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June 4, 2012

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Reid’s remarks go viral

By (contact)

Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2009 | 2:01 a.m.

Two weeks ago I wrote that Harry Reid’s mouth is the X-factor in his bid for reelection. The Senate majority leader didn’t wait long to prove my point.

Reid’s irrepressible, sardonic wit, exploited and twisted by a mendacious publisher, and his “gift for saying non-controversial things in the most controversial way possible,” as Politico’s Glenn Thrush put it, have once again roiled the senator’s reelection waters. Reid already had problems and, as I argued, might have trouble fending off even a second-tier GOP challenger. But by telling the Review-Journal’s advertising manager, Bob Brown, “I hope you go out of business,” Reid’s cutting humor has allowed Publisher Sherman Frederick to pose as a victim, absorb kudos from the right and stir up even more anti-Reid fervor.

On its own, Frederick’s Warren Zevon imitation (“Poor, poor pitiful me”), blasted across the world by Matt Drudge, would have been enough to make Reid’s campaign advisers moan. But he also managed to tell the Reno Gazette-Journal’s Anjeanette Damon recently that Ted Kennedy’s death “is going to help us” on health care reform, prompting Thrush’s pithy description.

Beyond sending the National Republican Senatorial Committee into paroxysms of delight, what is the political impact of this kerfuffle?

A few points:

First, Frederick’s assertion that Reid intended to threaten the newspaper’s existence is risible on its face. Would he like to see the R-J disappear? Sure. But would Gov. Jim Gibbons similarly like to see the Sun vanish? Of course.

But did Reid ominously mean he was going to use his power to shut down the R-J — and if he could, what took him so long considering the newspaper has been hostile to him for some time? Not a chance.

So Frederick’s attempt to portray the newspaper as besieged by one of the most powerful lawmakers in the country, especially after the R-J’s editor wrote a bemused blog item about the comments, smacked of self-promotion and seemed designed to create a justification for future Reid-bashing. As one wag said, “What, they are going to stop being nice to him now?”

Frederick’s attempt to stretch his 15 minutes of fame to Drudge, local talk radio and even Fox News notwithstanding, the political impact on Reid is negligible. If the majority leader loses next year, perhaps the R-J’s animus will be a straw on the camel’s back, but others are much more likely to do the breaking — Reid fatigue, Democratic Party tanking, deepening local recession. If Reid can successfully make the case that a small state having the most powerful person in Congress is too important to trade in for a GOP backbencher, he will defeat whomever the Republicans nominate, his horrible poll numbers notwithstanding.

Reid is one of the most polarizing figures in political history, and those who are for him will not budge, nor will those against him. So his fight is for the percentage points left in the middle, mainly independents, who still make up 15 percent of the electorate. If Snow White (Sue Lowden) or any of the dwarves capture that middle by undercutting his “I have the D.C. juice” argument, Reid will lose; if not, he will survive.

I know how it sounds for someone from the Sun to write this about the R-J. But I have the advantage of having worked for both organizations and I know how both operate. The Sun has warts, too. But the R-J arrogantly has claimed moral superiority over the Sun for the two and a half decades I have been here, with its overseers woefully blind to their own hypocrisy.

Which reminds me of a story from my time at the R-J, the day a naive cub political reporter learned how the world sometimes works:

In 1986 the R-J took the unusual step of endorsing Republican Senate hopeful Jim Santini weeks before the election. It seemed unusual coming so early, but I later learned why: The call had come to newspaper executives from the highest levels of the GOP in D.C. Santini was running behind and needed the R-J endorsement to try to help him catch up in the final weeks. The next night, at a major event, copies of the R-J endorsement were stacked on a table.

The ploy didn’t help Santini. He still lost ... to Harry Reid.

Much has changed since then — Reid has a malaprop highlight reel that will morph into a campaign ad(s) and yet he also has ascended to the apex of power. But the R-J’s impact is about what it always has been, so Reid probably shouldn’t worry too much about something he can’t control.

Perhaps he should worry more about controlling what comes out of his mouth, a much more serious threat to his reelection than any newspaper.

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