Media Watch: September 1995
Table of Contents:
"Moderates" vs. "Flamethrowers"
Reporters greeted the retirement of Democratic Senator Bill Bradley with a round of hosannas. That included media nods that Bradley would be a good independent candidate for President since he's a "moderate." CNN political analyst Bill Schneider announced on the August 19 Inside Politics that "Bradley is one of an endangered species in American politics, a true moderate. In 1981, he voted for the Reagan budget, but against the big tax cuts. In 1986, he led the fight for tax reform, arguing that the tax system should not be used either to punish the rich or to reward the special interests."
Time reporter Laurence Barrett suggested on CNBC's Cal Thomas show August 23 that Bradley's "got the right profile -- he's sort of in the middle and he's got integrity." On September 2, Washington Post reporter Dale Russakoff wrote that "moderates in both parties -- including Bradley" shared former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean's distaste for partisan politics as usual.
But a look at Bradley's record tells a different story. As Michael Barone and Grant Ujifusa noted in their 1994 Almanac of American Politics, other than his individual approach to taxes in the 1980s, "Bradley's record tends to be fairly liberal and partisan Democratic."
Indeed, Bradley's liberal Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) rating was 85 in 1994, 90 percent in 1993. The American Conservative Union (ACU) rated him at 4 percent in 1994, 13 percent in 1993.
By this math, Republican Senators Bill Roth (1994 ACU: 68), Richard Shelby (55), Rick Santorum (81), and Kit Bond (83) should also be tagged "true moderates." In March the Post called Santorum (1994 ADA of 15) "a hard charging conservative flamethrower."
In the August 14 Time, Jeffrey Birnbaum analyzed the latest Ross Perot hoedown: "The Democrats can offer only a cacophony of views, ranging from the leftist tract of [Jesse] Jackson to the more centrist perspectives of House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle."
Birnbaum did not note that in 1994 Gephardt's ADA score was 80 percent, while he only scored a five on the ACU conservative scale. Daschle voted correctly 80 percent of the time in 1994 according to the ADA, but earned only a 4 percent rating from the ACU.
Labeling Jackson a "leftist" is very rare for Time. Laurence Barrett asserted on C-SPAN in July that "We use it ["left wing"] quite frequently to describe, say, Jesse Jackson and other members of the most liberal side of the Democratic party." The Nexis data retrieval system found 498 Jackson mentions in Time since January 1, 1984, but only nine with the term "left wing" associated with Jackson.
