THE POWERS THAT BE

by David Haiberstam ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 10, 1979

Good-by to The Best and the Brightest, Halberstam's previous incarnation of pre-eminence: the real powers that be, the president-makers and policy-shapers, are the prime media magnates--Paley of CBS, Luce of Time Inc., the proprietors of the N. Y. Times, L. A. Times, and Washington Post. Plus their rattled or raging front-men, star reporters, spouses. . . . Halberstam has here a panoramic drama, grossly inflated at the outset and saddled with a Grand-Hotel scenario, that still manages to tighten the net around recent traumatic events: Vietnam and Watergate. ""All of politics has changed because of you. . . you guys in the media,"" LBJ charged. So Haiberstam, in tacit agreement, goes back to FDR's mastery of radio, which ""personalized"" the presidency, and the advent of slick, ""pretty boy"" radio correspondents. He describes Luce's tilt toward Willkie--who, like FDR, ""had a wonderful face for the era of modern photojournalism""--and, chillingly, Luce's disenchantment with Teddy White's reporting on China when White lost faith in Chiang (with the result that one man's bias determined the national perception of events). Then comes, incident by incident, the ascendancy of entertainment and the decline of sober, reflective Ed Murrow at ""more powerful, more timorous"" CBS; the creation of Eisenhower as an all-American (i.e., nonpartisan) candidate by the admiring Paley and the pragmatic Luce (who then dumped and stabbed Taft); and, in the 1952 Eisenhower presidential campaign, the debut of ""a new American art form,"" linking advertising, political, and television skills. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles and Washington, two family sagas are unreeling (featuring pushy, semi-posh Buff Chandler and ""Mad Phillip"" Graham) that will turn the rich, disreputable L. A. Times, Nixon's original sponsor, and the poor but honest Washington Post, his scourge, into peers of the N. Y. Times (which Halberstam, citing Gay Talese's history, treats only briefly). Vietnam, then, pits a powerful, media-made White House against ""a small handful of reporters,"" closing the ring. Here, in one of Halberstam's finest cameos, is Time's Frank McCulloch, an ex-Marine sympathetic to the military, painfully realizing that ""the price was too high,"" and stymied--unable, like White before him, to put across his views at home. But when the media finally turn on the White House, the stage is set for Watergate. Shall the rising, still-precarious Washington Post print the Pentagon Papers after the N. Y. Times is gagged? Kay Graham's go-ahead is the effective prelude to All the President's Men. A smashing imaginative projection--based on interviews with everyone--that should win its share of prizes and sweep the ratings.

Pub Date: May 10, 1979

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1979

Categories: NONFICTION