Ever since Theodore White`s incomparable “The Making of the President 1960,” the quadren-nial national electiith equally over-equipped roommates. Their parents, too, will bring substantial excess baggage to the scene. College is, after all, the place where their accumulated aspirations, sacrifices and deferred promises are supposed to be rewarded. And, at an average cost of $20,000 a year for private colleges and nearly $10,000 a year for undergraduate education at public universities, parents and students have every reason to wonder whether it’s worth it.
Anne Matthews’ “Bright College Years” examines the cul process and fewer still had an opportunity to view it behind closed doors.
By 1996 there was nothing hidden or suspenseful about how America chooses its presidents. And nothing is behind closed doors except for fund-raising. Everything is on camera, or at least in front of a microphone.
William O`Rourke tried to watch or listen to all of it. O`Rourke, a reporter, novelist and essayist who teaches English at the University of Notre Dame, became the ultimate consumer of the 1996 election campaign.
“Campaign America `96: The View From the Couch” is about absorbing and processing the media reports of the election year. O`Rourke watched or listened to ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN, C-SPAN, CNBC, CBN, TNN, MTV, the Comedy Channel, PBS, Rush Limbaugh, Larry King, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Geraldo Rivera, Charles Grodin, “The Capital Gang,” “The McLaughin Group,” “Frontline,” “48 Hours,” “60 Minutes,” Diane Rehm, Peggy Noonan, Dee Dee Myers and Mary Matalin. He read the South Bend Tribune, Indianapolis Star, New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report and scores of other periodicals.
At one point when O`Rourke writes, “These past eight months have taken their toll on me. All this TV has done its insidious work,” a reader wonders if the couch named in the subtitle is in a psychiatrist`s office.
Presidential elections changed dramatically-and disastrously-in 1972 with the primary system of choosing nominees. Not only did it create campaigns of more than a year in duration, it eliminated the fascination of inside politics and convention drama. Political reporters whose value diminished in the wake of these changes began to use election years as a backdrop to report on the state of America to Americans. This worked until the cable-satellite-Internet explosion of the 1990s.
Americans no longer need anyone else to report to them. They report on themselves and do it around the clock on talk radio and talk TV. No experienced courtroom journalist could have seen more of the O.J. Simpson trial than any American who chose to watch it from start to finish on TV, and O`Rourke proves that no political reporter on the bus or plane could have covered the 1996 campaign, or the state of America, as well as he did from his couch.
O`Rourke begins his diary on Jan. 1, 1996, and concludes on the day after the election. But his constant updates on Limbaugh`s mood (more morose as Clinton`s victory appears certain) and wise observations about the celebrity journalists either stating the obvious or contradicting themselves are merely reminders of how dismally predictable campaigns and their coverage have become.
It is O`Rourke the essayist and reporter whom the reader begins to appreciate. He states that his purpose was to put America into context, and he does it seamlessly by interspersing major and minor events with the babbling voices and images of and about the campaign. He notes Minnie Pearl`s death and he sees instantly the political ramifications of the 16 children shot to death in a Scotland school: democrats ranting about gun control and, he surmises, another NRA campaign contribution for Bob Dole.
He seems to dwell too often on his generational concerns: Vietnam, Baby Boomers, O.J. despecially O.J. -and the media. But that is, in fact, what Americans talk about when they call Limbaugh and the thousands of local broadcast talk opportunities. And it must be what Americans who don`t call talk about as well. O`Rourke blends these themes well, and often perceptively: “One result of the O.J. trial is that we now can see a lot of black lawyers on TV.”
O`Rourke watches both parties` national conventions faithfully. Of Jesse Jackson and Mario Cuomo at the democratic convention he notes, “Mario and Jesse could go around doing their own version of the Three Tenors, though they`- be just two.”
There are updates on tragedies-the TWA Flight 800 crash and the death of Ron Brown-which remind O`Rourke of the Oklahoma City bombing and “how that national mourning helped purify Clinton. The death president. … Mourning Becomes Him.”
Just as the long campaign ebbs into periods of tedium, “Campaign America `96” tends to be less compelling once dole has vanquished his Republican opponents and only Ross Perot`s fits and starts keep O`Rourke amused, until the pace quickens with the conventions, debates and the final days leading to the election.
O`Rourke contends that the media more than adequately covered the election but that an individual has to look in the right places to find all the information. He worries that the information will become part of a class struggle, with the rich becoming informationdrich and the poor becoming informationddeprived. Given the current lack of ideological differences and the stagnation of the two political parties, it could be argued the poor weren`t deprived of much if they didn`t avail themselves of all the information that was available to O`Rourke. Rich or poor, few people put it to better use.
