Volume 54, Number 12 · July 19, 2007
Can We Know Her?
By Michael Tomasky
A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton
by Carl Bernstein
Knopf, 628 pp., $27.95
Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton
by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr.
Little, Brown, 438 pp., $29.99
The 1988 presidential campaign is generally thought of as a low point in political journalism, if not national politics itself, during which coverage of politics was gravitating more and more toward polls, cheap symbolism—a ride in a tank, a visit to a flag factory, and Willie Horton—and even tawdrier matters. It was in the 1988 campaign that a candidate, Gary Hart, was first asked directly by a reporter, Paul Taylor of The Washington Post, if he had cheated on his wife. Because of what was widely seen as increasing superficiality and partisanship in the press, we were introduced around this time to a figure known as the media ethicist, who would be called upon to keep watch on this degeneration of coverage, as then Los Angeles Times press critic Tom Rosenstiel did in September 1992. When the 1992 campaign began, he wrote,
Review, 4275 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |