Spin Cycle: Inside the Clinton Propaganda Machine

Rating:
Summary: and this was just the dress rehearsal (so to speak)
Review: The presidential flacks had done their job. For 1997, at least, their spin had carried the day.
-Howard Kurtz, Spin Cycle

In a story that is utterly devoid of edifying moments and chock full of quite depressing ones, these
final lines of the book are the most shocking. For it is only as you read them that the full realization
hits home that Howard Kurtz's justifiably jaded and cynical look at the way the Clinton administration
manipulated the press and the public in order to cover up or blunt scandal was written before the
Lewinsky scandal broke. Commingled with the shock though is the sudden comprehension that the
Clinton Administration was uniquely well prepared to deal with such a scandal, having spent the prior
seven years honing their obfuscatory skills on a whole series of equally disturbing and potentially
damaging scandals.

In fact, as Kurtz notes in a hastily tacked on Epilogue, one that subsequent events were to wholly
outpace, in the deposition that Bill Clinton gave in the Jones case, on the weekend that Matt Drudge
broke the Monica story, he revealed that he had in fact had sex with Gennifer Flowers. In other
words, on the very first occasion that most Americans saw Clinton, the infamous Super Bowl night 60
Minutes appearance, he lied to us all, with Hillary at his side, and it worked.

What Howard Kurtz really ends up detailing for us is just the long dress rehearsal before the big show,
in which the Clintons and their spin machine worked out all the kinks in their act. By the time the
Lewinsky scandal broke, they understood that all they had to do was deny initially, demonize liberally
(both accusers and investigators), leak pre-emptively, and acknowledge belatedly and they would be
able to so desensitize the press and the people that Bill Clinton would ultimately survive. And so, as
the tawdry mess reached its foreordained conclusion, we had the hitherto unimaginable situation of a
credible rape charge (by Juanita Broaddrick) against the President of the United States, which he did
not even deny, but which the press chose not to hound him with. He had finally just beaten them
down to the point where they didn't have the heart to pursue another scandal.

Then, in a moment which nearly redeems him, Clinton left office in a blizzard of bartered pardons and
other final acts of contempt for the staffers, supporters, and voters who had excused everything he'd
ever done. It was the final (...) gesture of a man who clearly understood that he had so implicated a
nation in his treachery that he had become untouchable. To judge Bill Clinton at that late date would
have required people to face all of the excuses and allowances that they'd made for him in the
preceding eight years, and that was not going to happen. It was all just so brazen that it was hard not
to admire the in-your-face flourish with which he departed. Howard Kurtz does a fine job of charting
the early years of the Clinton scandals, but there was so much more yet to come.

GRADE : B+

Rating:
Summary: White House Spokesmen Not Forthcoming? Say It's not True!
Review: The revelations in this book are astonishing! My god, you mean to tell me that the president of the United States actually sends people out to talk to the press to put himself in a positive light? You mean to tell me that the white house spokesmen we see on tv aren't telling us everything that's going on? Are you telling me they are concealing things and sometimes even embellishing certain events to avoid negative public opinion. Why, this is outrageous!

Mr. Kurtz, you are a saint for revealing the decietful practices of these scoundrels. The world would have simply continued accepting everything these "spokesmen" were saying at face value if you had not written your invaluably enlightening book. And please keep appearing on my tv everyday and writing more books to talk about the excessive punditry going on these days.

Rating:
Summary: A Mike McCurry's eye view of White House press relations
Review: This book describes White House press relations, primarily from the point of view of Mike McCurry and others on the White House PR staff, as they struggle with the campaign finance and Paula Jones scandals, and occasionally find time to push the President's legislative agenda. The White House press corps and Washington investigative reporters are the other characters.

Those who are C-SPAN junkies will find little new. I was surprised to find out how important CNN's Inside Politics is; since it comes on while I am at work, I've never seen it. I was also surprised with Clinton's handwritten note "ready to start the overnights now," which I had lost in the general glut of campaign finance coverage (perhaps as a result of the "document dump" strategy described in the book).

The book increased my dislike for much of the DC press corps, and made me much more aware of how many DC heavyweights are married to each other. The book reflects poorly on the Washington Post, but Kurtz never turns inward to what his paper has become.

The book was ultimately unsatisfying because it was focussed on the public side of DC. The material being screened by the lawyers and released by the press office was being provided to Congressional committees, the independent counsel, Paula Jones' lawyers, etc.; the release policy was to counter the inevitable leaks and charges coming from those sources. But we never see those sources, we never find out where the reporters are getting these stories to which the White House must respond on the eve of publication. We never find out who the editors are who assign these reporters to these beats and why. We never find out why the PR aspects of the Democratic fundraising schemes were never run by the PR people before they began.

Kurtz has produced a narrow-focus view of the PR operation (to the extent McCurry allowed it to be viewed at all), which updates the Deaver/Fitzpatrick version into the Internet age.

Rating:
Summary: Very interesting treatment of White House PR machine
Review: This book gives an excellent ananysis of the White House machine that tries to manage the news. It assumes that the reader is familiar with the events since 1992 - this is not a primer on the Clinton scandals. It does show how the White House seems to spend more effort on public relations than on any substantive issues. There is a frightening parallel between this press management and that of Goebbels for Hitler, but the book also shows how the media ego allows this to happen.

Rating:
Summary: Worth reading
Review: This book is invaluable in its ability to give non-insiders a good look at how the news sausage is made. But (as the above reviews suggest) Howie Kurtz really seems to believe that this is a decent Administration getting tripped up by arcane laws and glory-seeking journalists.

I don't buy it for a second. Even when it becomes unavoidably obvious that the Commander in Chief has been up to no-good, Kurtz shies away from judgment like a shy little schoolgirl, diverting us with tales of minor journalistic shenanigans away from the true story, which is how this administration came to be so thoroughly corrupt.

Rating:
Summary: Could have been written in 5 pages
Review: This book was very dissappointing. It contained very little new information for anyone who watches C-Span. It is a mish mash of stories loosely organized without any analysis. I suppose if you had no idea any of this was going on it would be informative. Definitely not worth a whole book but a 5 page analysis piece.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting insider info, but lacking in coherent structure
Review: This is a history book. Do not kid yourself into thinking that it has value as political science. Kurtz presents an entire string of some interesting (plus some disturbing) anecdotes about modern relations between the press and the White House, but he culminates in no particular point. It just ends up being a timeline of the president and the press bickering . . . for 300+ pages! The lack of guiding thesis leaves the reader with an impression of sorts, but any point that Kurtz tried to make ends up being too elusive and intangible. The best use I can see for this book is to inform a hermit as to what went on in presidential politics from 92-98, other than that, its just more gossip.

Rating:
Summary: A Must Read for Journalist and Political Junkies
Review: When reading this book, which focuses on the Clinton Presidency, you must put your biases aside. If you can't get beyond your personal feelings about Bill Clinton, you will fail to grasp the very thing that made his presidency as successful as it was.
Reviewers that claim Clinton demeaned the Presidency through his constant campaigning, are naive. The truth is Clinton showed how the modern President must function, in order to be successful in this era of gotcha-jounalism in Washington.
The Clinton press and communications office show political proffesionals the way to manage scandal. Strategies include the document dump, the timing of news releases, and possibly the most important strategy, communicating to the electorate through the media.
If journalists want to learn to anticipate the various ways politicians in the future will attempt to avoid being caught in a scandal, then they must study Kurtz' Spin Cycle if they ever hope to realize their dream of being the next Bob Wooward.