ND prof examines media influence on Clinton campaign
Erin LaRuffa
News Writer
During presidential candidate Bill Clinton's 1992 visit to Notre Dame, creative writing professor William O'Rourke sat in the front row of the Stepan Center to watch the speech.
Describing his view from that seat, O'Rourke opened his book, "Campaign America j'96: The View from the Couch," which Notre Dame Press recently republished in a paperback edition.
"What was clear on Clinton's flushed red face was that he was enjoying this. The Secret Service men did not look happy. Clinton did," O'Rourke wrote in the book, originally published in 1997.
With a combination of political analysis and cultural history, the book recounts the 1996 presidential campaign through a series of journal entries O'Rourke kept from January to November of that year.
O'Rourke's goal was to show "how a campaign is consumed in this country instead of how it is produced." The book is unique because it is based on what O'Rourke learned through the media as a campaign outsider.
"The media tries to make the hidden unhidden, and they certainly did a good job of that," O'Rourke said. "The media tries to make the government transparent so people can see what their government is really like."
Relying in part on videotapes, O'Rourke watched both political commercials and news coverage on television, which has been part of campaigns since the famous 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debate. O'Rourke also read newspapers and magazines and listened to talk radio for the book.
"You don't have an election without the media … The only way that somebody is known is by people paying attention," said O'Rourke. Television is especially powerful in reaching what is known as the "swing vote," those undecided voters candidates work to win over.
Despite the importance of the press, it does not have the ability to completely determine the outcome of an election, said O'Rourke.
"Culture is larger than the media … There are forces in society that are bigger than how they get shown," he said.
At the same time, O'Rourke is also very critical of the media.
"The book is a book of press criticism," said O'Rourke, noting that television networks often hire political commentators who formerly worked for politicians.
"The press shouldn't be part of what they're criticizing … I said a lot of critical things about a lot of people, but that's because they're public figures and someone should criticize them," O'Rourke said.
At first he intended the book to be for people who do not watch television, but he soon realized that those people were not interested in reading about TV either.
The book is also a portrait of the Clinton administration. O'Rourke even theorizes in the book that Clinton did not expect to be elected president in 1992. The updated paperback edition includes an epilogue entitled "From Monica to Milosevic, 1998-1999."
Furthermore, "Campaign '96" can be useful in looking at the current presidential campaign.
"Everyone who is running this year is talked about in the '96 book," said O'Rourke, adding that the reporters mentioned in the book also remain influential now.
"The biggest change [between the 1996 and 2000 presidential campaigns] is that the Internet didn't play as big a role [in 1996]," O'Rourke said.
The book received favorable reviews from different sources.
According to Kirkus Reviews: "Some of the set pieces here, including his dissections of Dole's and Clinton's convention speeches, are hilarious, and his portrait of the obsessive shallowness of the media is convincing and alarming. A highly unusual contribution to the study of politics and media."
All News Stories for Tuesday, January 25, 2000
