JOHN ELLIS

Already, A Search For Scandal In Campaign 2000

By John Ellis, Globe Staff, May 15, 1999

Over the last three months I have spent a considerable amount of time researching what will eventually become two columns about the year 2000 presidential campaign. This is what I've learned so far from talking to people in Washington:

Texas Governor George W. Bush was a cocaine addict. His wife was or is an alcoholic. Senator John McCain of Arizona has a dark and crooked past. Steve Forbes is crazy. Al Gore is a womanizer and a criminal coconspirator in the 1996 fund-raising scandals. Tipper Gore is or was a pill-popper. And Bill Bradley's wife is as nutty as a fruitcake.

I am related to Governor Bush (he is my first cousin) so I happen to know that he was not, in fact, a cocaine addict, and I also know that his wife is not an alcoholic. But what I know to be true about two people whom I have been close to for a very long time is irrelevant. What's relevant is what sells and what sells is gossip.

The news media demand for juicy and juicier gossip has become insatiable. Since May of last year, I have been contacted by more than 30 news organizations regarding Governor Bush's presidential campaign. Roughly a third of these inquiries have been serious and substantial. The other two-thirds have focused, obsessively, on allegations of drug use, extramarital sex, and assorted other character issues, as they are pretentiously called.

And Bush hasn't even announced his candidacy yet. Yesterday The Wall Street Journal ran a long, front-page story about reporter Ellen Pollock's quest to nail down the Bush cocaine rumors. She interviewed scores of people who know Governor Bush, who worked with him in business and politics, who were with him at the time he supposedly used cocaine, and she could not find one person who would or could substantiate any incidence of cocaine use.

One assumes that if Pollock were likewise assigned to dig into the allegations about the other presidential candidates, she would emerge similarly empty-handed. The truth is that John McCain, Steve Forbes, Bill Bradley, and Al Gore, regardless of what one thinks of their politics, are all honorable, hard-working, conscientious people. The same can be said of their spouses.

The problem with this is that it doesn't sell. CNBC and MSNBC and the Fox News Channel and CNN aren't going to spike their ratings interviewing talking heads who assert that Bill Bradley worked hard to master the details of the financial infrastructure of the global economy. No one wants to watch a television program devoted to the evolution of Steve Forbes's thinking about the tax structure or Pat Buchanan's views on trade issues.

Scandal sells. The proof is in the Nielsen numbers. The O.J. Simpson trial enabled Steven Brill to sell his stake in Court TV for $30 million. The same trial converted CNBC from a money-losing cable news operation into a money machine. The Monica Lewinsky scandal put MSNBC on the map and enabled the Fox News Channel to beat its earnings estimates and dramatically increase its distribution.

Success breeds imitation. The success of scandal-mongering has created a glut of scandalous gossip. We are rapidly approaching the point when it will no longer matter whether the gossip is true. As The Wall Street Journal story shows, reporting on the anatomy of a rumor is now worthy of front-page treatment. And now we can look forward to a week's worth of talking heads explaining what it all means.

Another thing we can be certain of is that scandal-and gossip-mongering will get much worse as the campaign heats up. The net effect of that will be to turn more and more people away from the political process and make it increasingly less attractive to those who might have otherwise considered public service.

This is a result the nation can ill afford. The media elite's conceit that politics doesn't matter anymore is exactly wrong. It has never been so important. We are at war in the Balkans. Russia is teetering on the edge of chaos. China has stolen our most precious nuclear secrets and is using them to extend its influence over Asia. The genomics revolution and the technology revolution are transforming the global economy and in the process are erasing the social, political, and ethical boundaries within which we have lived for a half century.

There are more political issues to talk about now than at any time since the creation of the atomic bomb. Having Geraldo Rivera and Larry King lead the conversation away toward Tipper Gore's bout with depression is insane. But that's what we're doing, that's where we're going, and that's why so many people wish the 2000 campaign was already over.