MediaWatch: November 1992
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: November 1992
- Selective Post-Debate Truth Squads
- NewsBites: Mandate for What?
- Revolving Door: Clinton's Network Help
- Networks Say "Extreme" GOP Convention at Fault
- Bush Loss is Reagan's Fault
- NBC's Ross Dogs Dems
- Simon's Sermons
- Janet Cooke Award: CBS Reporter Eric Engberg, Running on Empty
Bush Loss is Reagan's Fault
BLAME GAME
As November 3 drew closer, some in the media tried to determine the cause of George Bush's impending loss. The culprit? Ronald Reagan.
Despite Bush's abandonment of Reaganomics, responsibility for his electoral woes was laid on the shoulders of the man who moved out of the White House four years ago. In the October 19 Time, special correspondent Michael Kramer wrote: "For a dozen years the nation's life has been dominated by a philosophy that proposes to limit government, encourage the creation of private wealth and confront enemies with a huge arsenal and a hair- trigger willingness to fight....The Reagan-Bush policies hastened the collapse of communism and the end of the cold war. But at home only the rich have truly prospered. The middle class is hurting, the poor are poorer, inequality has grown and the country's ability to compete has been hindered by an undistinguished education system and widespread inattention to the problems of those caught in the backwash of the West's victory over the 'evil empire.'" He concluded: "The Republicans, it is clear, see nothing wrong with extending the Me Decade indefinitely. No matter that Ronald Reagan's trickle-down nostrums, which were supposed to lift all boats, lifted only yachts."
On the October 17 NBC Nightly News, Garrick Utley chastised Bush for being too loyal to Reagan: "For eight years, [Bush] supported policies which, it is now widely acknowledged, contributed mightily to our excesses then and our economic problems now; above all, America being held hostage to debt. George Bush went along to get ahead, and it worked. He became President. Now, the painful irony. Now, Ronald Reagan is in happy retirement in California, and President Bush is left to pay the price. The price for supporting something he did not believe in to begin with. He knows it -- knows it is now too late to do anything about that fateful bargain he entered into twelve years ago. Going along to get ahead made George Bush President. Now it may unmake him. The ancient Greeks wrote about this sort of thing. They called it tragedy."
