April 28, 1981: Con Man's Triumph

Oh, yes, we've got Trouble...

In his On Bended Knee [Chapter 6, "Jelly-Bean Journalism"],
Mark Hertsgaard takes a detailed look at the Reagan PR team's efforts following the March 30 assassination attempt.

Throughout Reagan's recovery, the White House released to the press carefully staged photos—including this taken at the hospital, on April 3—
and cropped, as Paul Slansky notes, to hide the IV tubes in Reagan's left arm.

Days after the shooting—and subsequent spike in Reagan's popularity—his team began planning his first public appearance: a nationally televised speech before a joint session of Congress. Their goals: "to give a fresh boost to the economic program" and to "focus official Washington's and therefore the news media's attention on the economy"—that is, away from sources of Reagan's pre-shooting decline in popularity (such as news coverage of Central America).

Reagan's return and speech were on April 28. In Hertsgaard's words, it was

... a masterpiece of political theater. Covered live by all the networks, its image of a fallen but now triumphantly recovered President engendered, at least according to press accounts, fresh feelings of patriotism and hope across the land. The network evening newscasts were second to none in leading the cheers. "A boffo performance!" exulted Frank Reynolds in leading off ABC's World News Tonight… NBC's Roger Mudd, quoting a Republican congressman, referred to the speech as "a velvet steamroller."

And the press seemed determined not to get in the way of that steamroller. Instead of critiquing the substance of the speech—what it meant—news coverage focused on the turn-tail-and-run response of Democrats; that is, on what it accomplished. Amidst their disarray the best the Democrats could manage was to sputter that the numbers in Reagan's speech had been inaccurate... the charge was duly noted in the next day's news coverage. But television reporting in particular did little to settle the dispute, much less go beyond it and explain the ramifications of Reagan's proposals. The contest, not its content, was what mattered. As Sam Donaldson concluded: "The lift the President's program may have gotten last night has very little to do with the facts and figures. It was the President as national hero returned, selling his plan on a wave of personal admiration and popularity."

Which is exactly how the apparatus would continue to sell the President and his plan. Time and again when the White House faced a close vote… the claim was made that the American people had given Reagan a mandate for such [drastic economic policy] changes in the November election. And time and again, despite the objective weakness of the case, the claim was uncritically transmitted in news stories.

The predictable results did not take long:

Awed by Reagan's mastery of television and fearful of his ability to sway public opinion, the Democrats also seemed more than willing to accept the mandate thesis. Quickly abandoning any pretense of being an opposition party, dozens… fell in line behind the President while scores more simply refrained from voicing any strong or sustained criticism of his program. Thus on May 8 the House of Representatives gave Reagan his first big victory on economic policy, approving by a 60-vote margin a White House budget that slashed social spending while gorging the Pentagon.

Of course, we still live with the consequences of both Reaganomics and this:

As the opposition party, the Democrats were seen by most Washington journalists as virtually the sole responsible alternative voice to the administration. Thus, when Democrats' criticism of Reagan's program was tepid to nonexistent, the criticism included in news stories to balance administration claims was tepid to nonexistent.

Following the House victory was a story of Democratic blunders on the one side, and Republican image management plus mobilization of party activists and voters on the other; Hertsgaard devotes several pages to the gory details.

The media were there to cheer on Reagan during [in the words of ABC anchor ABC anchor Max Robinson] "his latest drive to budge a stubborn House"—

... Both ABC and CBS did list some specific social programs that Reagan's budget would cut. But they spent just as much time airing the equivalent of a White House political commercial in which Reagan spouted fatuous generalizations about all the good things his economic package would do while he ridiculed Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill as a politician out of step with the country. The visual images of Reagan were especially stunning—his triumphant arrival [in San Antonio] to the tune of "Hail to the Chief," a capacity crowd in full-throated patriotic ardor as he spoke and one particularly flattering closing shot from down in front of the stage which projected an almost majestically commanding image of the President.

In the end, writes Hertsgaard

... The combination of Reagan's personal persuasive skills, the political atmosphere created by the apparatus' media and political outreach shops, and, according to [David] Stockman, some last-minute old-fashioned vote buying behind closed doors on Capitol Hill resulted in a narrow 217-210 victory for the White House on June 25. The actual budget bill passed the next day, 217-211. The first full step toward making Reaganomics a reality had been taken.