The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 10 (1999)

President Clinton’s Strategies forCommunications in the 1998
Tobacco Debate

Noriko HIRABAYASHII INTRODUCTION
The modern political process in the United States is a war of debates
conducted through the media. The media has become a battleground forpolitical actors who want to appeal to the public and to promote theiragendas, to compete for attention and approval, and to attack and to
defend themselves. The press itself intervenes in political debates since
it shifts the focus of attention, determines the relative priorities of theissues in a national debate, or suggests to its audience the very nature of
the matter concerned. As the political parties are losing their ability tocontrol policy debates, and because of the current, rapid delivery of news
through an increasing number of media outlets, this modern “war” necessitates sophisticated skills in communications and strategies on the partof the political actors. The politicians are often assisted by political consultants and communications experts, or their campaigns are managed
by a “war room,” as was the case in the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign.1
Political communications strategies, their concepts and technologies,
are typically applied in campaigns, but they have now become prevalenteven in daily political performances, most notably in President Bill
Copyright © 1999 Noriko Hirabayashi. All rights reserved. This work may be
used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes. No copies of thiswork may be distributed, electronically or otherwise, in whole or in part, without
permission from the author.
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Clinton’s “campaign-like” style of government for promoting challenging agendas.2 This paper examines Clinton’s strategic communicationsin the policy debate over tobacco from 1995, when he declared his agenda in the Tobacco War, until the defeat of the Senate bill in the 105th
Congress on June 17, 1998. This bill, sponsored by Senator John McCain
and strongly supported by Clinton, aimed to curb smoking among minors
through regulating tobacco marketing and sales to them and by raising
cigarette prices, but accepting some limits to the legal liability of theindustry. Clinton is the ﬁrst American president to take the initiative incomprehensive government plans to regulate Big Tobacco and to curbsmoking by teenagers.
The tobacco industry has greatly inﬂuenced American politics both inand out of Washington as a big donor, a special interest group, and a key
sponsor for and campaigner in the media.3 Clinton’s tobacco agenda,
therefore, was deﬁnitely a political challenge, which required an energetic campaign with all the strategic and governing resources available
to the administration to secure the support of the electorate, Congress,and even the Washington press corps. His strategic communications
practices must have played a crucial role in this endeavor.
Political communications strategies generally cover the following
operations: research (polling and forming data bases), the establishment
and control of messages (setting or “framing” agendas, issue management, and personal images), media strategies (press relations, media
selection and formats, “ad buys,” and “narrowcast” media use, including the Internet and direct mailing), message creation and presentation(speech writing, camera performance, sound bites, and vocabularies),and organized feedback systems.4
In this paper we will examine the Clinton campaign, focusing on twophases of its strategic development: setting or framing the agenda andcontrolling the policy debate. We will show the skillful and advantageous, yet politically risky, aspects of his campaign-like governing
strategies. These include voter-orientation or responsiveness, skillfulspin control, and the “centrist” leadership strategy that Smith describes
as a feature of his presidency, as we see in his contrivances to seek allies
in the tobacco debate.5 Since the tobacco debate has not been settled yet,in this paper we will present only a midstream evaluation of the successes and failures of Clinton’s communications strategies and campaign
in his war on tobacco. Nevertheless, we will show a clear proﬁle of thestrategic communication forms and practices of his presidency andPRESIDENT CLINTON’S STRATEGIES IN TOBACCO DEBATE

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suggest what this will imply for modern presidential politics in the ageof the modern media.
II CLINTON’S STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS: AN OUTLINE
Before beginning a close examination of the Clinton tobacco campaign, we will give an outline of his communications strategies and theconcepts and technologies used in his campaign-like government. The
bottom line is that he has been a great political marketing practitioner
and strategic communicator, in which we will see the strategy as well as
the philosophy of his “responsive leadership.”6
DIRECT AND RESPONSIVE: A POLITICAL MARKETING PRACTITIONER
Communications strategies are part of the succinct strategic moves
made and revised at each stage of a campaign process, with all the personal, political, and environmental factors taken into account. Newman,
who gives a high assessment of Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign
from a marketing perspective, describes this as political marketing andwelcomes this consumer-oriented trend in politics since “the politicalprocess stands to be strengthened because candidates will need to direct
more attention to the concerns of the voters to keep them satisﬁed.”7
According to Newman, the marketing campaign for an election follows three major stages: market segmentation (to assess voter needs andto identify segments of voters), candidate positioning (to assess candidates and competition, to target segments, and to establish images), strategy formulation and implementation (campaign platform, promotion at
the grass roots level, promotion through mass media, polling, and organization development and control). Marketing operations thus provide
baselines for strategic campaign communications, and Clinton runs his
administration today according to marketing concepts and technologies,
particularly in conjunction with market (opinion) research. While
Clinton’s governing practices have often been criticized for their “polldriven” or opportunistic nature, his market (voter) orientation has contributed to the direct and responsive nature of his communication andgoverning styles, and thus has helped him win the support of a majority
for his agenda, or even create a large middle-class coalition of voters.
In formulating and controlling messages, for example, he was able touse marketing technologies to tailor his campaign platform to the

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concerns of the electorate, as exempliﬁed in his 1992 “Putting People
First” package. He also successfully cast his personal and governmental
image into that of “a candidate of the people” (1992) and then as “being
presidential, but not like a politician” (1996). This was done so that voters, in an age of political cynicism and anger, could have some identiﬁcation and sympathy with their leader.
Moreover, in areas of media strategies and in creating and presenting
messages, concepts and techniques for marketing promotion were fully
applied for effective voter appeal. For example, in his 1996 campaign,
Clinton learned that people wanted to hear from him positive appealspresenting “the facts,” rather than negative attacks on the character of
his opponents. He also selected effective media channels (e.g. local television stations) and formats (e.g. talk shows) to make sure that he reached
the targeted markets or to sidestep the negative press. He tailored his“communicative” style to show that he was “in touch with the people”
and could “talk with” them in impressive, pre-tested vocabulary
designed to garner public sympathy.
His agendas and appeals were therefore geared to stay in touch withand to respond to the market. It should be noted here that this is his strategy as well as his de facto political philosophy, as demonstrated by his
agendas and style. It constitutes an essential part of his responsive presidential leadership, which works particularly well in an age of public
cynicism toward how government works and also toward Washington
insiders who do not care about ordinary people.8
SPIN CONTROL AND “CENTRIST” LEADERSHIP:A STRATEGIC COMMUNICATOR
While marketing research has helped Clinton to read public opinion
and has made his administration more voter-oriented, he also applies thisexpertise to pursue his own political objectives through skillfully controlling discussions of policy discussion in the media, that is by using
spin control.9 We can assume that he had to be skilled at it partly because
he intended to try a politically challenging “third way,” independent of
the old Democratic liberals as well as the Republican conservatives.
Spin control is an indispensable tactic in modern political debate
where the perceptions of the people play a key role. For example, it would
make a difference to control the popular perception of what a given“problem” is and how well it could be solved with the candidate’s or

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speaker’s proposed policy. Ball-Rokeach and others suggest that this“framing” of political debate offers the people a frame of referencewith a set of values, which they can use to understand the nature of anagenda, in other words on what values the “problem” is deﬁned and its
resolutions are based, and thus to form their judgments on speciﬁc
proposals.10 Political actors therefore compete, whether in forming coalitions in a debate or in straightforward confrontation with each other, forthe predominance of their own “frames” in popular perceptions. The
press does this too, although it may not intend to mobilize the people but
just to have its own “deﬁnitions” of the problems recognized by the audience.
President Clinton and his strategy team are skilled at spin control tactics and have mastered the “perception game” in Washington, as notedby Seiichi Kondo, former Japanese Government Spokesman in the
United States.11 In his spin control, Clinton often exploits the “fact” or
the perception that he knows best what “real” public opinion is, or that
he has understood the “real” voices of the people. Such a “poll master”
perception of Clinton has a powerful political impact because politicalactors are eager to read precisely the shifting winds of public opinion for
their agendas or survival. As these actors acknowledge that Clinton’s
electoral victories and his ﬁrm public approval are clear proof of his
expertise in reading “real” public opinion, Clinton can strategically control the perceptions the actors may hold of public opinion. He can thentake the initiative in debates and possibly even shape public opinion.12
Clinton does not simply move with the public, nor does he rely on spin
control to change the direction of public opinion. Rather, he reads anduses public opinion as a strategic resource to win the “intelligence war”
against his rivals and to gain national approval of his agenda. Clinton’sformer strategist Dick Morris describes this with the metaphor of “tacking” a yacht in a race, where Clinton asks pollsters “to help him determine which current he should try to harness to move him closer to his
destination.” Supposedly, Clinton required these strategies of information control as a part of his “triangular” or “centrist” leadership. Suchtriangular leadership, according to Morris, “creates a third position, notjust in between the old positions of the two parties but above them aswell.” He recommended that Clinton “identify a new course that accommodates the needs the Republicans address [e.g. tax cuts] but does it in
a way that is uniquely yours” and also step out ahead of the Democrats
who talked “traditional class-warfare language.”13 In order to carve out

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his own destination while striking a balance between the two parties andalso to lead the nation and both parties to his agenda, Clinton was
required to be skilled at information control through reading and using
public opinion, or through showing the nation a new language and set ofvalues, then controlling the frame of debate.
According to Smith, Clinton used the “politics of inclusion rather thandivision,” putting him and his agenda centermost in policy discussions
and employing rhetoric and story telling to establish his electoral coalition. For example, he successfully packaged his 1992 campaign agenda
in a clear story line, including the “jeremiad story” in which “the forgotten middle class” should be rescued and led by his vision of hope. He
also strategically applied a new “centrist” approach to leadership, borrowing selectively from each of the four available leadership strategies:
political bargaining (party or congressional support), public approval,
going public (rhetorical power), and ideology. Smith indicated that
Clinton employed a “going public” strategy only to win over opinion
leaders and to undercut the opposition, and that it was a central theme in
Clinton’s strategic leadership to help others, including political leaders,to learn to think as the president does.14
Clinton’s leadership requires an aptitude for handling numerous
issues, from national health care reform to school uniforms for children,in a package with a set of values that a majority of the American people
would share and which would inﬂuence even the members of Congress.
It is crucial for him, while presiding over public debate, to bring otherkey players into his agenda frames, his vocabularies, and his resolutions,and to keep opponents silent. He also needs to make alliances in the political forum for common ground on which to promote his “third way.”
III CHILDREN VERSUS BIG TOBACCO: STRATEGIESFOR FRAMING THE AGENDA
The “War on Tobacco” is a case where these strategies were put intofull play, as “this might have been Clinton’s last major domestic initiative of his presidency.”15 He put tobacco and smoking on the national
policy agenda, after longstanding medical, legal, political, administrative, and social discussions of the issue,16 by skillfully framing it toappeal to the whole nation as well as to Washington politicians and thepress corps.

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CHILDREN VERSUS BIG TOBACCO: THE “HE-CARESABOUT-PEOPLE-LIKE-ME” PACKAGE
At a press conference on August 10, 1995, President Clinton proposed
for the ﬁrst time in American presidential history a comprehensive andcoordinated set of measures to signiﬁcantly reduce tobacco usage bychildren and adolescents who are addicted to cigarettes and smokelesstobacco. Claiming it was a major public health hazard, he declared “I
must do everything I can to bring this assault to a halt.” He started a campaign with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), led by Commissioner David Kessler who had classiﬁed tobacco products as a drugdelivery system for addictive nicotine, and proposed to bring these products within FDA jurisdiction. Then on August 23, 1996, Clinton
announced the nation’s ﬁrst comprehensive program to prevent minors
from smoking, or otherwise beginning a lifetime of nicotine addiction,
through stronger efforts to reduce youth access to tobacco products andto limit the appeal of tobacco marketing, promotion, and advertising
aimed at them.17 He allowed the FDA to regulate the sales and distribution of tobacco products to young people and required the tobacco industry to fund a public education campaign to prevent youth from smoking.
Here we can see how he double-framed the issue as a matter of publichealth and of protecting children. He put the issue into a new, more
appealing package by integrating some of the popular, widely sharedframes prevailing in the discussion of tobacco usage and how to control
it, with the particular aim of demonstrating that the president can tune into the public mood and address its demands.
Framing tobacco usage and its control as a matter of public health has
been prevalent since the release in 1964 of the ﬁrst report on smoking
and health by the Surgeon General Luther L. Terry. As this perspective
was diffused, medical reports and commentaries on the harmful impact
of tobacco on health have shifted their focus from the lifestyles of individual smokers to the social hazards caused by smoking, speciﬁcally tothe risks of underage smoking and the problems caused by secondhand
smoke. The issue of public health has also been raised in light of the rising medical costs from tobacco-related diseases that governments havecome to fear. In 1996, an estimated 47 million American adults smokedcigarettes, and regular tobacco use caused about one of every ﬁve deaths
annually. This cost the nation more than $100 billion for medical andother related expenditures and was called “the single most preventable

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cause of death and disease in the nation.” Yet, as stated in 1997 by Donna
Shalala, Secretary of Health and Human Services under Clinton, “today,
nearly 3000 young people across our country will begin smoking regularly. Of these 3000 young people, 1000 will lose that gamble to the diseases caused by smoking.”18
The “War on Tobacco” acquired more momentum from the public outrage against the tobacco industry, which gave the Clinton administration
a popular reason for regulating the industry and its promotional activities, especially those aimed at youth. Since the 1980s, and particularlyin the last ten years, journalists, lawyers, and some congressmen such as
Henry Waxman have devoted themselves to unveiling the concealed
exploitative business practices and “conspiracies” of the tobacco industry.19 These include marketing aimed at children, concealing information about the harmful impacts of their products on health which they
had long known about, and committing perjury about how they control
nicotine when making cigarettes. Based on this, Clinton justiﬁed his
1995 remark that government should intervene to stop the unjustiﬁable
promotional activities of Big Tobacco aimed at children. He said “it isillegal for children to smoke cigarettes” and asked how it could “be legal
for people to advertise to children to get them to smoke cigarettes” since“a lot of this advertising is designed to reach children, to get new customers for the tobacco companies as the old customers disappear.” Herationalized that “it cannot be a violation of freedom of speech [to ban
advertisements that] try to get people to do something they can’t legally do.”20
Clinton framed his tobacco war in terms of public health and protecting children, as well as of justiﬁably regulating Big Business, and he putthem both into one agenda for two major strategic reasons. One was tomake his frame persuasive and acceptable to the American people since
the majority continued to think that smoking was a personal choice, notthe government’s business, and found no strong reason for federal
involvement. Referring to children and unjustiﬁable business practices
was designed to clear this hurdle.21 The other reason was based on marketing strategies: he put this agenda into his policy package to target parents, as part of a broader vision for the 21st century which included otherdomestic initiatives such as health care, education, and ﬁghting crime.
Reportedly, three key players prompted him to take up this issue: Dr.
Kessler of the FDA, Vice President Albert Gore who lost a sister to lungcancer, and Dick Morris who advised Clinton to use it in his 1996 reelec-PRESIDENT CLINTON’S STRATEGIES IN TOBACCO DEBATE

115

tion campaign and to establish a record “which would rank him above
third-tier Presidents.”22 Morris persuaded him and the White House staff
by referring to results of a poll which indicated that a majority ofAmericans, including people in the major tobacco states, supported curbs
on teen smoking. He also suggested that it would appeal to Clinton’s targeted electorate, particularly the “swing,” wealthy baby boomers who
tended to vote Republican but were inclined to be in the middle of thepolitical spectrum, and speciﬁcally among them the parents who werelater called “Soccer Moms.” Morris expected that they would care about“values” rather than their pocketbooks in the 1996 election. In otherwords, the tobacco war could be a “he-cares-about-people-like-me”
issue, a symbol of his responsive presidency, in which he cared about
the concerns of ordinary people for the quality of personal lives.23
During the 1996 presidential campaign, the tobacco war was a major
theme. Gore appealed to anti-smoking feelings at the Democratic
Convention, and the debate was even fueled by Bob Dole, the Republican
candidate for president, who denied that nicotine was addictive. Clinton
exploited this to foster an image that distinguished him as a “moral
guard” for American families, ﬁghting against Big Tobacco and Big
Business, which he asserted the Republicans had long stood for in theirown interests. In the presidential debate on October 6, for example, heassailed his opponent on the campaign ﬁnance issue:
Senator Dole had some pretty harsh comments about special interest money.
But it wasn’t me who opposed what we tried to do to save the lives of children who are subject to tobacco and then went to the tobacco growers andbragged about standing up to the federal government when we tried to stop
the advertising, marketing, and sales of tobacco to children. . . . That’s what
Speaker [Newt] Gingrich and Senator Dole did, not me.24

This framing was so disruptive for the Republicans that, according toNancy Gibbs of Time, in 1998 the Senate majority leader Trent Lott was
induced, at least for the time being, to take the “least, worst option” of
cutting a deal with Clinton. He did this out of fear that the Republicans“were seen to be blocking anti-smoking legislation at a time when the
tobacco industry was by far the biggest soft-money donor to their party,”and “they’d be pummeled by the White House and the Democrats in themidterm elections.”25

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NORIKO HIRABAYASHIA PICTURE OF WORKABLE GOVERNMENT: BEYOND
THE “SMALL OR BIG GOVERNMENT” DEBATE
After this multi-faceted framing, Clinton brought in another strategy
for promoting the agenda so that he could stay with the idea of a workable government by going the “third way.” He would offer the nation
helpful federal services and still manage to balance the budget, thereby
crossing the line between big and small government. As the debate
developed, he came to focus on how to save and to spend money, or how
to pay for his initial anti-tobacco programs and research as well as forhis other policy initiatives such as child care and education.
Following the $368.5 billion settlement reached by the major tobacco companies and forty state attorneys general on June 21, 1997, Clinton
approved the agreement in principle. But he proposed tougher measures:a cigarette price hike of $1.10 per pack over ﬁve years, full authority for
the FDA to regulate tobacco products, and stiffer penalties to be imposedon the industry for failing to meet the target of reducing teen smoking.
He again argued strongly for his initiative in the 1998 State of the Union
address and pushed Congress to take legislative action.26 Since Congress
traditionally has dismissed or watered down bills that would hurt Big
Tobacco, and might do so again,27 the White House took the opportunity provided by the settlement “to make tobacco an achievement, not an
issue.”28 For this he needed a governing coalition strategy that would
include compromises, and he developed his communications strategies
accordingly.
IV CHILDREN AND MONEY: STRATEGIES FORCONTROLLING THE DEBATE
Clinton succeeded in setting a national agenda in his own frame whenon April 1, 1998, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Committee approved a comprehensive bipartisan tobacco bill by 19
votes to 1. This bill, sponsored by Republican Chairman John McCain,included tougher measures against the tobacco industry than the 1997
settlement. Cigarette prices would rise by $1.10 per pack over ﬁve years,
not the sixty-two cents negotiated in the settlement that would be
imposed only if the target of reducing teen smoking was not met. There
would be a payment from the industry of $516 billion over 25 years,
compared with the original $368.5 billion. Toughest of all, there would

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be a withdrawal of the agreed legal immunity of the industry from classaction suits. Clinton rallied support for this bill, which met his objectives
but was controversial because it was not clear how the tobacco money
and tax revenues would be used and because of its stiffened legal responsibility for the industry.29
STRATEGIC CONTROL OF DEBATEAs mentioned earlier, Clinton’s strategic communications and leadership had three focal points—responsiveness, spin control, and coalition—in the policy debate. In controlling the policy debate then underway, Clinton seemed to use a threefold strategy by being very vocal andemploying any available means for spin control, keeping opponents
silent, and doing whatever else was possible to preserve the agenda andto keep it alive.
First, Clinton used a variety of means such as press conferences andtown meetings to convey to the nation his ﬁrm stand on tobacco regulation and a need for legislation. He even had talks with tobacco farmers,
which could be interpreted as a sign of support from most of the nation.30
From April 9 to June 20, he referred to tobacco in ten of his addressesor remarks.31 He also used electronic communication networks (e.g. theInternet) in collaboration with federal agencies to provide convincing
data and information. He helped to organize multimedia campaigns,
which he proposed that the FDA should employ in 1995, particularly at
the grass-roots level. The national debate was thus sustained by a teamcomprising a “Regulator and a President” and their surrogates such as
public health activists.32
Second, Clinton was careful not to give legitimacy to the argumentsof his opponents. For example, he proposed that the tobacco companies
should refrain from selling to and aiming advertisements at children, but
not adults who could enjoy the freedom of choice. He even approved, atﬁrst, the June 1997 settlement, which required the tobacco industry tostop sales to children through self-imposed controls, rather than throughlaw, on the condition that these controls were monitored by the FDA. He
warned the Republicans, despite his original harsh criticism of activities
aimed at children, that the Republican proposals for a ban on advertisements might be “unconstitutional” in terms of freedom of speech.33 This
strategy intended to silence potential opponents and to ﬁnd a middle way,a pragmatic common ground on which to get things done.

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Third, and most important, Clinton devoted himself to preserving theagenda and to blocking the possibility that Congress would “pick-todeath” the tobacco bill. According to Alexis Simendinger in the National
Journal, Clinton “made it politically uncomfortable for any lawmakerto just say no.” Simendinger claimed that Clinton strategically linked thelegislation with public health concerns about children smoking so thatcongressmen, preparing for the 1998 elections, would not abstain fromthe debate in case they would be seen as doing so in the interests of thetobacco companies. Clinton also had “taken the debate beyond ‘if’ thereis legislation to ‘what’ it will accomplish and how the tobacco money
could be spent.” He did it by assuming there would be billions of dollars
in tobacco receipts—$65.5 billion over ﬁve years—in his ﬁscal 1999
budget and by linking the money to “feel-good proposals” for medical
research, child care, and new teachers. Clinton was also “careful not tocall the cigarette price hike a tax, inviting Congress to think of it as industry payments or fees.” In other words, he intended to defend against
Republican attacks on the “tax-and-spend” Democrats. Simendinger
critically viewed this strategy as “politicizing the issue, making it harder to resolve.”34 But in fact this strategy offered incentives, “a kind ofgold rush,” for Congress to stay with the bill, which they might count on
to fund tax cuts or Social Security plans.35 In order to keep the debate
alive, Clinton even sought a middle way by agreeing to some of the compensatory tax cuts demanded by the Republicans and even by suggesting to consider lowering the extent of legal liability for the industry.
Thus Clinton energetically campaigned for his agenda through strategic controls of debate. Gibbs noted that “no single domestic-policy issue
has consumed so much of Clinton’s public time and attention” since it
was introduced. The press, including Gibbs, was cynical in suspecting
Clinton’s intentions for the agenda, and focused on two strategic implications of the tobacco deal for his presidency. One pertained to how his
programs, for example those suggested in the 1998 State of the Union
address, would be funded by the tobacco revenue. The other was to“show that Clinton was still in the game” after he had been foiled repeatedly when moving his plans through Congress despite “his shiny
approval ratings.”36 The press seemed to be not only interested in the
future of the bill but also—or even much more—in Clinton’s responsive
leadership.
Despite his campaign and the approval by the Commerce Committee,
the Senate did not pass the bill—53 were opposed while 46 agreed—andPRESIDENT CLINTON’S STRATEGIES IN TOBACCO DEBATE

119

it was sent back to the Committee on June 17. The press again cynically responded to the outcome and predicted a dim future for Clinton’sleadership. For example, one writer blamed “both Republican intransigence and his own inability to summon a governing coalition for the centrist agenda he laid out with great ﬂourish” earlier in the year and addedthat “his once-bright hopes for building a signiﬁcant domestic policy
record this year now look decidedly dim.”37 The press, however, did not
mention their own responsibility for why the bill was not passed or, inother words, how their cynical view could have possibly affected the policy debate. We will discuss this in the last section.
DIVERGENT FRAMES AND LOST SPIN CONTROL
Returning to Clinton’s strategies, how is he to blame, particularly concerning communications? There are two points. First, Clinton failed tocontrol divergent frames applied in the policy debate. Secondly, he also
failed to assure the public that his initiative would work well and truly
contribute to resolving the problem. These failures indicate his loss of
spin control in the debate war, presumably because of powerful counterframing and insufﬁcient feedback from the public, to which might be
added possible diversion because of legal and public interest in his affair
with Monica Lewinsky.38
When commenting on the failure of the Senate to pass its bill, Clinton
argued that “if more members of the Senate would vote like parents
rather than politicians, we could solve this problem” and criticizedCongress for voting “against our children and for the tobacco lobby.”
Yet, Clinton shared part of the blame because his own framing of theagenda was too elaborate and therefore vulnerable. One problem wasthat his multi-faceted framing shifted the focus from his original themeof “kids versus Big Tobacco” to “how to save the money for Social
Security or other programs,” which set the stage for debate among parties looking for funds.39 Republicans then persisted to seek ﬁnancing fortheir two conventional agendas, cutting taxes and the war on drugs, andshifted the debate to their beneﬁt. Accordingly, vocal opponents such as
Senator Phil Gramm argued against the “Big Brother” bill, implying that
more taxes would be required and government would get bigger, which
he said “had no support in America.”40 Furthermore, Newt Gingrich,
Speaker of the House of Representatives, even presented a counter-frame
to oppose Clinton’s version of the “cause” of children smoking. He

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ascribed it to the impact of Hollywood movies that depicted smoking as
fashionable, rather than that of tobacco advertisements, notably thosewith the animal character “Joe Camel” which Clinton claimed induced
children to smoke. Gingrich intended to criticize an industry that is oneof the biggest contributors to the Democratic Party and a powerful supporter of Clinton, thus countering the Democrats who had been emphasizing the close connections between his party and the tobacco industry.41
Another problem was the advertising blitz sponsored by the tobacco
industry, amounting to forty million dollars over eight weeks, whichstrongly supported the “tax and spend” assaults on Clinton and the
Democrats. Aimed at killing the bill, these advertisements posed a question about whether the cigarette price hikes would decrease the numberof underaged smokers, and they suggested that a black market would
come into existence if prices became too high. The advertisements also
were designed to make congressmen worry that they might offend big
donors or lose votes if they supported the bill, while lobbyists for theindustry reportedly promised to help them with campaign advertising if
they voted against the bill.42
Clinton assailed this campaign, calling it an “absolutely false” attempt
to distract attention from the tobacco industry’s complicity in misleading the nation about the dangers of tobacco. He described its tactics as
tempting the voters to “channel your well-known hatred of government
and taxes against this bill.” He bemoaned the fact that public healthgroups which supported the bill did not have enough money to reply tothe advertisements with their own, and he noted that “unanswered ads
can sometimes be fatal.” He did not, however, help by having his own“issue advertisements” printed and aired as he did when he faced a similar formidable wave of campaigning against his 1994 health care reform
plan.43 It might be argued that he did not defend in this way partly because
the ﬁnancing of his 1996 campaign was being investigated by the JusticeDepartment, which was also interested in his previous advertisements.
INSUFFICIENT COMMUNICATION FEEDBACK FROM THE PUBLIC
Under these circumstances, Clinton failed to lead and to convince thepublic that his proposal would work well and be the best remedy for the
problem. At ﬁrst the public seemed to agree with his story line that was
targeted at parents. A Gallup poll in August 1996 showed that 63% of
the nation approved Clinton’s policies on tobacco and smoking and wel-

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comed his packaged agenda.44 Public opinion and the inﬂuential press
were impressed with his ﬁrm stand concerning the June 1997 tobacco
settlement, even though they were still undecided on what options would
be best for curbing teen smoking.45
As the debate continued, however, he shifted its focus from a matterof children and parents to one of money. “How to pay” for his “parents”
package came to the fore in the debate, but he did not fully explain how
his initiative would substantially contribute to curbs on teen smoking. It
is certain that the public obviously favored his nicely packaged agenda
as enunciated in the 1998 State of the Union address,46 but the tobacco
initiative might still have been seen as a tool rather than an objective of
his government. We can speculate that this perception became more pronounced while Congress was debating the bill and the tobacco industry
was running its advertisements. According to the poll conducted by NBC
in mid April 1998, people were leaning more toward the Republican
frame than Clinton’s. Asked about the suspected intentions of the tobacco bill, 70% of the respondents said it was “getting additional tax revenue for the federal government,” while only 20% found it “cutting teensmoking by raising cigarette prices.” According to this poll, public opinion on passing the bill was completely split: 47% felt that Congressshould pass it, and 48% thought it should be rejected.47
While public opinion ﬂuctuated on the Senate bill, Clinton tried to persuade the public to support his tobacco initiative as they had at its inception. His campaign seemed partly successful. CNN released the resultsof a poll it conducted on May 11, which showed that 87% of the nation
favored restrictions on tobacco sales to minors and that 59% favored cigarette price hikes, even though a majority was skeptical about federal
regulation of tobacco as a drug. Another CNN poll, conducted after thebill was defeated by the Senate and released on July 24, showed that support for the Clinton frame had increased to 41%, although 50% viewed
the bill as a “tax-and-spend” issue, as did the Republicans.
Clinton could have read these shifts in public opinion and tried toachieve his goal by seeking opinions and feedback that could be fed into
his spin control machines. He nevertheless failed at his own game. For
example, when some experts cast doubt on the data Clinton presented tojustify federal regulation, he did not seem to argue with them and thereby left the public skeptical about its justiﬁability.48 Moreover, he lost theinitiative at the ﬁnal stage of the spin war. When the congressional debatecame close to ﬁnishing, three poll ﬁndings on the tobacco bill were122

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released. One, conducted by Republican pollster Linda Divall on July 9,
revealed that 69% of the respondents said that supporters of the bill wereseeking to increase tax revenue rather than trying to curb teen smoking.
The second was conducted for the White House and the public healthcoalition Effective National Action to Control Tobacco (ENACT) andfound that registered voters supported the bill by a 2-to-1 margin. A similar result was obtained by the third poll, conducted by the nonpartisan
Pew Research Center. The Divall poll offered Republican senators a reason to vote against the bill, and it was only “after” the bill was defeated,even though it was within 24 hours, that Democratic pollsters and a
White House strategist counter-argued that the Republicans, captives of
Big Tobacco, had misinterpreted the public sentiment. They claimed thatthe public wanted “some” bill, although not necessarily “this” one.49
The press also had a role in Clinton’s insufﬁcient feedback with the
public. Along with the tobacco debate, the press had paid a great deal ofattention to Clinton’s sex scandals despite his attempts to focus on getting the tobacco bill passed. This created two obstacles that made it difﬁcult for him to communicate with the public. As the media diverted
attention from tobacco and substantial policy debates to his sexualescapades, he failed to retain sufﬁcient opportunities or time and spacein the press to keep public attention on his agenda. Moreover, Clinton’s
aides for communications and press relations, as well as his surrogates,
were preoccupied with rebuttals and press scrutiny in regard to the allegations of improper behavior, and thereby were unable to speak for him
on the agenda.50
Certainly Clinton was partly responsible for the bill being defeatedsince his sexual improprieties created an environment for the media toprobe into his behavior and also inhibited his ability to persuade the public and the Senate to support the bill. We can presume that his “kids versus Big Tobacco” framing seemed less plausible in the eyes of thetargeted parents, who were fed up with his inﬁdelity and possible perjury, which made his concern about children and family values suspect.
Nevertheless, it should still be noted that the weakened power of the president to “moderate” the debate to reach a national as well as a politicalconsensus during this period, and accordingly the irreconcilable frames
proposed by the two political parties, led the public to believe that thedebate had lost perspective of the original aims of the bill on the one
hand and, on the other, legitimized and even energized the campaign ofthe tobacco companies to defeat the bill.

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DISCUSSION: IS THE MEDIA RESPONSIBLE?

While Clinton failed to reach a national and political consensus andto achieve one of the most important objectives of his second term, he
is not the only loser in the tobacco war. The other losers are not his allies,
the advocacy groups, and victims of tobacco, but the parents. What theyacquired with the defeated Senate bill was not simply disappointment,
but also a deepening cynicism toward the works of the government, thepartisan Congress, and, possibly, the negatively inclined press. Finally,
we will suggest two possible ways that the press affected the course of
the debate on tobacco and discuss the implications of these for the modern presidency in the age of a powerful media.
THE ATTACK CULTURE AND POLITICAL SHOWDOWN
One possible way in which the press affected the tobacco debate isthat it contributed to justifying or even accelerating the debate on thebasis of partisanship. The American public seemed not to want this sincepolls showed that a majority of them agreed with curbs on teen smoking, even if they did not speciﬁcally endorse the McCain bill. Although
the public might have hoped that politicians could share vocabularies,
concerns, and values with them, and also with each other, to attain a reasonable national consensus, politics in America is a world of “showdown,” to use a cliché from the press, in which politicians appear to be
in conﬂict with, accusing, and attacking each other to seek personal andpartisan advantages at the expense of the public interest.
This is what Robert Samuelson, a Washington Post columnist, sees incontemporary Washington politics, especially in the turbulent days ofinvestigation into Clinton’s conduct.51 He calls it the “attack culture,” inwhich the press but not the public participates. Although people might
enjoy a dramatized political spectacle, at the same time they are concerned that investigations by Congress, the press, independent counsels,
and prosecutors may go too far and become disconnected from common
sense and common decency. They feel that the attack culture diminishes accountability in government, and Samuelson perceived a backlash
against this culture in the public ambivalence shown in polls. A majority of the people do not trust Clinton personally, but his job approval ratings have remained as high as approximately 60% from January toAugust of 1998. He concludes that Clinton has beneﬁted, in part, frompublic sympathy for the targets of this attack culture.

124

NORIKO HIRABAYASHIAs far as public cynicism is concerned, the press can be criticized for
its attack culture and routine dependence on a showdown frame. It
prefers to focus on conﬂicts rather than consensus, unspoken strategies
and motives rather than spoken words, and on a political “horse race”
rather than substantial details in policy debates. The press sometimes
applies this frame even when a consensus does in fact exist, as Cappellaand Jamieson suggested in their discussion of how “conﬂicts” between
Clinton and Gingrich were covered and how the way politics are covered might affect public cynicism.52 While we have not conducted a content analysis of the news coverage of the tobacco debate, the press
seemed to focus on how difﬁcult—rather than how feasible—it would
be for parties to reach an agreement on this issue. It reported lurid
episodes of struggles for money and votes, stories of conspiracies anddeceit behind the scenes, and a strained relationship between the
President and Congress.
Even when we admit that all this reﬂects the way politics is conducted, the press could still focus on the common ground of policy objectives and weigh arguments in terms of practical effects on resolution. In
the very least, the press should not “get in the way” of politicians whochallenge what is on a difﬁcult agenda. James Fallows, a former
Washington editor of the Atlantic Monthly, presents a case of this in
regard to Clinton’s 1994 health care reform plan,53 and we can suspectthat several of the press performances referred to by Fallows reappearedin the tobacco case. For example, the press focused on the advertisement
campaigns countering Clinton’s initiatives as business-as-usual in the
Washington spin wars, which paradoxically caused people to pay more
attention to the advertisements and to perceive the dissidents as more
vocal than they actually were. The press also enjoyed treating politics asa horse race and ended up presenting a sinister view of the defeat of thetobacco bill and the weakened power of the President, suggesting that
there was no future for the administration as well as for Clinton’s proposals. Popular cynicism about politics is deepened by media coveragethat is inclined to emphasize these aspects, the dark side of the modern
political process.54
MEDIA FRENZIES OVER THE PRESIDENT’S PUBLIC AND PRIVATE FACES
The press can also get in the way by paying too much attention to theprivate lives of politicians. Certainly the press should inform the public

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125

and thus should criticize those in power, as demonstrated by some laudable works of investigative reporting on the tobacco business.55 Its
appetite for disclosing information from “behind the scenes” leads tocrossing conventional boundaries between the public and the private,56
and covering some personal issues might even help the public become
familiar with politicians and politics.57
Nevertheless, the press may be criticized for these transgressions if
they divert time and space from coverage of substantial policy discussions. The press has long focused on Clinton’s “dark” personal side, oron his distinct public and private characters, and he has suffered fromthis sort of press scrutiny since the beginning of his political career.58
The press sometimes excuses itself by saying that it offers what the public wants, yet a gap exists between what the public actually wants to know
about politics and what the press believes to be the case. A poll conducted after the 1998 State of the Union address showed that a majorityof the people were tired of coverage of the President’s scandals and evensuspected that the press was interested in “getting it ﬁrst” rather than“getting it right.”59 Even after the focus shifted from the sex scandals tothe alleged perjury and possible impeachment of the President, a majority of the people still found the press to be paying too much attention tohis affair with Lewinsky and wanted it to address more important issues
such as measures to defend against terrorism.60
As Samuelson put it, public ambivalence over personal evaluation andjob approval can be accounted for, in part, by this gap between the people and those “inside the beltway.” People seem to value the president’s
public work and accomplishments ﬁrst and foremost, not his supremacy as a leader or his sexual morality as a person. Public ambivalence also
could be a sign that people now long for a presidency that functions well,as part of a government working to beneﬁt the people ﬁrst. People may
wish to see in him part of a system that can work, and this is exactly what
Clinton’s strategic leadership and communications aims for as it uses its
resources to focus on his public work, while evading attacks from thepress and his rivals.61
The question is how far this “predominance-of-the-public-over-theprivate” strategy works for his presidency. In the tobacco debate,
Clinton’s business-as-usual style and the shift of focus failed him. Aftera federal judge dismissed Paula Jones’s sexual harassment lawsuit
against him on April 1, 1998, Clinton commented that the decision wasin the interests of the American people. He said it would make him

126

NORIKO HIRABAYASHI“freer” to focus attention on important issues such as tobacco, education,and Social Security.62 However, because of the attention paid to his affair
with Lewinsky, he could not move these issues along by taking the initiative in debates. To blame were the media frenzy, partisan moves inand out of Congress, Clinton’ s lack of resources, his tactical failures,and even his other burdens at home and abroad.
We will suggest here one more factor, the nature of his agenda in the
tobacco war. Tobacco is a subtle issue because it concerns the personal
lives of people, as have many other agendas proposed by Clinton who
likes to target particularly the baby-boomer parents. His agenda for thepeople ﬁts the common slogan of the baby boomer generation, “the personal is the political.” Framing the tobacco agenda as an appealing “personal-as-well-as-political” issue would bring personal values into the
public policy debate. Those who are parents may share the values in his
agendas or even accept his “parent” framing of tobacco, so they may feelbetrayed as parents when they hear or read about his misbehavior. This
creates a situation in which the personal rebounds into the public domain
in people’s minds. Despite their stated interest in values, but not in the
President’s morals, parents tend to intertwine them and thereby twist apossible advantage in Clinton’s strategic leadership into a disadvantage.
Another risk of Clinton’s “campaign-like” governing strategies rests
in his crammed package of agendas. Each agenda represents a symbol
and constitutes a part of the whole blueprint of his responsive presidency. The linkages were not only rhetorical but also substantial in the tobacco case since the tobacco money might be used for funding otherinitiatives. Failure in the tobacco agenda goes far to invite the perception, mainly in the press, that his government will fail to produce important outcomes and has fallen into a “lame duck” situation. This viewmight handicap him as a player in perception politics and in getting new
tobacco legislation enacted, partly because Congress will feel less pressured by the President and even by the press that is devoted to his personal problems.63
Clinton responds to people as a public ofﬁcial, even when he pretends
to establish a personal form of communication with his audience by presenting himself in an intimate style and talking about the daily concernsof people. His work and messages should be evaluated in this context.
If, however, the press confuses the character and style of “the messenger” with his “message,” and if the responsive and personal-as-well-aspublic nature of Clinton’s government is not a strategy, but a philosophy,

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127

this performance of the press might have contributed not just to defeating the tobacco bill, but to weakening the presidency.

NOTES
1
Dee Dee Myers, “New Technologies and the 1992 Clinton Presidential Campaign,”
American Behavioral Scientist 37, no.2 (1993): 181–187.
2
See Lawrence R. Jacobs and Robert Y. Shapiro, “Public Opinion in President
Clinton’s First Year: Leadership and Responsiveness,” in The Clinton Presidency, ed.
S.A. Renshon (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1995), 195–211.
3
See, for example, Susan Wagner, Cigarette Country (New York: Praeger, 1971);
Philip J. Hilts, Smokescreen (New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 1996); and GlennFrankel, “Decades after Declaration, War on Smoking Begins,” Washington Post, 24
August 1996.
4
Outline given by Robert V. Friedenberg in Communication Consultants in Political
Campaigns (New York: Praeger, 1997), chapters 1 and 7.
5
Craig A. Smith, “Rough Stretches and Honest Disagreements: Is Bill Clinton
Redeﬁning the Rhetorical Presidency?” in The Clinton Presidency, eds. R. E. Denton,
Jr. and R. L. Holloway (New York: Praeger, 1996), 225–247.
6
Jacobs and Shapiro, “Public Opinion,” 195–211.
7
Bruce I. Newman, The Marketing of the President (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage,
1994), 22 and, for his model of political marketing, 11–23.
8
The argument here was developed further by the author in “Kurinton to ‘Fokasu
Gurupu Daitoryosei’” [“Clinton and the ‘Focus-Group Presidency’”], Saitama Daigaku
Kiyo: Kyoyogakubu / Saitama University Review 33, no.2 (1997): 111–154 (in Japanese).
See also Elisabeth Kolbert, “Test-Marketing a President,” New York Times Magazine,
30 August 1992.
9
John A. Maltese deﬁnes the term in Spin Control, 2d ed. (Chapel Hill, N.C.:
University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 215–216: “to manipulate not only what
administration ofﬁcials are saying but also what the media are saying about them.
Spinning a story involves twisting it to one’s advantage, using surrogates, press releases, radio actualities, and other friendly sources to deliver the line from an angle thatputs the story in the best possible light.”
10
S. J. Ball-Rokeach, G. J. Power, K. K. Guthrie, and H. R. Waring, “Value-Framing
Abortion in the United States,” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 2(1990): 249–273.
11
Seiichi Kondo, Yugamerareru Nihon Imeji [The Distorted Image of Japan] (Tokyo:
Simul Press, 1997).
12
An example of this sort of spin is discussed in Michael Kelly, “Clinton’s Economic
Plan,” New York Times, 18 February 1993.
13
Dick Morris, Behind the Oval Ofﬁce (New York: Random House, 1997), 80–85.
14Smith, “Rough Stretches,” 225–247.
15
Alan Greenblatt, “Amendments and Ads Bury ‘Inviolable’ Tobacco Bill,”
Congressional Quarterly (20 June 1998), 1670–1671.
16
For a chronology of these discussions, see The Washington Post Index (annual, Ann
Arbor, Mich.: UMI) and CDC-TIPS (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Tobacco Information and Prevention Source), accessible on the web (http://www.cdc.gov/).

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17
His ﬁrst remark on the war on tobacco, dated August 10, 1995, is available fromthe Federal News Service, an on-line data source of the Lexis-Nexis database(http://www.lexis-nexis.com/). See also “Key Elements of the President’s Plan to
Reduce Children’s Use of Tobacco,” dated August 23, 1996, on the web site for the
Health and Human Services (http://www.hhs/gov/).
18
CDC-TIPS, “Targeting Tobacco Use: At-A-Glance 1998.”
19
See, for example, Hilts, Smokescreen, particularly chapters 7–9 and 11–13. Besides
the actors noted here, agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission andthe Federal Trade Commission have also played key roles in monitoring tobacco and its
marketing.
20
This was his ﬁrst remark on restricting tobacco advertisements and dated to August
10, 1995. See the Federal News Service (see note 17).
21
Gallup polls conducted from 1987 to 1994 revealed that an increasing number ofpeople have been opposed to smoking in public places, while a majority agreed with theidea to “set aside areas” for smokers rather than either to ban smoking or to have norestrictions. See The Gallup Poll Monthly, March 1994. In a 1997 poll which asked who
was to blame for the health problems of smokers, a majority of the respondents ascribed
it completely or mostly to individual smokers, while 25% blamed tobacco companies
and 10% answered “both equally” (The Gallup Poll Monthly, May 1997).
22
Ceci Connolly and John Mintz, “3 Allies, 3 Motives for War on Tobacco,”
Washington Post, 31 March 1998.
23
Morris, Behind the Oval Ofﬁce, 207–234, 293–308.
24
Cited from the transcript available from the New York Times on the web(http://www.nytimes.com/specials/issues/ihome/debate6.html). The ﬁrst presidential
debate, held on October 6, 1996 at the Bushnell Theater in Hartford, Connecticut, andmoderated by Jim Lehrer from PBS, dealt with nearly two dozen issues including thatof campaign ﬁnancing.
25
Nancy Gibbs, “Up in Smoke,” Time, 29 June 1998, 42–44.
26
Clinton delivered the 1998 State of the Union Address on January 27 and demanded that Congress pass some tobacco legislation:

we must help parents protect their children from the gravest health threat that they face: an epidemic of teen smoking spread by multimillion dollar marketing campaigns. I challenge
Congress. Let’s pass bipartisan, comprehensive legislation that will improve public health, protect our tobacco farmers, and change the way tobacco companies do business forever. Let’s dowhat it takes to bring teen smoking down. Let’s raise the price of cigarettes by up to $1.50 apack over the next 10 years, with penalties on the tobacco industry if it keeps marketing to ourchildren. Now tomorrow, like every day, 3,000 children will start smoking, and a thousand will
die early as a result. Let this Congress be remembered as the Congress that saved their lives.

The full text of the address is available from the Federal News Service (see note 17),and more information about it is in note 36.
27
See Hilts, Smokescreen, chapters 11 and 12.
28
John F. Harris and Ceci Connolly, “Clinton Suffers Major Defeat on Tobacco,”
Washington Post, 18 June 1998.
29
Issues in the debate were: the amount of payment for medical and other related costsby the tobacco industry and the level and period of cigarette tax hikes, the legal liability of the industry (immunity from class-action lawsuits and an annual ceiling limit ondamages from legal claims), the FDA’s authority for regulation, and how to spend thepayment made by the industry (research and prevention programs, protection of tobacco farmers, spending on drug-control programs).
30
See Ceci Connolly, “ ‘At War’ with Tobacco, Clinton Woos Farmers,” Washington

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129

Post, 10 April 1998. Clinton met with tobacco growers in Kentucky the day after thenation’s leading cigarette manufacturers declared they were abandoning negotiations on
Capitol Hill.
31
Data from the Federal News Service (see note 17). Those referring to tobacco during the three months were “Remarks by Clinton upon Return from Chicago” (given on
April 9), “Panel Discussion with Clinton and Tobacco Farmers” (April 9), “Clinton
Remarks at Rose Garden Event” (April 20), “Clinton Remarks on 1998 Legislative
Agendas” (April 21), “Clinton Remarks at Rose Garden Event” (April 27), “Statement
by Clinton” (May 14), “Clinton Remarks at White House Event” (May 20), “Clinton
Weekly Radio Address” (June 6), “Clinton Statement on Tobacco” (June 17), and“Clinton Remarks” (June 20).
32
See Frankel, “Decades after Declaration.”33
See David E. Rosenbaum, “White House Warns Congress Tobacco Ad Limits May
Be Unconstitutional,” New York Times, 3 March 1998.
34
Alexis Simendinger, “A Strategy, of Sorts, on Tobacco,” National Journal (14February 1998), 350–351.
35
Remark given by Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot on the PBS program
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, 10 April 1998. For political motives and shifting frames,
also see David E. Rosenbaum, “Politics of Tobacco: Taxes vs. Kids,” New York Times,
21 June 1998.
36
Gibbs, “Up in Smoke,” 44. In his 1998 State of the Union Address, Clinton referredﬁrst to the federal deﬁcit, and then to a variety of domestic agendas including the budget for targeted tax cuts and Social Security, minimum wage for laborers, education,
welfare, health care, tobacco (see note 26 for a quotation), child care, crime and druguse, smaller government, pollution, food safety, environment, race, medical research,and the Internet. See the Federal News Service (note 17) for details.
37
John F. Harris, “Clinton’s Domestic Policy Hopes Fade,” Washington Post, 21 June
1998.
38
The 1998 tobacco debate took place at the same time as investigations into Clinton’saffair with Lewinsky, the chronology being: after the press reported about Lewinsky,
the President denied allegations of a sexual relationship and of suborning perjury (21January); Clinton was subpoenaed by a grand jury (17 July); after testifying before thegrand jury, he publicly acknowledged an improper relationship (17 August); Kenneth
Starr, the Independent Counsel, submitted his report with details about the affair toCongress (9 September); tapes of Clinton’s testimony were released by Congress to the
public (21 September); the House of Representatives approved an open-ended
impeachment inquiry into the President (8 October); the House of Representatives
impeached the President, charging him with perjury before a grand jury and obstructionof justice (19 December); the impeachment trial of President Clinton began in the Senate(7 January 1999); and the Senate acquitted the President on two articles of impeachment, falling short of a majority vote on either of the charges against him (12 February1999).
39
Remark given by Paul Gigot on NewsHour, 19 April 1998.
40
See Greenblatt, “Amendments and Ads,” 1669.
41
See Alison Mitchell, “Warfare over Tobacco Bill Could Make It or Break It,” NewYork Times, 27 April 1998.
42
Tobacco companies also ran advertisements in newspapers to counter Clinton’s
tobacco plan after his 1995 proposal. For the 1998 campaign and its impact, see Melinda
Henneberger, “Tobacco Industry’s Ad Campaign Strikes a Responsive Chord,” NewYork Times, 22 May 1998; and Saundra Torry and Helen Dewar, “Big Tobacco’s Ad

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Blitz Felt in Senate Debate,” Washington Post, 17 June 1998. In mid August, the JusticeDepartment looked into allegations that the industry had offered some Republican senators favorable advertising, designed to provide “political cover” in exchange for votes
against tobacco legislation. See Jeffrey Taylor, “Is Tobacco Industry Playing Politics
with Issue Ads?” Wall Street Journal, 1 September 1998.
43
Clinton’s comment was quoted and analyzed in Peter Baker and Saundra Torry,“Clinton Scolds Tobacco Lobby for Ad Campaign,” Washington Post, 16 June 1998.
44
The Gallup poll on “Clinton Job Approval Ratings on Issues” was conducted on
August 23–25, 1996. Of all the surveyed items, policies on tobacco and smoking
acquired the highest approval, 63%, and education was the second highest (60%approved, 33% disapproved). In this survey, majorities approved his handling of diplomacy, the economy, education, crime, welfare, environmental issues, tobacco and smoking, and national defense.
45
For the response of the press, see the National Journal (27 September 1997), 1919.
For the public response, see Alexis Simendinger, “The Slow Burn on a Tobacco Deal,”
National Journal (13 September 1997), 1794; and “Poll Detects Widespread Skepticism
About Proposed Tobacco Deal,” New York Times, 30 August 1997. On public skepticism, the Gallup poll conducted on June 23–24, 1997 showed that (1) people were split
over or uncertain about the settlement (asked whether the President and Congress should
accept it as it was, 40% of the people had no opinion, while “approve” registered 20%,
“make changes” 25%, and “should reject” 16%); (2) more than 60% agreed on (a) banning outdoor advertisements and vending machines and (b) the industry funding
Medicaid for children, despite being split on the industry sponsoring events and its legal
liability; and (3) nearly half of them did not believe that the settlement would contributeto a signiﬁcant decline in the number of smokers (adults and teens) in the long run.
46
The CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, conducted immediately after the address andreleased on 27 January 1998, showed that 84% of the nation had a “very” or “somewhat” positive reaction to the speech. Clinton’s job approval rating also reached 67%,
according to a Washington Post poll released on 1 February. See notes 26 and 36 for
information about the address.
47
NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, released on 22 April 1998.
48
See, for example, Barry Meier, “Politics of Youth Smoking Fueled by Unproven
Data,” New York Times, 20 May 1998. According to Meier,Social issues often spark unfounded claims cloaked in the reason of science. But the debate oversmoking, politically packaged around the emotional subject of the health of children, is charged
with hyperbole, some experts say. Politicians and policy makers have tossed out dozens of estimates about the impact of various strategies on youth smoking rates, ﬁgures that turn out to be
based on projections rather than fact.
49
For the spin war concerning these poll results, see Torry and Dewar, “Big Tobacco’s
Ad Blitz.” The ENACT survey was released on 16 June in the “Statement 6/16/98: Poll:
Americans want McCain tobacco bill passed, public health funding restored,” which canbe accessed, for example, on the web site for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free-Kids(http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/html/statement_6_16_98.html).
50
See Gibbs, “Up in Smoke,”42.
51
Robert J. Samuelson, “The Attack Culture Revisited,” Washington Post, 26 August
1998.
52
Joseph A. Cappella and Kathleen H. Jamieson, Spiral of Cynicism (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997), 3–16.
53
James Fallows, Breaking the News (New York: Pantheon Books, 1996), 182–234.

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54
See the argument made by the Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz in“Public Declines to Share Media’s Sense of Betrayal,” Washington Post, 15 September
1998.
55
Examples from the New York Times are in Hilts, Smokescreen, particularly chapters
7–9 and 11–13.
56
Joshua Meyrowitz, No Sense of Place (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985),
chapters 5, 6, 8–11, and 13.
57
Lisbett Van Zoonen, “A Tyranny of Intimacy? Women, Femininity and TelevisionNews,” in Communication and Citizenship, eds. P. Dahlgren and C. Sparks (London:
Routledge, 1991), 216–235.
58
Press scrutiny and Clinton’s press relations are examined in Martha Kumer,“President Clinton Meets the Media: Communications Shaped by Predictable Patterns,”
in The Clinton Presidency, ed. S. A. Renshon, 167–193. While some journalists andauthors see many facets in Clinton’s personality and governing style, others focus on
his “two” faces or “double” lives, particularly after the news about his affair with
Lewinsky broke out. For examples of the former, see David Maraniss, First in His Class(New York: Touchstone, 1995); and Todd Purdum, “Facets of Clinton,” New York Times
Magazine, 19 May 1996. Good examples of the latter are Jonathan Alter, “The Two Mr.
Clintons,” Newsweek, 24 August 1998, 22–26; and Robert D. McFadden, John Kifner
and N. R. Kleinﬁeld, “10 Days in the White House: Public Acts and Secret Trysts,” NewYork Times, 14 September 1998.
59
CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released on January 29, 1998.
60
See David S. Broder and Richard Morin, “American Voters See Two Very Different
Bill Clintons,” Washington Post, 23 August 1998, which showed that 76% of the nation
still regarded the press to be paying too much attention to the Lewinsky scandal, twopoints higher than in January according to the Washington Post/ABC News polls. See
also the Media Studies Center survey result, cited in Richard Morin, “Higher Marks for
the Media,” Washington Post, 7 September 1998.
61
Focusing on Clinton’s public work was to draw attention to his achievements andlegitimate objectives, as well as to reduce interest in his personal life. Former Chief ofStaff Leon Panetta and two former Presidential advisors, David Gergen and George
Stephanopoulos, commented on this on ABC Nightline, “Clinton—Public Person,
Private Life,” aired on 15 September 1998.
62
Peter Baker, “Clinton Says He Feels ‘Freer’ to Focus on Duties,” Washington Post,
6 April 1998.
63
See Helen Dewar, “As Congress Winds Up Work, Legislative Casualties Mount,”
Washington Post, 5 October 1998.