Where D.C. Pundits Get Their Placebo Politics

By Eric Boehlert, Washington Monthly. Posted July 24, 2006.

In the spring of 2005, a story came along that was so important, so history-altering that it threatened to revive a killer press instinct that had been dormant for the previous four years. Of course, it helped that it was a Clinton-flavored scandal: That May, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's former campaign finance director, David Rosen, went on trial for his handling of a 2000 fundraiser staged in Hollywood to benefit Clinton's campaign for the U.S. Senate. Rosen was accused of hiding, or underreporting, $800,000 worth of costs. At the time, CNN political editor John Mercurio suggested that Rosen's funny money trial "reminds people of Whitewater" and the "sleazy side of the Clinton administration that [Hillary] and the president are both trying to forget."

Taking the lead in trumpeting the importance of the Rosen trial was ABC's The Note. An inside-baseball daily tip sheet for a readership it has dubbed the "Gang of 500" (politicians, lobbyists, consultants, and journalists who help shape the Beltway's public agenda), The Note is posted online every weekday morning and is widely viewed as the agenda-setter for the political class. On 14 different days between May 2 and 27, The Note posted cumulatively nearly forty links to Rosen-related articles, calling them "must-read." A typical Note entry came on May 10, highlighting "The opening and closing paragraphs in Dick Morris' New York Post column -- perfectly explaining why the David Rosen story is going to be with us for a while."

On the day before the Rosen verdict, The Note listed "Waiting for the Rosen verdict" as the number-one priority among the Gang of 500. The next day, a federal jury acquitted Rosen of any wrongdoing. How did The Note handle this news about the trial it had hyped? By ignoring it. The next edition of The Note included a long round-up of must-reads from the Memorial Day weekend. Rosen's not-guilty verdict was not among them. The abrupt disappearance of the story shouldn't have surprised close readers of The Note, which ABC's website has posted publicly since January 2002. In theory, what drives The Note is anything that's generating Beltway buzz. "We try to channel what the chattering class is chattering about, and to capture the sensibility, ethos, and rituals of the Gang of 500," Mark Halperin, ABC's political director and founder of The Note, once explained. Too often, though, The Note's definition of buzz has been whatever Beltway Republicans are chattering about. The Note has been nourished on an era of total Republican rule. It shows.

Too cool for school

The first thing you notice about The Note is that it sounds like it's written by high school students. Smart high school students -- really smart students, even -- but nevertheless teenagers who crack themselves up with their wit, rely on hard-to-decipher references to up their hip insider quotient, and have a penchant for words like "ginormous" and multiple exclamation points. Cutesy, creepy, and relentlessly effusive towards the media elite, The Note confirms the old adage that life really is like high school, with The Note filling the role of cheerleader-meets-yearbook editor, keeping tabs on where the cool kids are eating lunch, what they're wearing, and who's having the big party this weekend. In The Note's eyes, Beltway reporters are wonderfully talented, and everyone deserves a raise (e.g., "Will New York Times management recognize how great [reporter] Anne Kornblut is and act accordingly?")

No doubt this incestuous and over-the-top backslapping is meant to be taken somewhat tongue-in-cheek. (The Note does boast a sense of humor.) But after a while, the compliments -- the egregious stroking of the press -- become so pervasive that readers suspect The Note actually believes the press valentines, that New York Times columnist John Tierney is "successful and dashing," that his colleague Adam Nagourney is a "poet/historian," that former U.S. News & World Report's Roger Simon flashes "brilliance, élan, and grace," that the work of Time's Mike Allen is "indescribably delicious," that Newsday's Glenn Thrush is "super savvy and smart," and that "Time's [former managing editor] Jim Kelly is more powerful than all but 23 United States Senators." (If you were truly in the know, The Note implies, you'd know exactly which 23 they mean.)

Interestingly, although the tone of The Note is often too-cool-for-school, it never crosses over into actually being edgy. In fact, The Note doesn't mock conventional wisdom so much as idolize it. It's been dismissive of Democrats, reluctant to dwell on Bush's second-term collapse, eager to dwell on Terri Schiavo (at first), scornful of the Downing Street memo, uninterested in Iraq, nostalgic for Clinton-era scandals, fearful of Republican attacks, and generally awestruck by the Bush White House and its galaxy of all-stars. (According to The Note, Mike Gerson may just be the "greatest presidential speechwriter of all time.") "To read ABC News's 'The Note,'" wrote The Nation's Eric Alterman, "is to enter a world in which the President and his advisers are treated in a manner not unlike the way US Weekly treats 'Brad and Jen.' "

Eric Boehlert, a contributing editor to Rolling Stone, is author of the book Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush (Free Press, 2006), from which this article is adapted.

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