ary Bauer's accidental tumble off the back of a stage during a pancake-flipping contest did not bring about his New Hampshire primary defeat nor his subsequent withdrawal from the GOP presidential race. But the vivid image of a flailing Bauer trying to catch a wayward flapjack may be how many voters best remember the Republican underdog. Both photographers and TV cameras were there to capture every embarrassing moment. Voters in New Hampshire - and the rest of the free world - could watch Bauer's stumble and his scramble back on stage again and again, in living color, as 24-hour news channels replayed it.
Bauer was not the first, or the last, candidate to get caught off balance, on camera. In 1996, GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole took a tumble at a campaign rally, and suddenly his age became more of an issue.
''The implication here is that Dole is too feeble to stand on his feet and too foggy to know what decade he's in,'' a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote.
''It is a metaphor,'' Fred Barnes insisted on CNN. ''Remember when Jimmy Carter got all exhausted and had to drop out of that marathon and those pictures? George Bush throwing up on the Japanese prime minister? Now Bob Dole takes a fall. It's suggestive.''
Contrast this minute-by-minute reporting of every campaign misstep with the forgiving coverage of earlier campaigns and presidents.
Throughout Franklin D. Roosevelt's campaigns and presidency, the rule of thumb for press coverage remained simple: Private behavior of public figures remained private unless it had a direct bearing on their public responsibilities. That unwritten rule explains why there are almost no photographs of the president showing his braces or his wheelchair, no editorials debating his physical fitness to serve.
The most dramatic test of this press restraint came at the 1936 Democratic National Convention. On his way to the podium, Roosevelt was moving down the aisle on the arms of two strong men and reached out to shake a supporter's hands. He lost his balance. His braces snapped. He fell to the ground, the pages of his speech scattered on the floor. ''Clean me up,'' he said to the people surrounding him as he brushed off the dirt, relocked his braces, and was helped to his feet. Minutes later, he was behind the podium delivering his masterful ''rendezvous with destiny'' speech. No photograph of his fall was published, nor did newspaper accounts focus on the mishap.
This ''look-the-other-way'' coverage can be attributed in part to Roosevelt's masterful co-opting of the media. In 1932 he shamelessly wooed reporters on his campaign train, ''the Roosevelt Special.''
Late at night, Roosevelt regularly joined newspapermen in their car, calling them by first names, teasing them about hangovers, and taking their questions directly without written submissions. Once, a correspondent missed Roosevelt's train, and the president covered for him by writing his copy until he could catch up.
The ''hands-off'' behavior of the press may strike us today as preferable to the current attack mode. But the press grew so docile that in 1945 its tacit agreement not to pursue the issue of Roosevelt's health led to the election of a president sickened by congestive heart failure. Less than six months later, the nation was shocked by - and ill prepared for - his death.
The struggle between the candidates and the news media continues. As the style of campaigning has changed over the decades, so has the form of coverage. On the downside, coverage has become more titillating, more frenzied, and less restrained, while campaigns have become more negative, more manipulative, and less substantive.
On the upside, the coverage of campaigns has become less partisan, more sophisticated, more analytical, more willing to look below the surface, more capable of holding candidates accountable. There is greater diversity among both the candidates and members of the press.
The challenge for both candidates and the news media in the century to come is to find ways - while still fussing at each other, as they always will - to stimulate more interest and deeper involvement in more people. For in the end, both the candidates and the reporters need each other.
''Presidents and press, who uses whom?'' Max Frankel asks. ''The truth is, we use each other at every important turn.''
And this is how it should be in a democracy. ''No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise,'' Winston Churchill observed. ''Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.''
Doris Kearns Goodwin is a presidential historian and author.
