Public Forgiveness Despite Media Condemnation: Identification and Empathy

Who among the current crop of candidates gearing up for the 2008 presidential election will make a single remark or action that will spell certain doom for his or her campaign? Reports of Edmund Muskie’s crying in 1972 led many to dismiss him as overly emotional and therefore weak; Gerald Ford’s “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe” remark in 1976 confirmed beliefs that he was an ill-informed bumbler; Michael Dukakis’s tepid response to the hypothetical scenario of his wife’s rape during the 1988 presidential debates cemented his image as passionless and overly cerebral, and Howard Dean’s whooping and spinning after finishing third in the Iowa caucuses during the 2004 presidential campaign led many to dismiss him as not just exuberant but disturbingly out of control. All four gaffes were endlessly rebroadcast and lampooned, becoming so engraved in the national consciousness that there was little chance of the candidate’s campaigns, or careers, ever recovering.

One “sin of the father” continues to reverberate today. In 1967 Republican hopeful George Romney explained that his earlier support for the war in Vietnam, which he had come to oppose, was the result of “the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get” at the hands of some of the generals and members of the diplomatic corps with whom he had met during his visit to Vietnam in 1965. The Associated Press picked up the brainwashing quote and rival campaigns hyped it endlessly: “How could we trust this guy to sit across the table from the Russians if he couldn’t resist pressure from a few American generals and diplomats?” Romney refused the chance to backtrack, apologize, or otherwise immediately attempt damage control. His candidacy could not recover from his reputation as “the brainwashed guy,” and the story dogged him even in death: the headline of a national Associated Press obituary in 1995 read “George Romney, Who Said Military Brainwashed Him on Vietnam, Dead at 88.” (Neil Swidey, “The Lessons of the Father.” Boston Globe, August 13, 2006, http://boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2006/08/13/the lesson of the father/)

(George Romney’s son Mitt, candidate in the 2008 presidential race, has been frequently criticized for being so traumatized by the fallout from his father’s gaffe that, in his efforts to ensure that he will never be rendered politically obsolete by a spontaneous comment, he is too tightly controlled, cautious, and overly scripted. For example, Newsweek’s October 1, 2007 cover story on Mitt Romney focused almost as much on the carefully scripted nature of the candidate’s political rhetoric and responses as it did on his Mormon faith.)

Gaffes like the five mentioned above prove lethal when they are viewed by the public not as an aberration, a simple false step, but rather as a rare moment in which the candidate’s guard is momentarily down and the real truth—the candidate’s fatal flaw as a leader—is revealed. Even psychological identification based on “likeability” is not enough to resuscitate a candidate who has revealed himself to be weak (witness George Romney). The public does not easily identify with candidates it perceives as weak, ignorant, overly cerebral to the point of passionlessness, or conversely, lacking in emotional control. Nonetheless, an embarrassing public performance, even one that brings a campaign to a grinding halt, does not necessarily signal the death of a political career. While Americans may bridle or snicker at an inappropriate remark or even a speech, as long as it remains a singular occurrence rather than part of a larger pattern, the candidate’s reputation can be resuscitated.

For the public to be able to identify with, and therefore forgive a candidate’s gaffe, several other conditions must be met. We’ve all said something off the cuff that we can’t believe came out of our mouths and consequently are willing to recognize and forgive this in others. Therefore, the offending event must appear spontaneous rather than planned, and uncharacteristic rather than a window into the offender’s true but usually disguised self. Most of us have also been mortified when that chance, off-hand remark we’ve made (in private, we thought) somehow seems to take on a life of its own. The chance for a candidate’s political resurrection is thus proportionate to the sense that the ensuing scandal was the result of media amplification more than the actual offending event itself. Recovery is also more likely if there is a widespread sense that the event was not

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intended for broad public consumption, but originally directed at a much smaller audience.

There are many examples of candidates ultimately recovering after potentially lethal gaffes. Following his California gubernatorial defeat in 1962, an embittered Richard Nixon gave his self-declared “last press conference,” in which he announced to the press, “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.” The pronouncement seemed so final that five nights later, ABC aired “The Political Obituary of Richard Nixon.” Yet many people have suffered a great disappointment or have been undeservedly rejected and so can relate to the desire to lash out at one’s oppressor. The American public forgave Nixon for not holding to his word, not because they found him particularly likeable, but because his understandably bitter remarks were obviously spontaneous rather than a carefully considered and binding pronouncement. They were also a rare departure from his tightly controlled image of sincerity and humility and therefore deemed uncharacteristic. In addition, Nixon’s barb was clearly directed not at the American people, but at the cadre of reporters he, and many others, viewed as biased against him.

Jesse Jackson’s “hymietown” slur in 1984 damaged his candidacy and left a scar on his political career, but did not permanently hinder his ability to provide significant leadership and influence. When the anti-Semitic remark was widely reported, the outrage was nearly palpable. Several factors prevented Jackson from being shunned into oblivion. Even many Americans who claim to be racially colorblind have, at some point in their lives, made their own racial slur or at least laughed at or even repeated a racist joke or for some other reason know that their own record is not completely spotless, yet persist in their belief that they are not racist. Such people were therefore receptive to the emotional apology Jackson ultimately offered. Moreover, the single remark was at odds with decades of the highly publicized words and actions of a minister dedicated to securing civil rights for all Americans, and therefore not perceived as a window into the soul of a secret racist. Finally, it was also well known that Jackson had assumed he was making an off-the-record comment to an African American reporter, so its wide coverage was judged by many to be more of a media frenzy that a compelling assessment of Jackson’s beliefs.

Not recognizing that his microphone was on during a radio sound check in 1984, President Ronald Reagan announced that he had outlawed Russia and that its bombing would begin in five minutes. The seemingly endless repetition of the recording ensured that charges ranging from insensitivity to warmongering ensued. Early assertions that the president had caused serious damage to either international relations or his own reputation, however, did not gain traction. All but his harshest critics acknowledged that the gaffe was essentially an ill-advised attempt at humor (the kind of bad joke many of us have made and regret) by an enormously likeable president celebrated for his congeniality. The fact that Reagan’s remarks were clearly unrehearsed, and intended to be heard only by those in the studio, reinforced the perception that they were relatively benign. The staggering number of the clip’s repetitions contributed to the outrage being ultimately dismissed as overblown and three months later Reagan was re-elected by a landslide.

In 1911, the presidential campaign of Wisconsin senator Robert M. La Follette shared many qualities with Howard Dean’s ill-fated 2004 quest. La Follette, like Dean, was seeking to unseat an incumbent and enjoyed the support of a cadre of followers nearly as dedicated as the “Deaniacs” of 2004. Like Dean, he was a presidential long shot, but enjoyed some surprisingly strong early support. Like Dean, La Follette saw some of his early momentum begin to stall.

As the hopes for his candidacy dimmed, a frustrated and exhausted La Follette made his way to Philadelphia to speak at the banquet of the Periodical Publishers Association. Suffering from indigestion, he consumed only a cup of hot chocolate and a shot of whiskey before taking the podium. More than five hundred guests, many of them newspaper reporters, were witness to La Follette’s speech. He verbally attacked his audience as corrupt, launching into a tirade against the press that lasted for more than two hours. In the words of Congressman Henry Cooper, an eyewitness, “La Follette killed himself politically…. It was a shocking scene. He lost his temper repeatedly—shook his fist—at listeners who had started to walk out, too tired to linger,-was abusive, ugly in manner.” More than one pundit termed his performance “political suicide.”

For a man pronounced politically dead, La Follette enjoyed a remarkable subsequent career. His

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Progressive vision. They forgave his lashing out at members of a press that had long been biased against him and had exaggerated an emotional, unrepresentative performance made by an understandably disappointed man. In their eyes, his hard-earned qualities of fortitude and patience placed the embarrassing speech of 1911 in proper perspective. La Follette remained a Progressive powerhouse in the Senate until his death in 1925. His 1924 independent bid for the presidency garnered almost seventeen percent of the total cast. In 2000, a Senate resolution recognized Robert La Follette as one the seven greatest senators in American history. (See Nancy C. Unger, Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer, 2000, pp. 200-220.)

The American public is frequently accused of being too easily manipulated by the media. That public does not, however automatically succumb to every media frenzy seemingly bent on signaling the end to a politician’s career. It does not unquestionably accept the verdict of the media that a candidate has committed a lethal gaffe, even in the face of seemingly endless repetition by the media (or opposing candidates) of the unfortunate remark or action. The public cannot identify with and will not forgive an error that it believes reveals a serious character flaw that will impede a candidate’s ability to lead effectively. Members of the public have proven, however, to be discerning, demonstrating a long history of instances of forgiveness concerning the kinds of uncharacteristic gaffes that they themselves have made. Identification, empathy, and forgiveness come into play when the public judges a candidate’s mistakes to be ultimately overblown by the media and unrepresentative of the politician’s true self.

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