the claim that he was more credible than other politicians.

But the interest of this election will be lost if all one does is observe the two candidates; they are not all that interesting, they are possibly not all that important. American politics are breaking out of many old moulds, irrespective of the candidates, and what is of real importance is that they are not moving in the directions which have for so long been predicted.

For months now, and for years, those who dominate the reporting of politics in the newspapers and on television have been telling us that the people of the United States have been moving to the left. By newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post, and by the network news of the National Broadcasting Company and the Columbia Broadcasting System, and by many foreign correspondents who are supposed to report the United States, we have been told that the country is on the edge of rebellion; or equally, when this did not seem to fit the facts, that a terrible white ' backlash ' was gathering. I have sat at the tables of colleagues, English and American, as they have unfolded their news of a joyous crusade which was assembling in the backlands, or of a fearful carnage which was being prepared in the cities.

But neither their good news nor their bad news has ever come true. 'The American Melodrama ', if one may be excused the pun, has been mellow but not dramatic. This is the real point which Spiro Agnew has had during the past few years in his criticisms of the political reporting in the United States, especially by some of the leading newspapers and two of the leading television networks.

But he need not, from his point of view, have worried: the people whom the reporters and the pundits have most seriously misled are themselves. How short a time ago, this year, they were offering George McGovern to us as a singular champion of the true and the beautiful and the good; but, even more revealing, how short a time ago they were talking of a "new populism" which was sweeping the country. They were all talking about it; and it is this which is most telling.

Increasingly during my career — "now getting quite long ", as Clement Attlee once said to Harold Laski — political journalists have seemed to be using their noses to smell only each other's farts: language which is more offensive than I normally use in print, but for which I can find no gentler alternative which is also as appropriate. The idea of a "new populism" was always only a balloon of the warmest, the most fetid, air which one journalist let break one morning, and the rest gratefully inhaled.

There is not a word — not one word — in the newspapers or on television now about the "new populism ": no one is now telling George McGovern that he can win by proposing more populist measures. Everyone who only a month or two ago was urging him to keep to the left, to catch the winds of change, is now bemoaning the fact that he appears to have lost almost the whole of the centre.

What is more — and it is this which I find so despicable — these reporters and these pundits are already placing themselves in the position to put the entire blame on him. This is why the press is exaggerating his errors and his inconsistencies; this is why it avidly reports the disagreements on his staff. The fact that they misread — that they altogether misread — the mood of the country is to be overlooked. Instead, they can say that George McGovern threw it all away, that all the time there was a victory for the new radicalism to be won; but for his mistakes. . . .

The fact that they failed — even refused — to see that the American people were remaining remarkably steady — that the voters would, generally speaking, stay in the centre, where they are normally to be found — is to be concealed by a general denunciation of George McGovern which will be every bit as gratuitous as the original elevation of him. If he were not there to blame, the explaining which would have to be done by the reporters would be tortuous.

This is why I began with — and why it is worth looking at — the movement of the Jewish vote, especially after the recent tragedy. It is far too easy to say that George McGovern's statements on foreign policy and his defence proposals, especially as they appear to affect the Middle East, have driven the Jews, concerned for the survival of Israel, into the arms of Richard Nixon.

In New York alone, there were very significant shifts in the Jewish vote during the mayoral election in 1969. There was evidence, on the one hand, that the less prosperous Jew was ready to break away from the leadership of the more prosperous, if this was too liberal; and there was even more important evidence, on the other hand, that the less prosperous and the more prosperous alike would go to the candidate who stood in the centre. In 1969 in New York, that candidate was John Lindsay, who "simply came closer to representing the centre of New York City" than either of his opponents, as one political scientist demonstrated after a detailed investigation. "What is truly remarkable about the 1969 election ", he wrote, "is that great swings at the fringes of the electorate ended up having little impact at the centre." This is a crucial observation: not only about the Jewish vote, but about the student vote, about the blue-collar vote, about the urban ethnic vote, about the women's vote, and about the entire course of American politics during the past few years. The great swings at the fringes of the electorate have not had a significant impact at the centre. This is the truth which matters beyond all other facts.

This was the explanation of the sharp reversal of George Wallace's fortunes during the presidential election of 1968; this was the explanation of the rejection of the extreme campaign waged by Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew in 1970; and this is the explanation of Richard Nixon's apparent supremacy at the moment. The great swings at the fringes have consis tently absorbed the newspapers and television news during the past few years, while the centre has remained as large and as steady as before; and it is this centre which has, for George McGovern, been fatally under-reported.

In 1968, Richard Nixon was widely believed to belong to the right wing of the Republican Party; that was the image of him, and as a result he divided the centre with Hubert Humphrey. In the mid-term elections in 1970, he appeared to have moved definitely toward the right wing; that was the image of him, and as a result he almost forfeited the centre. Today he has moved to occupy the entire centre, partly as a result of his experience in 1970, and partly because George McGovern is believed to belong to the left wing of the Democratic Party; that is the image of him, and as a result he is finding in the centre all those Jews and students, women and ethnics, who will always be found there, and who will never be found on either fringe.

This seems, in fact, a far more sensible way of regarding the election at the moment than to talk of it solely in terms of the success or failure of Richard Nixon or George McGovern to woo particular groups of voters. "Do none of us vote just as Americans?" a commentator on the third television network asked the other night. It was a good question, and it is as " Americans " that the centre speaks.