The King of Quotes; why the press is addicted to Norman Ornstein

Washington Monthly, Dec, 1986 by Steven Waldman

Many Washington journalists feel more comfortablewith politics than government. Campaign reporters tend to focus on the horse race without evaluating policies and issues; congressional reporters too often concentrate on whether the bill will pass, not what it would do. All the more reason that Norman Ornstein is a star. He is a process man in a town obsessed with the process.

Ornstein is careful that he be seen as not justwell-informed, but non-partisan. When pressed he says he is a moderate Democrat, but only when pressed. "I want to keep them guessing,' he says. He gave Reagan an A-grade for his first year, but has sharply criticized Donald Regan. He has praised Republican Robert Dole and Democrat Mario Cuomo. He has favorite and least favorite legislators but will rarely give a one-sided assessment "I don't want to be known as a professional nay-sayer.'

This attitude is crucial for maintaining his standingas a detached, and therefore credible, observer. "We use him as a one-person truth squad,' says Peggy Robinson of "MacNeil/Lehrer.' "He can sit back and provide analysis, and, most important, he is a non-partisan voice.' Most of his analysis is decidedly mainstream, and it is to his advantage that the American Enterprise Institute is considered ideologically in between the conservative Heritage Foundation and the liberal Brookings Institution. Reporters will often go to a conservative for one side of an issue and a liberal for the other, and then to Ornstein as the final authority. In every way--the centrism, the non-partisanship, the respectability, the quick reaction time--Ornstein answers a deep, anthropological need of the Washington press. He answers it so fully as to have created a stampede that must seem very odd to outsiders. It has gotten to the point that the "conventional wisdom,' that amorphous consensus of opinions held by respectable powers-that-be, is not so amorphous after all. It is what Norman Ornstein is thinking.

Ornstein gathers information from reporters,legislators and opinion makers, digests it and then, through his middle-of-the-road, process-oriented prism, reflects it out in a fine beam of light onto "MacNeil/Lehrer.' Ornstein predicted radical tax reform wouldn't pass, and wasn't that the conventional wisdom? He also predicted in 1980 that the Democrats would lose only four to five Senate seats (they lost 12) and that they would gain two to six seats in 1986 (they won 8). That was the conventional wisdom, too. If it doesn't represent the popular consensus before he says it, it may become so if he's quoted enough. "He helps set the conventional wisdom,' says John Barry. "Almost by definition he is conventional wisdom.'

Mr. Comment

Ornstein's fame has given him a somewhatawkward position in the political science community. He is read and heard by more people than any other political scientist. Others in the profession respect him for providing a bridge between them and journalists. He doesn't speak the language of political science, but he understands it. Indeed, Ornstein has typified and, in some ways, spurred a change in the field. There is now a growing group of other people in town serving the same function as Ornstein, though without as much recognition. At AEI alone, Allen Schick explains the budget process, William Schneider talks about national politics, Michael Robinson discusses politics and the media, Michael Malbin talks about interest groups and lobbying, and Ben Wattenberg pontificates about the media. Reporters also call congressional experts Stephen Smith and Stephen Hess at Brookings, Roger Davidson at the Congressional Research Service, and Robert Peabody at Johns Hopkins, the veteran of the group. Journalists looking for an expert's view now have quite a few who will be perfectly willing and eager to return their calls and pronounce judgment.