Recollection of the campaign of 1984 will make the likenesses evident. Mondale came into the primary contest a heavy favorite, a big shot in the party out of power, someone whose loyalty to and labors for that party over the years were beyond question, and the recipient of trunkloads of official endorsements. In other words: an all too obvious setup for a fall.
The classic campaign psychodrama, generously helped along by the press, practically required it, and all it took was the unexpected ascension of Gary Hart in New Hampshire to set it off. Mondale had a more protracted period of fighting Hart and other opponents for the nomination than Dole has had with his, but the mood music was similar: a rush of commentary during his initial primary setbacks about his weakness as a candidate and pitiable state generally along with some merriment about how the allegedly invincible establishmentarian with all the useless endorsements was a kind of paper tiger after all. As it has been with Dole, once Mondale recovered and went on to prevail in the primaries and assure himself the nomination, the image instantaneously changed. He was now derided, and often reviled, not as the amusingly feeble, accident-prone fellow of late winter, but rather as the single-minded, ruthless boss and beneficiary of the Democratic special-interest machine, Mr. Steamroller himself, Mr. Highhanded, a kind of wanna-be General Pinochet. Neither the wimp image nor the tinpot dictator one ever seemed to me to fit Mondale, and I think the same can be said of Dole. But never mind: images stick.
To some extent I think the nature of both men plays them right into the trap. Both came to their presidential races with copious legislative records, but also, famously, with personalities that seemed to be understood and appreciated only by those who knew them pretty well. The defects of their oratory sprang from a kind of acute, pervasive sense of irony, especially as it concerned their own oratory, an irrepressible inclination to start sawing off the branch they happen to be standing on at the moment. Neither is good at resisting the deflating, comic comment on what he has just done or said or the odd (in Mondale’s case, but not Dole’s, sotto voce) comment on someone else’s behavior. At its best this is a welcome sign that they are proof against the endless guff of the world politicians inhabit. But both men speak in a voice that you have to know how to hear if you are not going to hopelessly misread them at least half of the time. On one notable occasion late in the 1984 campaign, when Mondale was running well behind a Democratic congressman whose rally he was attending, he was overheard to say to the congressman upon rising to speak for him, “This is really going to help you a lot.” Anyone who had ever spent 20 minutes with Mondale would have known the self-mocking, somewhat embarrassed meaning of the crack, but of course it got played as further proof of his arrogance.
Some people have suggested that the Kansan Dole’s relative inarticulateness and discomfort with full-blown speechifying are Midwestern traits, and I suppose they would say the same of the Minnesotan Mondale. But some of our most skillful bloviators, inspirers and demagogues have come from the Midwest, so I think we are talking about a personal, not regional, characteristic here. Its downside in a presidential campaign is that it is often taken for emptiness of mind and heart and makes candidates especially vulnerable to assaults from the oratorically less challenged. This will be all the more true if the presidential candidates have been, as both Dole and Mondale were, heavily engaged in legislative or administrative acts of actual governing for years, activity which at once diminishes both the need and capacity for delivering the moving address and renders them suspect in the eyes of party true believers who consider them compromised and bereft of ideals. In Pat Buchanan now and Jesse Jackson then, each man met his rhetorical better and could only watch as a slice of the constituency was mobilized against him as an empty, unfeeling betrayer of their values.
Mondale was not very successful in neutralizing the threat Jackson posed. And, rather like Dole in the present circumstance, his particular weaknesses–the charge of being “out of touch,” the boss image, his own mixed record in being able really to stir the troops–led to terrific pressures concerning his vice presidential choice. Because, as is the unhappy fate sometimes of candidates in his bind, he was never freed of the burden of both negative images, he was forever being faulted for being weak and even wimpish when he succumbed to a pressure and imperious and unresponsive when he did not. It was a lose-lose game. And on the rare occasions when something did go right, he rarely got credit for it, as the good news would be seen as simply another triumph of his vaguely illegitimate clout with the party establishment, the fruits of strong-arming, not of sense or, heaven forbid, decency or wisdom. Am I wrong in seeing a similar fate getting ready to challenge Bob Dole? I don’t think so. But I don’t believe the outcome is a foregone conclusion. The point is that Dole has to try to figure out how to elude the Mondale fate, how to handle the challenger in his own party and how to convey seriousness of purpose in an idiom that people will understand and not one that sounds either indifferently abbreviated or suddenly lavish and unnatural, like a William Jennings Bryan impersonation. Watching him attempt this, which he must, will be an engrossing spectator sport of the campaign.
title: “The Odd Couple” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-18” author: “Janice Schwebach”
Last week the popular free song-swapping service took a big step toward dodging the fowl’s fate. At a hastily convened press conference last Tuesday in New York City, Bertelsmann’s CEO, Thomas Middelhoff, announced he was breaking with his music-industry cohorts and forming a “strategic alliance” with the outlaw Internet service. The German media giant will loan $50 million to Napster to help it build a system to charge the music start-up’s 38 million freebie-addicted users, and give artists, songwriters, publishers and music labels a cut. There are precious few details, but Barry says they are considering billing customers $4.95 a month. Moreover, when the upgraded service goes live, Bertelsmann’s music unit, BMG, will withdraw from the industry’s lawsuit against Napster, a case that has the potential to slow the rollout of digital media services to a crawl and shutter the popular music site.
But the agreement signals a major shift in the Napster wars. The $40 billion music industry has treated online file-sharing, where users zip songs to each other over the Internet, as a time bomb that threatens to eviscerate CD sales. Now at least one mogul is embracing the concept and its popularity among young music lovers. The well-connected, tech-savvy Middelhoff claims that digital distribution will in fact nourish music sales and says he’ll ask pals like Steve Case (who will soon oversee Warner Music) and Vivendi chairman Jean-Marie Messier (who will soon run Seagram’s Universal music division) to also drop their suits and strike deals with Napster. For Barry, who understood that his company needed support from the major labels to avoid a doomed, revenue-free life in court, it’s a major breakthrough, as well. The music industry is now rife with speculation that the copyright- infringement lawsuit will ultimately be settled in the boardroom among the world’s powerful media elite. Even Hilary Rosen, president of the Recording Industry Association of America and the labels’ chief warrior in the Napster fight, struck a conciliatory note at the weekend: “This is a good thing… I strongly believe that the future of these issues is best served when people are working together and licenses are sought and agreements are made.”
The music industry’s response to Napster hasn’t always been so accommodating. The file-sharing service was famously founded last year by college student Shawn Fanning at his uncle’s offices. Venture capitalists took over last spring, sensing the kind of user enthusiasm that made AOL a multibillion-dollar firm. But it was a risky investment: the music industry sued the service last December for abetting the free exchange of copyrighted songs over the Net. Before the RIAA’s request for an injunction was heard in San Francisco federal court last July, Barry, a former lawyer, spent months meeting with representatives from the major labels, with little to show for it. Industry execs say that Napster had yet to present a coherent model of how it would charge users.
Observers cite recent history in explaining why Middelhoff has taken a more opportunistic approach toward Napster. Middelhoff scaled the ranks of 165-year-old Bertelsmann primarily by making a well-timed bet on AOL. In 1994, he persuaded his bosses to sink $50 million into the fledgling online service, an investment worth $5 billion at the end of last year. With that winning move on his resume, Middelhoff was appointed CEO in 1998. But his recent Internet maneuvers have been disappointing. Because of his close relationship with AOL, Bertelsmann was seen as the jilted party when the online service bought another media company, Time Warner. And e-commerce investments in barnesandnoble.com and CDNow have gone nowhere. But if the deal works out, Napster’s technology will permeate the company as it rushes to digitize every book and movie, too. “We’re moving from catalog sales to all media on demand,” says a Bertelsmann board member. “I expect one day we’ll have divisions like Napster Music, Napster Books and Napster Films.”
Colleagues say Middelhoff is also a personal fan of Napster’s and uses it with his 15-year-old son–even though BMG is suing the service. The contradiction reflects the mogul’s reluctance to adopt the defensive posture of the music industry. At a recent Bertelsmann board meeting, Middelhoff sang the praises of Napster, then looked at Michael Dornemann, the chief of BMG, and said, “I hope you guys aren’t going to sue me for that.” In early September at the PopKomm music conference in Hamburg, Germany, Middelhoff laid the groundwork for his planned break from the labels. “Which one of you, and I expressly include Bertelsmann here, is able to offer music fans a comparable service [to Napster]?” he asked in a speech. Back in New York for another industry powwow in September, Middelhoff and Schmidt dined with Barry and Fanning at the posh restaurant Porter House. Two bottles of expensive wine later, the quartet had run up a sizable bill. Forty-seven-year-old Middelhoff and 20-year-old Fanning sat together on one side of the table, paving the way for their expressive, if very un-Prussian, hug at the press conference last week.
There are still many obstacles for the allies to hurdle before the deal pays dividends. They will now face the technical challenge of creating a system that can support CD-quality song files and protect paying users from problems like viruses. They also have to perfect a business model and sell it to the other labels, or the new service will have a meager selection. Finally, in the legal arena, Napster has to continue to fight off its record-label foes, including BMG, at least until Middelhoff gets to work convincing his fellow moguls that they’re missing an opportunity. Until that happens, Napster may continue to feel more like the pigeon than the bear.
