The Anatomy of Spin:
Causes, Consequences, and Cure
By:
Kenneth S. Hicks
Assistant Professor
Department of Social and Behavioral Science
Rogers State University
-----------------------------------------------Introduction
Over the past twenty years, media scholars noted an increasingly adversarial and tendentious tone to relationships between
and among members of the media and elected officials and their representatives (Patterson, 1994; Fallows, 1997; Cook, 1998;
Janeway, 1999: Bennett, 2001; Sabato, 2001). Given the critical role the media plays as conduit of information between governmental
actors and the public, the possibility that the media-government relationship has become dysfunctional is particularly troubling (Cook,
1998; Janeway, 1999). As a result, an entire language has sprung into existence to describe the Byzantine world of political news
journalism. This essay is devoted to explaining the meaning and consequences of ‘spin,’ one of the new concepts that capture the
increasingly problematic relationship between politicians and journalists.
New words draw attention to important changes in an environment. Just as sociologists have noted the profligacy of adjectives
for ‘ice’ in Aleut vocabulary, etymologists must concede to ‘spin’ its origins in the rough-and-tumble world of American politics. Since the
word was first discussed by Nixon speech writer-cum-journalist William Safire in a 1986 New York Times column, spin has moved from
an occupation (i.e. ‘spin doctor’) to an activity in campaign politics (i.e. ‘spin patrol’) to an ongoing governing activity with multiple actors.
Spin also refers to a journalistic interpretation of ‘acceptable’ or ‘unacceptable’ public relations manipulations. In a sense, spin often
stands as a sort of code word for demagoguery just short of propaganda. However, the generally pejorative connotation of spin also
points to the increasingly problematic nature of contemporary political discourse, and the need for a reorientation of the relationship
between political actors and journalists.
This essay takes on four interrelated tasks whose overall purpose is conceptual clarification. An important initial goal is to
attempt to delineate the meaning of spin as a form of political behavior. From there, consideration of the structural features of American
politics that have facilitated the growing utility of spin will highlight some of the enduring problems that exist in a democratic polity.
Specific illustrations of spin as a political tactic further demonstrate the increasingly adversarial nature of politician-journalistic relations.
A final question is whether a democratic society can have a genuinely ‘spin-free’ discourse; if so, the question then becomes why
Americans leave it to journalists to determine whether a particular discourse is free of spin.
What is Spin?
Journalists and politicians generally know what they mean when they characterize a statement as spin; that is, they know what
they judge as legitimate and illegitimate attempts to control a message or avoid political fallout. However, the rules differentiating ‘spin’
from other forms of communication, including garden-variety public relations and more overt forms of propaganda, are often obscure.
However, two contexts can help to clarify the meaning of spin, and set the stage for further consideration of its proximate causes.
The first context is the electoral politics that led Safire to describe an activity as ‘spin.’ According to Safire’s Times column,
spin derives from 1950’s slang ‘to deceive,’ which he hypothesized originated with the phrase ‘to spin a yarn.’ Safire further mused that
spin has more recently become a noun, and that spin now means that a person has “angled” a story “to suit our predilections or
interests.” Elaborating, Safire noted that the “phrase spin doctor was coined on the analogy of play doctor, one who fixes up a limping
second act, and gains from the larcenous connotation of the verb doctor, to fix a product by way a crooked bookkeeper ‘cooks’ books”
(Safire, 1986).
Safire attributes the first political usage of spin to Jack Rosenthal, who was deputy director of the New York Times editorial
page. A Times editorial noted that immediately after the conclusion of the 1984 Reagan-Mondale debates “a bazaar will suddenly
materialize in the press room… A dozen men in good suits and women in silk dresses will circulate smoothly among the reporters,
spouting confident opinions” (Ibid). Implicit in this description is a journalistic disdain for what the media perceived as crude attempts by
both campaigns to minimize the potential damage of any misstatement. Nonetheless, the high stakes of presidential politics led to
spin’s widespread adoption; in time, spin’s acceptance among candidates and journalists became habituated. Indeed, the perceived
need to disseminate and control one’s message has taken on a near fetishistic quality in contemporary politics (Cook, 1998).
Part of value of spin as part of the journalistic vocabulary is the independence it confers on the user. By alerting the
viewer/reader that a political agent is engaging in ‘spin,’ the journalist is implicitly suggesting ‘that is not what I am doing.’ As will be
noted below, the need of journalists to maintain in independent stance itself constitutes a version of spin.
Earlier scholarship began to track this movement in American politics. An important resource in that regard is The Image by
Daniel Boorstin, a book published in 1962 that captured the growing prevalence of public relations efforts in politics. Boorstin invented
the phrase pseudo-events to capture what he described as the “tantalizing difference between man-made and God-made events” (p
11). Although the concept was sufficiently scholastic and infelicitous to prevent widespread usage among journalists, the pseudo-event
clearly stands as a progenitor of spin, and captures many of its central characteristics. Boorstin noted the following characteristics of
pseudo-events:
1.
2.
It is not spontaneous, but comes about because someone has planned, planted, or incited it. Typically,
it is not a train wreck or an earthquake, but an interview.
It is planted primarily (not always exclusively) for the immediate purpose of being reported or
reproduced. Therefore, its occurrence is arranged for the convenience of the reporting or reproducing
media. Its success is measured by how widely it is reported. Time relations in it are commonly fictitious
3.
4.
or factitious; the announcement is given out in advance “for future release” and written as if the event
had occurred in the past. The question “Is it real?” is less important than, “is it newsworthy?”
Its relation to the underlying reality of the situation is ambiguous. Its interest arises largely from this
very ambiguity. Concerning a pseudo-event the question, “What does it mean?” has a new dimension.
While the news interest in a train wreck is in what happened and in the real consequences, the interest
in an interview is always, in a sense, in whether it really happened and in what might have been the
motives. Did the statement really mean what it said? Without some of this ambiguity a pseudo-event
cannot be very interesting.
Usually it is intended to be a self-fulfilling prophecy… (pp. 11-12).
To what extent do journalistic characterizations of spin reflect Boorstin’s criteria for pseudo-events? First, spin, like the pseudo-event, is
not spontaneous, but results from the perceived need by a political actor to attract or deflect attention. In this sense, there are spinners
(e.g. press secretaries, communication directors, and occasionally journalists themselves) and ‘spinnees’ (e.g. journalists, and, by
extension, the attentive public). Second, spin is facilitated by the forum provided by the media; in particular, spin as a political strategy
has benefited from the proliferation of cable television and specifically the rise of political talk shows, which offers a stage for the
practitioners of spin. Third, spin constitutes a news event in itself; indeed, part of the political utility of spin is its ethereal, distracting
quality. What makes political talk shows newsworthy is often the interplay among contending spinners -- and the collision of
personalities -- rather than the substance of their remarks (what may be called the ‘Crossfire Effect).
Finally, spin emulates that part of pseudo-events that Boorstin likens to the ‘search for self-fulfilling prophecies’ (pp. 181-238).
Boorstin identifies several characteristics of images that also reinforce the power of spin. First, images are “synthetic” or planned events
(p. 185); similarly, campaign managers and political consultants plan and stage events to serve a specific purpose, and today
presidents often move around the country with the primary purpose being to force the Washington press corps to follow them around to
track their movements (Smith, 1996; Milbank, 2002A). The rise and pervasive use of ‘line of the day’ memos to would-be spinners is
illustrative of the orchestrated nature of contemporary spin (Cook).
Second, Boorstin notes the importance of credibility for an image (Boorstin, p. 188). Likewise, spinner’s credibility derives from
their ability to persuade and ‘make good copy.’ Credibility in circumstances characterized by spin is a complex phenomenon; while
journalists expect political advisers and spokespersons to defend the elected officials for whom they work, journalists themselves derive
credibility from establishing and maintaining the appearance of independence from a particular ideological or partisan perspective. An
important corollary is that spin is not lying, an issue considered at greater length below.
Third, images are passive; as Boorstin puts it, an “image is a kind of ideal which becomes real only when it has become
public” (p. 189). Practitioners of spin also aspire to such an ideal of passivity, seeking to present an audience with a prepackaged
account of reality. Fourth, images are at once “vivid, simplified, and ambiguous.” According to Boorstin, images must be compelling
enough to attract attention, simple enough for people to remember, yet sufficiently ambiguous that it “float[s] somewhere between the
imagination and the sense, between expectations and reality” (p. 193). Likewise, the ambition of articulators of spin is to become “a
receptacle of the wishes of different people” (p. 194). In other words, practitioners of spin want to give supporters a reason to believe in
and support a cause in the face of unpleasant appearances.
Creating a perspicacious definition of spin is a more difficult task than it would appear. Succinct definitions ignore its dynamic
qualities, while exhaustive definitions create conceptual vacuity that might include nearly all acts of political communication, including
those forms of expression that are more clearly unacceptable. [1] Nonetheless, for the purposes of this essay, spin may be understood in
the following sense:
Spin: attempts to reorient potentially embarrassing or ambiguous actions, (mis)statements, and/or circumstances in
such a way as to deflect, minimize, or refute critical attention from a primary target (e.g. party, political actor, journalist
or the journalistic profession).
The purposes of spin are many and constantly evolving. Spin can be proactive or reactive, can originate with a political actor or be
carried out through surrogates, and can be a campaigning or governing activity (to the extent that the one set of political activities can
be meaningfully extruded from the other). Indeed, spin often originates within the journalistic culture. One important thing to keep in
mind is that spin is a discursive act that emerges from various actor’s perceived insecurities, and their attempts to sustain their
influence and position within a system of separate institutions sharing – and often competing for -- power (Neustadt, 1960).
Causes of Spin
The wellsprings of spin are numerous. While its profligacy makes it unique to American politics, the activity characterized as
spin is probably innate to the political process itself; if spin is nothing more than equivocation, then spin has probably existed as long as
language itself. Factors unique to American politics encourage the kinds of behavior that legitimize and systematize spin as a political
activity. I will suggest three factors that have facilitated the rise of spin as a political phenomenon: (1) the inevitability of spin as a
natural, human response to the ambiguities of political contestation; (2) features of the American political system that encourage
candidate-centered and personality-driven politics; (3) a First Amendment-protected media whose intimate and ambiguous relationship
with political actors creates an often problematic and irresolvable tension.
Spin as a Product of Human Nature
In order to understand the phenomenon more fully, spin must be accepted as a ubiquitous feature of political discourse,
regardless of culture. History is replete with examples of figures that, faced with seemingly damning circumstances, attempted to
present the most flattering justification for their actions. For example, Alcibiades – who, when accused of impiety by his fellow
Athenians fled to Athens’s rival Sparta, and advised them on how best to harm Athens – offered this subsequent ‘spin’ to his
treasonous behavior: “The true patriot is not he who, when he has unjustly lost his country, abstains from attacking it, but he who,
because of his longing for it, tries by all means to regain it” (Chroust, 1954: 283).
From there, a number of political preconditions appear necessary for spin to occur. A first prerequisite for spin is a minimally
democratic polity. Dictators rarely attempt to justify themselves, and find repression to be a more reliable means of guiding the
perceptions of their subjects. This is not to say that dictators have not frequently resorted to propaganda; indeed, some would say that
totalitarianism would not be possible without propaganda augmented by modern communications technology (Davis, 2001: 2-3).
However, the point remains that people who rely on force to maintain themselves in power rarely waste time in the kinds of parsing
activities that characterize spin, and differentiate spin from overt propaganda. [2]
**Second and related, spin demands the presence of a fully articulated and respected body of civil law. If dictators lack the
motivation to employ spin, democratic leaders in a society with an explicit legal superstructure feel compelled to employ the kinds of
punctilious legal observances that are often the principal wellspring of spin. Third, spin requires the presence of a politically
consequential and independent media (The second and third points will be considered at greater length later in the section).
Spin initially emanates from a relatively simple psychological assumption of the human nature of political actors in a
democratic polity: people want to be understood as they understand themselves. To that end, political actors with sufficient resources
and sufficient motivation will resort to spin when confronted with less than flattering circumstances.
Spin and American Political Institutions
The nature of American politics and the shape of American political institutions contribute in important ways to the emergence
of spin. First, two-party political systems appear to be more susceptible to spin than multi-party systems. Part of the reason is the mixed
nature of rewards in a two-party system. The potential for coalitions in two-party systems is usually muted; most often, the motivations
for the two parties are to persuade voters to continue voting for them, while attempting to persuade voters to reject the other party. The
result is a Manichean political environment that facilitates eristic debate, fertile ground for spin. In contrast, the foundation of multi-party
systems is coalition building, where an election-day opponent may become part of a governing coalition.[3] Both party systems require
compromise in order to produce policy, but two-party politics often mutes the public nature of such compromises by hiding them in
committee negotiations, thus enhancing the kinds of ‘Us-Them’ rhetoric that gives spin its clearest voice.
Second, presidential systems of government are more likely to produce divided government, and with it spin-driven conflict. In
the United States, while the president is the head of government and the symbolic leader of his/her party, that leadership brings with it
few of the kinds of control mechanisms that parliamentary systems extend to their leaders, especially in the areas of party discipline
within Congress and candidate selection in the campaign process. President’s can use their authority to make personal appeals to
congressional members on votes, but such appeals are rarely effective when members see following their leader as a threat to their
electoral future, and have limited effect on legislative members from the other party. Likewise, presidents can raise money and
campaign for their preferred candidates, but often find that their influence outside Washington wanes unless a nationalizing issue
overlaps local concerns. In some districts, a visit by national politicians is harmful to their preferred candidate’s chances.[4] Especially in
primary politics, intrusion by ‘outside forces’ can by viewed as intrusive and paternalistic, and hurt the chances of the president’s
preferred candidate.
Third, the separated nature of power in American politics generates a vacuum into which spin often intrudes. The framers of
the Constitution did not anticipate the formation of political parties, nor did they envision scenarios in which one party controlled the
legislative and executive branches of government. In the absence of decisive governing coalitions, [5] presidents and legislators must
identify policy options that give voters a reason to continue supporting their party while simultaneously intimating that they should reject
incumbents of the other party. The resulting electoral minuet has no real analogue in parliamentary politics, and creates a broken field
on which professional practitioners of spin can work to great advantage.
Fourth, non-ideological and anemic political parties give rise to candidate-centered, personality-driven campaigns and politics,
allowing interest groups to play an enlarged role in political discourse. For example, strong parties are in a position to control candidate
selection; in the U.S., Democratic and Republican leadership must often adopt positions of benign neutrality in primary battles that can
exhaust and alienate the party faithful and sap the resources of the winners. In worst-case scenarios, having won a Pyrrhic primary
victory, bloodied candidates often find that the promises made in the primary leave them exposed in the general election to attacks that
they are the captives of their party’s most extreme supporters which is often electoral death in American campaign politics, where
voters cherish moderate and/or independent candidates. Such leadership-in-name-only creates a very precarious governing
environment. The resulting divided government spurs political actors (e.g. presidents) to ever-greater efforts to dictate the terms of
political discourse, and stimulates emulation by rival political actors. As Stephen Hess noted of the intensely political nature of the Bush
presidency during the 2002 midterm elections, “When one seat can make the difference between divided and unified government, that’s
a big incentive” for Bush to raise the stakes, and risk his personal popularity campaigning across the country in the final weeks of the
election (Allen, 2002: A08).
Many scholars argued that personality politics is the wellspring of spin, and emerged from the Byzantine manipulations of the
Reagan administration. However, a case can be made that something similar to spin began taking shape in the activities of the
20th century’s earlier Great Communicator, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. For example, Boorstin notes that Roosevelt was among the first
political leaders in American politics to mold the news cycles to his own purposes:
F.D.R. was a man of great warmth, natural spontaneity, and simple eloquence, and his public utterances reached the
citizen with a new intimacy. Yet, paradoxically, it was under his administration that statements by the President
attained a new subtlety and a new calculatedness. On his production team, in addition to newspapermen, there were
poets, playwrights, and a regular corps of speech writers. Far from detracting from his effectiveness, this collaborative
system for producing the impression of personal frankness and spontaneity provided an additional subject of
newsworthy interest. Was it Robert Sherwood or Judge Samuel Rosenman who contributed this or that phrase? How
much had the President revised the draft given him by his speech-writing team? Citizens became nearly as much
interested in how a particular speech was put together as in what it said. And when the President spoke, almost
everyone knew it was a long-planned group production in which F.D.R. was only the star performer (p. 21).
What makes Roosevelt’s machinations a progenitor of spin is the erosion of the distinction between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ news: policy debate
is increasingly reduced to speculation over tactics of ‘the line of the day’ and authorship of a particular soundbite, or who generated the
latest iteration of a stump speech journalists have heard at every stop. Tactics and performance, rather than platforms and issues,
become the linchpin of political success, and widen the distance between ‘Beltway Culture’ and citizens. Today, the once comfortable
distinction between ‘tabloid journalism’ and ‘professional’ reportage has blurred in ways not approached since the era of yellow
journalism in the late 19th century (Fallows, 1997: 184).
Spin and the American Media Establishment
The media, as noted above, plays a decisive role in the generation of spin. The media in the United States is at once more
independent from and less accountable to political authority than in other industrial democratic states. In part, this paradoxical
circumstance is the result of constitutional design, and in part is the result of the commercial evolution of the news media.
Freedom of the press may not be a uniquely American ideal, but no other nation has taken freedom of the press to such
extremes. While most democracies pay lip service to the idea of a free and open press, none but the United States has connoted
‘freedom of the press’ with a literal separation of the news media from the state. [6] In the absence of such constitutional strictures, states
have felt free to run state-owned news services that effectively truncate the free market operation of information gathering and
disseminating industries. In the United States, the press evolved initially as a party-organ, but by the 1830’s had mutated into an
independent entity that tied profitability to a growing professional commitment to a stance of political independence (Schudson, 1978).
The commitment to freedom of the press is often cherished in theory but excoriated in practice. The United States is the
exception that proves the rule. The rare instances where the American press has been subjected to regulation have occurred during
times of national emergencies, and since WWI have occurred with much less frequency than in other democratic nations. The federal
judiciary’s ‘strict scrutiny’ standard applied to states attempting to restrain First Amendment rights has generally insured that the
media’s right to publish controversial or embarrassing information remains essentially unchecked.
Supreme Court decisions have helped shape American media in ways that have contributed to the evolution of spin. No case
greater illustrates the legal instantiation of spin than Sullivan v. New York Times (1963). In Sullivan, the Court established the standard
of ‘actual malice’ necessary for public figures to sustain a libel verdict. Mere misstatements cannot constitute libel under the ‘actual
malice’ standard; rather, litigants must prove that journalists made character-harming misstatements with malicious intent. Such a high
standard of proof has not prevented political actors from at times using litigation as an effective threat, [7] particularly in local politics,
where small newspapers lack the financial resources for extended litigation. However, the evolution toward ‘pack journalism’ and
‘feeding frenzy’ reporting often leave libeled politicians the choice of suing reporters backed by powerful media corporations or doing
nothing in the hope that the offending story will die quickly. Thus far, political actors faced with such a stark choice have opted to do
nothing, perhaps realizing that the courts would have little enthusiasm for litigation touching so clearly on First Amendment freedoms.
As a result, journalistic standards have descended toward the level of the tabloids, resulting in the publication of mere rumor by
attribution with tabloids often breaking news (Sabato, 2000: 100-102).
Buckley v. Valeo (1986) is another decision that has had a sweeping impact on political campaigns, and inadvertently
facilitated spin-dominated discourse. In the Buckley decision, the Court accepted limits on political party’s spending, but not individual
spending by candidates themselves. Political parties have been weakened by Buckley, and will be weakened further still by the
McCain-Feingold Act. Candidate’s reliance on television advertising to reach as wide an audience as possible has dramatically
increased the cost of campaigning, and expanded the influence of interest groups and wealthy contributors. The attempts by political
actors implicated in these access-for-contributions relationships constitute an entire chapter in the evolution of spin.
The commercial evolution of the media in the U.S. has furthered the proliferation of spin. James Fallows, for example, has
effectively chronicled the growth of the ‘punditocracy’ and the misguided incentives under which contemporary political journalists
operate. The ambitions of journalists today lead them less toward a posting in the White House press corps or a byline with the New
York Times, but rather toward achieving sufficient notoriety on the television talk shows to command lucrative speaking fees on the
lecture circuit. The kinds of performances that television values and rewards (e.g. the capacity to make statements that are at once
clever, sweeping, simplistic, and controversial)[8] are often directly at odds with the values of professional reportage, and create a
capricious environment where political actors feel compelled to make increasingly dramatic statements simply to gain attention
(Fallows, 1997: 74-128). The attempt to pursue a political agenda in such a frenzied atmosphere naturally results in frequent
miscalculations that journalists quickly (and at times, accurately) denounce as spin. American legal traditions have firmly ensconced a
privately owned, for-profit media. The consequence of this commitment is a media whose primary objective is profit-driven, motivations
that do not often lend themselves to educative tasks, an essential justification for the First Amendment. Media programming is generally
more committed to entertaining than to providing citizens with the kind and quality of information needed to make informed decisions.
Indeed, many media executives display evidence of real cynicism, stating, in effect, ‘we are simply giving the public what it wants’
(Bennett, 2001: 89-100).
In addition, modern journalism’s commitment to an ideal of independence and partisan neutrality often produces political
coverage that has the dubious distinction of being at once anti-political and vacuous (Sabato, 2000; Fallows, 1997). A recent
consequence is the creation of ‘journalistic spin,’ which will be analyzed in the next section.
The advent of the Internet has served to intensify spin in numerous ways. Howard Kurtz notes that through the 1980’s, only
three newspapers had national circulations (Kurtz, 1994: 44). Today, most newspapers and television stations have free Internet sites.
Political parties and interest groups have quickly followed suit, and most federal campaigns have online strategies designed to quickly
respond to opponent’s attacks or media criticism, a rapid-fire evolution of Clinton’s ‘War Room’ strategy (Stephanopoulos, 1999: 86-91).
As Internet use has spread from affluent to middle-class citizens, its democratizing potential brings with it greater opportunities to
employ spin.
To summarize, spin, while not unique to American politics, is not so ubiquitous in other nations as to merit its own word. In
American political discourse, part of spin’s novelty is its constantly evolving nature. As noted above, spin began as primarily a campaign
related activity, and while confined to the stump or the halls of Congress, its excesses explained if not excused. However, spin has
since burst through the confines of Washington, blurring the lines between election year rhetoric and ‘nuts and bolts’ governance, and
become the currency of a ‘permanent campaign’ (Ornstein and Mann, 2000).
Spin 2002
Attempts to categorize spin are fraught with difficulties, not the least being the dynamic and evolving quality of politicians’
public relations efforts. Nonetheless, spin falls into a relatively discrete set of easily comprehended categories. An initial distinction is
between political and journalistic spin. The purposes of journalistic spin are sufficiently distinctive to require treating it as a separate
phenomenon: journalists do not simply label the statements of politicians as ‘spin,’ but also engage in discursive activities whose intent
is to advance journalistic objectives, which will be considered below.
Political Spin
Political spin is a multifarious activity. One possible formulation of political spin revolves around the following questions: Who is
spinning? What is the political intent behind the spinning? Analysis of these questions yields a four-part typology.
First Person
Surrogate
Offensive
I
III
II
IV
The person engaged in spin provides an important orientational cue. As individuals become more politically powerful and influential,
they are correspondingly more inclined to have surrogates do their spinning for them, and will only resort to first-person spin when the
stakes are high and circumstances demand it. Part of the problem for influential actors, especially presidents, is that first-person spin
brings greater risk than leaving such public relations tasks to surrogates.
Spin usually serves two strategic, interrelated purposes. Defensive Spin includes all attempts to recast or redefine an
unfavorable set of circumstances to encourage viewing them in a more favorable (or at least more understandable and hence
palatable) light. Offensive Spin involves attacking or the strategic use of anger as a means of either immobilizing opponents who would
otherwise be in a position to capitalize on embarrassing circumstance (i.e. ‘the best defense is a good offense’) or, alternatively, to
immobilize journalists by raising the costs of pursuing an aggressive line of questioning. [9]
Examples of these categories of spin abound in recent political discourse:
First-Person Defensive (F-P-D) Spin. This category of spin refers to attempts by a primary political actor to resort to personal
explanations as a means of recovering support lost by an embarrassing circumstance. Politicians forced to resort to F-P-D spin
attempt to create a controlled and staged event: a press conference, or a televised interview with a selected journalist with prescreened questions. Studies indicate that for personal appeals can be effective (Robertson and Burgess, 1970), but a number of
factors will influence the success of F-P-D spin, including:
Pre-event name recognition (district, state-wide, national);
‘Positive/negative’ perceptions’ among voters;
The nature of the event in question (private vs. public infraction; culpable malfeasance vs. merely
embarrassing situation or statement, etc.);
The intensity of the news cycle.
Recent political memory offers numerous instances of F-P-D spin (e.g. ‘I am not a crook,’ ‘I didn’t inhale,’ ‘It depends on what the
meaning of the word “is” is,’ etc.), most of which suggest that primary actors should avoid being compelled to make such
statements whenever possible. Perhaps the most infamous recent instance of a failed F-P-D spin was Gary Condit’s disastrous
interview with Connie Chung. Condit’s attempts at spin failed miserably for a number of reasons, including:
A poor public relations strategy (saying nothing to the media for nearly two months, and then belatedly
attempting to ‘clear the air’ without giving away any details of his relationship with the missing intern
Chandra Levy);
The perception among the media that Condit had a ‘Gary Hart’ problem (womanizing).
A slow news cycle (summer with little hard political news for journalists to report); [10]
Poor pre-event name recognition (members of the House outside the leadership are rarely well known).
First-Person Offensive (F-P-O) Spin. Offensive spin typically involves attempting to change the subject, either
by questioning the credibility of persons attacking, or by attacking the media in an attempt to raise the
perceived stakes of pursuing a line of questioning a politician clearly indicates is out of bounds. Politicians,
however, can rarely afford to pick fights with journalists, given the mutual needs of both sides (Graber, 1997:
279).
Typically, F-P-O spin takes the form of calculated outbursts of anger directed at reporters following up on a politically
embarrassing or damaging event. Given the high costs associated with alienating reporters, the intent behind F-P-O spin is
frequently to head off ‘feeding frenzies,’ where reporters engage in pack questioning of the same incident that dominates news
cycles and can destroy politician’s careers (see Gary Condit). For example, W. Lance Bennett has noted that instances of
truculence can help politicians with an easy-going reputation (Bennett, 2001: 256-257).
A recent and complex example of F-P-O spin was Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle’s angry speech from the Senate floor
on September 25, 2002, denouncing a Bush campaign speech he and Democrats perceived as politicizing the war effort (Loughlin,
2002; Sisk, 2002). Daschle was especially angry at a line in a Bush speech given in New Jersey that concluded, “The Senate is
more interested in special interests in Washington and not interested in the security of the American people.” Daschle declared that
the remark was “outrageous,” that neither party should seek to create a political advantage from the war on terrorism, and that the
President ought to apologize to those Democratic members who had fought for their country. Senate Republicans immediately
attempted to respond, questioning whether it was Bush or Daschle who was politicizing the issue, and Bush press secretary Ari
Fleischer attempted to defuse the issue at a press conference, remarking, “Now is a time for everybody concerned to take a deep
breath” (Sisk).
Daschle’s behavior is actually a complex example of F-P-O spin. On the one hand, Daschle’s anger at Bush’s impugning the
patriotism of Senate Democrats illustrates one of the chief virtues of F-P-O spin; for a day, Daschle’s outburst blunted Republicans’
efforts to make the midterm campaign about homeland security. On the other hand, Daschle’s long term hopes proved largely
ineffectual: Bush did not apologize, Republicans continued to campaign on the issue, and ultimately several vulnerable Democratic
senators – especially Missouri’s Jean Carnahan and Georgia’s Max Cleland – were defeated by opponents who received heavy
campaign support from Bush and the GOP National Committee, who made the Senate’s failure to pass a homeland security bill a
major issue in attack advertisements.
Several factors weigh in the decision by primary political actors to employ F-P-O spin, including:
The nature of the politician-media relationship;
The intensity of the news cycle and media estimations of the size of the story;
The possible calculation of ‘scandal fatigue’ among viewers;
Daschle failed largely because people were willing to accept the GOP’s politicization of the issue. Daschle’s criticisms failed to
persuade either the voters or the Bush administration that such politicization was unfair. Within a few days, the media returned to
its preoccupied with the campaign, and Democratic complaints of unfairness were lost in the horserace.
Surrogate Defensive (S-D) Spin. The use of proxies to defend the actions of a political actor or administration
– previously a sporadic tactical maneuver reserved for crucial moments – has in past ten years become
basic feature of contemporary political discourse. To illustrate, in 2002 the Bush administration launched a
number of well-coordinated public relations campaigns employing the disciplined use of surrogates, the first
to refute the idea that going to war with Iraq was an attempt to shift the tone of midterm elections (Hirsh,
2002; Milbank, 2002; Solomon, 2002), and the second to engage the entire executive branch in the
campaign (Allen, 2002).
The surrogate spin campaign on Iraq began inauspiciously, when comments by Karl Rove, a top Bush political adviser, and
Andrew Card Jr., Bush’s chief of staff, each indicated that war with Iraq should become a principal plank of the GOP midterm
election efforts.[11] The Bush administration discipline regarding leaks is already widely noted, but the administration spent time
early on attempting to minimize perceived ‘Hawk-Dove’ conflicts within the administration and the GOP at-large (Hirsh, 2002;
Saleton, 2002). Many observers argued that Democrats were lulled into accepting Iraq as a campaign issue, thinking that Bush’s
inexperience would create confusion within the administration that would work to Democrat’s advantage. In the end, Democratic
leader’s quiescence on Iraq became a powerful campaign issue that worked to many Democratic candidates’ disadvantage in the
midterms, and allowed Bush to be one of only three incumbent presidents in last 100 years to avoid losing seats in midterm
elections.[12]
Republican pre-election spin on the midterms came from Ken Mehman, White House political director, who sought to lower
expectations by concluding that if the GOP was successful in holding the House and winning back the Senate, “we would make
history by defying history” (Bumiller and Nagournney, 2002). Democrats like former chief of staff John Podesta countered by
claiming that Bush could have taken the high road, but that instead “he is out there in the dirt with the candidates,” (Bumiller and
Nagourney, 2002). Republican strategists, in hindsight, correctly calculated that Bush’s involvement in the campaign would cost
little, and that the benefits far outweighed any perceived disadvantages. [13]
In the weeks leading up to the midterms, the Bush administration took advantage of the loosening of the Hatch Act to solicit
the full support of the executive branch on behalf of GOP candidates. Members of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
were sent a memo reminding them that federal employees “are permitted to take an active part in partisan political management
and campaigns” (Allen, 2002: A08). When Democrats questioned these activities, White House communications director Dan
Bartlett claimed that “The president is the leader of the Republican Party and he’s doing everything he can to help elect people who
share his agenda… It’s totally appropriate to allow people to participate in the political process” (ibid). Thus, where Democrats
viewed these activities as ‘politicizing policy implementation’ Republicans defended them as ‘encouraging participation.’
Surrogate Offensive (S-O) Spin. Proxies can also go on the offensive in spin wars. The above-mentioned
‘wag-the-dog’ controversy enabled Bush supporters to attack Democrats. For example, spokespersons like
White House press secretary Ari Fleisher lashed out at Democrats’ ‘wag-the-dog’ insinuations, declaring,
“Even the suggestion that the timing of something so serious could be done for political reasons is
reprehensible” (Milbank: A01).
Another example of the aggressive strains of S-O spin are the GOP’s attempts to deflect or deprive Democrats of Social
Security as a campaign issue. Paul Krugman, an op-ed writer for the New York Times and harsh critic of George W. Bush’s
administration, quotes a GOP National Campaign Committee memo which declares “It is very important that we not allow reporters
to shill for Democrat demagoguery by inaccurately characterizing ‘personal accounts’ and ‘privatization’ as one and the same”
(Krugman, 2002). Realizing how unpopular privatizing Social Security was among older voters, Republicans embarked on a
strategy whose goal was to “mau-mau reporters out of using the word ‘privatization’ in this context” (Ibid). Many incumbent GOP
candidates in the midterms sought to preemptively inoculate themselves from the issue by airing personal issue advertisements
disavowing any intention of cutting Social Security benefits or seeking privatization. [14]
----To summarize, most varieties of ‘real-world’ spin are combinations of the above categories. As the Daschle example above suggests,
frequently spin simultaneously serves offensive and defensive purposes. Additionally, W. Lance Bennett suggests that the relationship between
primary actors and surrogates deserves serious analysis. At times, intimate relationships between surrogates and journalists trump surrogate’s
relationships with the person for whom they are spinning. According to Bennett, “the new coziness results in a potentially unsavory mix of news spin
calculated to balance a client’s immediate interests with the sometimes conflicting interests of other clients, and with the consultant’s own reputation
as an insider with whom reporters want to do business (Bennett, 2001: 159).
Journalistic Spin
Journalistic spin is less apparent but more insidious than political spin. After all, the psychological motivations of political spin
are self-evident: parties and politicians use spin as a semi-legitimate tactic in a twilight struggle to seize the political initiative. In
contrast, journalists seemingly have little incentive to spin, so long as we understand spin as a primarily political activity. More to the
point, journalists have little incentive to spin so long as we conceptualize the media as occupying a non-political role as a disinterested
chronicler of political happenings and as government watchdog.
Recent scholarship has increasingly challenged this view of the media as a non-political private enterprise with independent
political responsibilities.[15] Investigations of the media’s role in politics has yielded a number of conclusions, ranging from conspiratorial
views of the media as an indoctrinator of the dominant economic class (e.g. Parenti) to the media as increasingly concentrated in its
ownership, and hence limited in the views that are distributed (e.g. Bagdikian) to the media as an innately political institution whose
ability to act as a neutral forum for political discourse is increasingly undermined by its commercial imperatives (e.g. Cook). Add to that
conservative complaints of an incipient liberal bias in journalistic coverage of politics, and a picture emerges of the media as an
institution occupying dangerously ambiguous ground. The result is a political institution disguised as an industry whose competence to
provide the detailed, issue-centric coverage necessary for a democratic citizenry to make consequential decisions is dubious, and
whose accountability within the framework of a democratic society is uncertain.
Journalistic spin is primarily a tactic of deflection, designed to avoid the perception that a media actor has violated norms of
objectivity. A second motivation for journalistic spin lies in the reward structure of contemporary reportage. Call the first
manifestation objective spin, and call the second manifestation bloviating spin. Each variety of spin serves the overarching purpose of
maintaining the image of the media as gatekeeper/watchdog while often serving to further individual journalist’s careers, with the added
consequence of sterilizing media coverage of politics.
Objective spin serves to deflect criticism from political actors, who complain about a left- or rightward tilt to media coverage.
Journalists seek out stories that facilitate the view of the media as an independent and impartial forum. One of the most intensively
employed varieties of objective spin during election campaigns is ‘horserace coverage’; using public opinion surveys, journalists report
on ‘who is winning, who is losing, who is gaining ground etc.’ (Sabato, p. 35). The virtue of the horserace format is that journalists
occupy the role of a seemingly disinterested announcer, excited by the atmosphere and drama of the race (Bennett, 2000). The
midterm elections of 2002 offered a new variation on horserace coverage: with VNS unable to iron technical problems with its exit
polling models, the major networks were not in a position to call many of the major races. As with Florida in the 2000 elections – but
without the mortifying mistakes that cast doubt on the media’s competence – the 2002 midterm elections created a new ‘race’ drama:
election as down-to-the-wire marathon, which no doubt enhanced network ratings.
Another important version of objective spin is the ‘gridlock’ story format. Focusing stories on congressional conflict offers the
media the opportunity to decry divided government while appearing above the fray. A Jack Shafer posting on Slate’s Internet site
meditates on certain reporter’s penchant for condemning gridlock. For a certain group of journalists:
blocking legislation is partisan and awful while passing legislation – no matter how ill-conceived – is nonpartisan and
wonderful. [Journalists] imagines the House and Senate as legislative factories that should be judged by the same
metrics the Soviets would apply to a steel mill: Never mind the quality or whether or not there’s a demand. How much
did it produce last year? Not much? Then, let’s shake up management! (Shafer, 2002).
The gridlock framework enables journalists to criticize political actors without seeming partisan, but one consequence of this narrative
framewok is to pass along a profoundly simplistic and dangerously anti-political attitude to the viewing public, who increasingly reflect
this dissatisfaction in public opinion surveys.
Bloviating spin reflects the growing popularity of the proliferating shows in which journalists interview other journalists on
television (examples include Face the Nation, Meet the Press, Cross-Fire, The Capital Gang, The McCloughlin Group, Hanity and
Combs, etc.). Program hosts’ set up their interviewees – usually ‘celebrity reporters’ like Cokie Roberts or George Stephanopoulos –
who then proceed to offer whichever witticisms brought them to the set (Shafer). Bloviation has been facilitated by the popularity of
adversarial talk shows like Crossfire and Hanity and Combs, shows whose primary appeal lies not in the light cast upon issues, but
rather in the heat sparked by the clash of personalities between hosts and guests, and where shouting often obscures whatever serious
points might be raised within such a format.
Perhaps more disturbing, as noted above, journalists and consultants often find themselves in ambiguous positions because of
the calculus of spinning. The necessarily cozy triangular relationship among journalists, surrogate spinners, and political actors often
works to the detriment of politicians, with surrogates surreptitiously helping journalists get unflattering stories about their political
sponsors. However, politicians are rarely in a position to know whether someone working for them because journalists feel a strong
professional incentive to protect sources has betrayed them. [16] Overall, there is very little accountability imposed on journalists, which
leads some scholars to ask the question: “Who elected them? And to whom are journalists responsible?” (Cook, 1998: 167).
When is Spin Not Spin?
Briefly, spin is not spin when a person crosses the line between parsing and lying. Lies, by definition, cannot be spin.
However, the exponential and pervasive deployment of spin creates a wide gray area that frequently tempts political actors and
journalists into falsehoods in the hopes that they can dress up prevarications as spin. Two examples illustrate the range of problems
that can tempt political actors into crossing the line.
Bill Clinton’s fiery, finger-thumping January 26, 1997 “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” statement in the White
House Roosevelt Room was a clear example of a lie masquerading as spin. The politics that led Clinton are sufficiently well known that
need not exhaustively characterized. By 1997, Clinton had convinced himself that lying was an acceptable tactic against a faction of the
GOP that was obsessed with his destruction.
A second example of a lie masquerading as spin took place repeatedly during the opening months of George W. Bush’s
administration. Sensitive to mounting evidence of a recession and the harsh medicine that would likely be required to combat it, Bush
started including in his fund raising speeches across the country a story that, when questioned during the 2000 campaign whether he
would ever consider running a deficit or dipping into Social Security, he replied he would only do so in case of war, recession, or
national security. His applause line was “Never did I dream we’d have a trifecta” (Editors, 2002D: 8). The problem, as The New
Republic editors have exhaustively pointed out, is that Bush never made such a qualifying remark in any speech that any reporter
recalls hearing. The editors of The New Republic have repeatedly challenged the Bush administration to show any videotape or
recording to substantiate his claim.
Clinton’s non-spin took place in a media swirl that no one could ignore. In contrast, Bush’s non-spin has been taking place in
small fund-raising venues before sympathetic audiences. The discomfiting implication of these two instances of lies-qua-spin is that
lying about policy is more understandable – and hence more acceptable – than lies about personal behavior. However, both instances
of lies-qua-spin indicate instances where political actors feel sufficiently threatened by an issue or event that they feel compelled to
prevaricate, and hope either that the media will not discover the lie, or that the media will not have the will to publicize the lie. Failing
that, politicians must hope that voters will forgive them.
Conclusion:
Is ‘Spin-Free’ Political Discourse Possible?
The problem of spin is much like the problem of faction confronted by James Madison in Federalist 10. How can a democratic
society prevent the wealthy and powerful or the numerous and angry from exerting a disproportionate influence over a polity’s
discourse? Legally barring such behavior was a cure worse than the disease. Madison’s answer lay in controlling the ability of factions
to completely dominate the institutions of government. Spin is a logical byproduct of the inertia built into the American system of
government.
If the arguments in this essay have any validity, then the likelihood of banishing spin from American political discourse is
remote. Indeed, imagining a conversation about politics that did not resort to some kind of spin-like rhetoric is to imagine a dull
conversation, held among people who do not care sufficiently about politics to have arrived at a coherent set of beliefs, and hence
make little effort to win the argument. In an important sense, part of the reason for spin is that politics is not simply a cooperative
process of identifying public goods. Politics is also about the distribution of scarce resources among people who frequently have
diametrically opposed ideas of what to do with those resources. Spin is one set of tactics employed to win such arguments.
However, a spin-dominated political discourse has many unfortunate implications. The damaged relationship between political
actors and the media has seriously impaired the ability of the media to act as a forum for a mass public. Politicians increasingly rely on
television to wholesale their messages, and rely on spin to shorthand their views to the public. If the present discursive norms were in
place in 1787, The Federalist Papers would likely have been reduced to catchphrases like “A federal government will bring peace and
secure prosperity. Do you want inflated prices and an ineffectual government? If so, stick with the Articles of Confederation.” What
made the ratification debates so important was not the absence of hardball politics, of which there was plenty; rather, the ratification
debates offered testimony to the power of vigorous and passionate public debate before an attentive citizenry.
The existence of journalistic spin should alert political observers that the media is incompetent to adequately inform the public.
Part of the problem is that conducting campaigns through private media is prohibitively expensive, and in the end favors the side with
the most money. While wealth is unconnected to the validity of a person’s ideology or policy preferences, the reality established our
jurisprudence is that persons with the resources to hire lobbyists or make large campaign contributions can speak more loudly than
people who lack those resources.
The journalistic profession has materially contributed to the intensification of spin (Bennett, 2001; Cook, 1998). The question
is whether the media’s culpability can be remedied, or whether proposed solutions may prove to be worse than the cure. The problems
exhaustively chronicled by academics and journalists themselves should yield to the recognition that the media simply cannot act as a
reliable conduit of information. In other words, citizens may find their information needs better served by more explicitly partisan news
outlets than a private for-profit media whose independence is dubious and whose profit motives undermine their credibility as conveyors
of news. Far better to use the wealth of contributors to fund liberal and conservative networks, rather than continue to rely on ‘neutral’
news coverage that often fails to meaningfully distinguish between diametrically opposed partisans. Conservatives have already
established themselves in the news-dissemination business; rather than decry the influence of FoxNews, liberals would likely be better
off politically (and on firmer constitutional grounds than campaign funding limits advocates) to seek funding for a liberal media outlet.
In conclusion, one might argue that if spin is inevitable, why not simply accept that spin is one of the ineluctable byproducts of
American institutions. However, to say that spin is inevitable is not to say that a democratic society can long endure a political discourse
where political actors are unable or unwilling to communicate forthrightly with the public. When spin becomes the currency of the realm,
no one should be surprised to find that what is bought is cynicism, apathy, and a jaded and unsatisfactory political discourse.
References
Allen, Mike (2002), “Bush Shifts from Terror to Kitchen Table,” Washington Post, Friday, October 25, p. A02
___ “Bush Enlists Government in GOP Campaign,” Washington Post, October 24, p. A08.
Alter, Jonathan (2002), “The Wellstone Effect: Minn. Senator’s Untimely Death Could be a boost for Democrats
Nationally,” http://www.msnbc.com/news/827818.asp.
Bagdikian, Ben (1997), The Media Monopoly, (Boston: Beacon Press).
Bailey, F.G. (1988), Humbuggery and Manipulation: The Art of Leadership, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press).
Bennett, L. Lance, News: The Politics of Illusion,
Boorstin, Daniel J.(1962 and 1992). The Image or What Happened to the American Dream? (New York: Macmillan). Later published
as The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, with an Afterword by George F. Will, (New York: Vintage Books).
Bumiller, Elisabeth, and Adam Nagourney (2002), “In Homestretch, Bush Makes Push for G.O.P. Gains,” The New York Times,
October 23, http://nytimes.com/2002/10/23/politics/campaigns/23Elec.html.
Chait, Jonathan (2002). “Defense Secretary: the Peculiar Duplicity of Ari Fleischer,” The New Republic 4, pp. 20-23.
Chroust, Anton-Hermann (1954), “Treason and Patriotism in Ancient Greece,” Journal of the History of Ideas 15, pp. 280-288.
Cook, Timothy E. (1998). Governing With the News: The News Media as a Political Institution, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Fallows, James, (1997), Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy, (New York: Vintage).
Graber, Doris A. (1997), Mass Media and American Politics, (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press).
Hirsh, Michael (2002), “Hawks, Doves, and Dubya,”, Newsweek, August 26 http://www.msnbc.com/news/798832.asp.
Jamieson, Kathleen Hall, and Paul Waldman (2002), The Press Effect: Politicians, Journalists, and the Stories that Shape the Political
World, (New York: Oxford University Press).
Janeway, Michael (1999), The Republic of Denial: Press, Politics, and Public Life, (New Haven: Yale University Press).
Kessler, Glenn (2002), “Dissidents to Aid Case for Iraq Action: U.S. to Coach Baghdad’s Opponents for Debate,” Washington Post,
August 26, p. A12
Kiefer, Francine (2001), “Bush Travel Itinerary – Surprise! – is to Swing States,” Christian Science Monitor, Wednesday, June 6,
2001, http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/06/06/p2s2.htm.
Krugman, Paul (2002), “The Bully’s Pulpit,” New York Times, September 6, 2002, http://nytimes.com/2002/09/06/opinion/06KRUG.html.
Kurtz, Howard (2002A), “In Ads, It’s a Campaign Smackdown,” Washington Post, Friday, October 25, p. A03
____, (2002B), “Welcome to the Tar Pits: California’s Gubernatorial Campaign Bypasses the High Road,” Washington Post, October 9,
p. C01
____ (1998). Spin Cycle: How the White House and the Media Manipulate the News, (New York: Simon & Schuster).
____ (1994), Media Circus: The Trouble With America’s Newspapers, (New York: Time Books).
Loughlin, Sean (2002), “Dems, GOP Trade Jabs Over Iraq,” http://cnn.allpolitics.clickability.com/pt/cpt.
Merida, Kevin (2002), “The No-Pity Party: When They’re Down, Democrats Kick Each Other Hard,” Washington Post, November 7, p.
C01
Milbank, Dana (2002A), “The Cost of Presidential Travel is Anyone’s Guess,” Washington Post, October 29, 2002, p.
A19. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32561-2002Oxt28.
___, (2002B), “For Bush, Facts are Malleable: Presidential Tradition of Embroidering Key Assertions Continues,” Washington Post,
October 22, p. A01.
___, (2002C), “Democrats Question Iraq Timing: Talk of War Distracts from Election Issues,” Washington Post, September 16, p. A01.
___, (2002D), “No Crawfishing From a Unique Vernacular,” Washington Post, September 10, p. A13.
Neusdadt, Richard (1960), Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership, (New York: John Wiley).
Ornstein, Norman, and Thomas Mann, eds., (2000), The Permanent Campaign and its Future, (Washington, D.C.: The American
Enterprise and Brookings Institutes).
Parenti, Michael (1992), Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment, (New York: St. Martin’s).
Patterson, Thomas E. (1994), Out of Order, (New York: Vintage Books).
Robinson, Michael J., and Philip M. Burgess (1970), “The Edward M. Kennedy Speech: The Impact of a Prime-Time Television
Appeal,” Television Quarterly 9 (Winter: 29-39).
Rosati, Jerel A.(1993), The Politics of United States Foreign Policy, (New York: Harcourt Brace College Publishers).
Sabato, Larry (2000), Feeding Frenzy: Attack Journalism and American Politics, (Baltimore: Lanahan).
Safire, William (1986), “On Language: Calling Dr. Spin,” New York Times, Section 6, Page 8, Column 3.
Saletan, William (2002A), “Ballot Box: Slamming Dorr: How a Bush Appointee Manipulated Farm Subsidies,” Slate, August
30, http://slate.msn.com/toolbar.aspx.
___, (2002B), “Ballot Box: Cheney vs. Scowcroft: How to Duck the Arguments Against Attacking Iraq,” Slate, August
27, http://slate.msn.com/toolbar.aspx.
Sanger, David E., (2002), “Bush Juggles the Roles of Leaders and Cheerleader,” http://nytimes.com/2002/10/28/politics/28Bush.html.
Schudson, Michael (1978), Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers, (Boston: Basic Books).
Shafer, Jack (2002), “I Love Gridlock! Why Doesn’t the Rest of the Washington Press Corps?” Slate Internet Magazine, October
21, http://slate.msn.com/toolbar.aspx?
Sisk, Richard (2002), “Patriot Slap Riles Dems,” New York Daily News, September 26. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/vpfriedly/story/21900p-20764c.html.
Smith, Culver (1977), The Press, Politics, and Patronage: the American Government’s Use of Newspapers, 1789-1875, (Athens:
University of Georgia Press).
Smith, Hedrick (1996), The Power Game: How Washington Works, (New York: Ballantine Books).
Solomon, Norman, “Wag the Puppy: Rumors of Iraqi War Help White House,” http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6242.
Stephanopoulos, George (1999), All Too Human: A Political Education, (Boston: Little, Brown, & Company).
Suellentrop, Chris (2002), “Assessment: Richard Perle: Washington’s Faceful Bureaucrat,” http://slate.msn.com/toobar.aspx.
Tebbel, John, and Sarah Miles Watts (1985), The Press and the Presidency: From George Washington to Ronald Reagan, (New York:
Oxford University Press).
VandeHei, Jim (2002), “GOP Nominees Make Iraq a Political Weapon,” Washington Post, September 18, p. A01.
Will, Garry (1988), Reagan’s America, (New York: Penguin).
Willner, Ann Ruth (1984), The Spellbinders: Charismatic Political Leadership, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).
Note: The New Republic’s ongoing challenge to George W. Bush to disclose an instance during the 2000 campaign where he stated
that he would consider running a deficit or dip into the Social Security trust fund can be found in the ‘Notebook’ section of
numerous editions of the magazine, including the following:
“Fuzzy English,” September 10, 2001A, Issue 4, 521, p. 12.
“ Hearing Voices,“ April 29, 2002B, Issue 4, 554, p. 8.
“Guy Talk,” June 3, 2002C, Issue 4, 559, p. 10.
“The Mystery of the Missing Caveats, Cont’d, ”June 24, 2002D, Issue 4, 562, p. 8,
“And Now the Cover-Up,” July 8 & 15, 2002E, Issues 4, 564 & 4, 565, p. 10.
“Don’t Tell, Don’t Ask,” July 29, 2002F, Issue 4, 567, p. 8.
[1]
For example, spin emanates from public relations, but is a particular manifestation of rhetorical behavior that occupies a gray zone
between public relations and propaganda.
[2] Hence, Shakespeare’s line in Henry VI, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Part II, 88.
[3] Israeli politics is a particularly good example, where the two major parties frequently find themselves forced to choose between a
Likud-Labor alliance, or patch together an unstable coalition from the multitudinous minor parties that dot the Israeli political landscape.
[4] The 2002 midterm campaign stands as an exception that likely proves this rule. The ability of an incumbent president to use the
threat of war to appeal to the patriotism of voters.
[5] A decisive governing coalition may be defined as instances where one political party controls the presidency and both houses of
Congress.
[6] A case can be made that the First Amendment was intended simply as an injunction on censorship, and not designed to impose a
radical separation between the media and government separation. See Cook for a good illustration of this perspective.
[7] Howard Kurtz discusses Charles Keating’s litigiousness as one reason the media failed to break the savings and loan scandal
sooner. See Kurtz, Media Circus.
[8] Journalists have created a word for such performance – to ‘bloviate’ – to capture the performances of television
commentator/’journalists.’ See Fallows
[9] Hedrick Smith describes similarly speaks of ‘porcupine power,’ quoting Chris Matthews, who noted that “I think a bad temper is a very
powerful political tool because most people don’t like confrontation” (p. 61). See Smith, pp. 58-69.
[10] Readers will recall that the dominant stories for summer 2002 were several well-publicized incidences of shark attacks at Atlantic
coast beaches.
Card’s widely reported comment that “from a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August” appeared
particularly damaging. See Milbank, “Democrats Question Iraq Timing,” op. cited.
[12] For example, Milbank’s article quotes Marshall Wittmann of the Hudson Institute, who contended that the Democratic strategy was
short-sighted and constituted a “massive blunder” that turned the midterm elections into a debate on foreign policy, which presidents
typically dominate.
[13] The possibility remains that Bush’s aggressive campaigning will permanently sour his future relationship with congressional
Democrats.
[14] For example, in Oklahoma Jim Inhofe ran advertisements whose opening statement was ‘I’m not going to cut Social Security.’ These
ads ran throughout the state before his opponent could even afford to run attack ads.
[15] Scholars have long questioned the assumption that the media is a nonpolitical entity. See, for example, Douglass Cater (1959), The
Fourth Branch of Government, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin). Boorstin’s work also raises questions concerning the role of the media.
[16] See Bennet’s case study, “The New and the Old Coziness: Cooperation Between Reporters and Officials in the Age of Gotcha
Journalism,” in News: The Politics of Illusion, pp. 157-160.
[11]