If Paul Taylor ultimately helps improve American democracy, the republic should be grateful that a politician’s marital infidelity dampened a journalist’s professional ardor.
The television networks are being shamed into coughing up free time to the presidential candidates this fall. The latest to belatedly, and unwillingly, hop on the bandwagon was ABC, which last week announced it will offer a one-hour live debate without questioners.
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ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN acted after pressure from peers and outsiders who believe money and the media have so polluted the system that giving candidates an unfiltered access to millions of citizens would be an improvement.
Rupert Murdoch, the king of Fox who sensed a change afoot, beat all to the punch by offering 10 one-minute segments in prime time, as well as one hour right before the election for a final presentation without questions.
At the same time, a new do-gooder group called the Free TV for Straight Talk Coalition, headed by Taylor and including the likes of anchor emeritus Walter Cronkite, effectively lobbied the others to follow suit.
The fact that Taylor, who only months ago was a highly respected Washington Post reporter, is working a different side of the street highlights a sharp, if logical, turn in a personal journey.
Taylor, 47, was the reporter who popped The Question to presidential candidate Gary Hart in 1987 after reports surfaced in the Miami Herald of his extramarital fling with model Donna Rice.
At a Hanover, N.H., press conference, Taylor pressed the subject. What were Hart’s standards of immorality? And, finally, “Have you ever committed adultery?”
“I do not have to answer that question because you get into some fairly fine definitions,” Hart responded.
Thinking back to the episode last week, Taylor asserted that “Hart said he didn’t have to answer, which I think was the right answer.
“But, I also think I asked the right question.”
Yet, Taylor concedes to a certain “queasiness” about the questions and that campaign. After the Hart hoopla, some Post colleagues sensed a certain guilt in Taylor.
He continued as a Post reporter, a key member of the political team at a place where politics is the grand obsession. He was a good digger and strong writer with a more encompassing view of the political system than most.
His father was briefly in the State Department and then was a trade association official. Taylor was born in Brooklyn, raised mostly in Washington and graduated from Yale. He worked on papers in North Carolina and Philadelphia before joining the Post. He struck some colleagues as being a tad remote and preoccupied but also as an optimist who wasn’t arrogant.
As the 1988 campaign unfolded, Taylor felt “a growing disillusionment. The system wasn’t putting its best foot forward. Voters, politicians and reporters were smarter than they behaved.”
“My problem as one member of this triad was that I couldn’t figure out how to write my way out of that box. I didn’t think when I was originally attracted to journalism that it would take me to peeping through keyholes and wondering what candidates were doing in their bedrooms.”
The 1988 campaign was unsettling. Big things were happening in the world, like the imminent fall of the Soviet empire. “Though we had a lot to talk about (on the campaign), we talked about flags and furloughs (Willie Horton) and nothing particularly important.”
A momentous turn in his odyssey came in Africa, in particular South Africa. Sent by the Post, he covered “the story of a lifetime, watching the birth of a democracy and how the best of human nature could come to the fore in the most bleak and tortured of places.”
His three years in Africa included being shot in the chest, beaten up by pro-apartheid thugs, held captive in Angola and catching hepatitis in Rwanda. On the campaign trail back home, the big stresses tend to involve the quality of room service and efficiency of one’s cellular phone.
Returning from any eventful foreign assignment can be a difficult and deflating transition. It was especially so for Taylor. Time away sharpened doubts about the sloppy way the American democracy goes about electing its leaders.
While also teaching a course in politics and the press at Princeton University, he sensed he was primed for a leap, although the idea of splitting without something firm to go to was scary–“I am a guy with three kids, two in college, one on the way, a wife who doesn’t work and not a lot of money to pay the next mortgage bill.”
He asked his Post bosses for a leave of absence to see if he could rally support for improving the presidential election system, notably through getting free time for candidates.
In his heart, he knew that merely asking for the leave was a watershed. He was making a break, regardless of what his editors said. They told him they could not give him a leave, feeling he could not maintain a relationship with the paper while pursuing a cause.
With no recriminations (“they were right”), he quit without anything to go to. Luckily, he made contact with the Pew Charitable Trusts, a big foundation looking to get into media-related matters. They signed him for a six-month trial.
Taylor quickly drummed up support and publicity for the cause. He met with lots of broadcast executives, who generally have been paragons of hypocrisy and greed.
They profit from free broadcast licenses extended by the federal government. In return, they do little except cash in. They often hide behind the 1st Amendment as they argue against giving up precious prime time advertising slots for public purposes.
Now they’ve taken small steps, and Taylor should be proud. It’s far from what he really wants, namely a unified package in which the networks would merge efforts, not the current hodgepodge. CNN gives up time on an afternoon political show, NBC on evening newsmagazine shows and CBS on regular newscasts.
Further, the real problem is on the state and local level, where a potent mix of incumbency and money makes it nearly impossible for a challenger to get attention.
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Taylor is not naive. What has happened partly because of his labors “is good and represents an improvement but not necessarily the potential for a transforming change in the system.”
Cokie Watch (bona fide)
“Any Washington insider will tell you that Cokie and Steven Roberts are this country’s premier journalistic couple,” says the invitation.
As an insider, I can vouch for this. I swear.
Alas, a conflict will prevent me from returning to Chicago May 20 for the Real Estate, Building Trades and Home & Contract Furnishings Divisions’ annual dinner on behalf of the Jewish United Fund-Israel Emergency Fund.
The group says it has a policy of not discussing compensation for speakers. The Roberts do likewise with their moonlighting, though Mrs. Roberts often takes in around $30,000 for appearances.
As for the topic of their address, given the group and the division sponsor, I’d bet on something like, “U.S.-Israeli Relations at a Time of Tumultuous Change in Home Furnishings.”
Cokie Watch (pseudo)
“While you can always hear Dan Rather speak at dinnertime, this is your only opportunity to hear him speak at breakfast.”
The CBS anchor will speak May 21 to the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce annual membership breakfast at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. He will be there for free, as a favor to Steve Carver, general manager of WBBM-AM radio and a member of the chamber board.
Now, you also can hear Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, who will be star of the Chamber’s crime prevention awards luncheon May 22 or Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., who’ll speak at the youth motivation program recognition luncheon May 24.
Unlike the premier journalistic couple, neither Reno nor Jackson can take money for appearances. It would violate federal ethics rules.