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By Jay Bushinsky
The Jerusalem Post
January 19, 2012
Should a successful career in the news media catapult ambitious journalists into the political arena as candidates for high public office?
The answer is no.
That is not the way it is in the U.S.A., UK, France or any of the world's other genuine democracies.
None one of the 44 men elected to the American presidency since 1789 were newspaper reporters, radio correspondents or television anchors. Nor have the British or French recruited national leaders from the ranks of their respective news media.
There is good reason for this.
Coverage or analysis of current events in democratic countries requires objectivity, honesty and independence. Journalists who engage in this activity cannot have ulterior motives or secret agendas. If such duplicity were exposed these individuals would lose credibility.
That is why outstanding personalities in the American news media such as Edward R. Murrow, William L. Shirer and Walter Cronkite never became candidates for elected office. Their popularity and renown might have won them impressive victories at the polls, but never has there been a single case in which this presumed advantage was put to the test.
And rightly so.
One need only consider the mental pressures that political ambition would have generated in the back of these men's minds. One of them presumably would be to avoid offending key people whose support or funding they might require once they threw their hats into the proverbial political ring.
And since the psychological, intellectual and practical preparations for a crossover from news media to politics transpire are not am overnight problem, the self-imposed restrictions on the scope of their reporting would undermine its quality if not its honesty or fairness over a relatively long period of time.
These considerations surfaced dramatically in Israel when TV's Friday night anchor and newspaper columnist, Yair Lapid, announced that he will run in the next national election.
Actually, he was following the example set by my his late father, Yosef "Tommy" Lapid, my close friend and esteemed colleague, whose popularity as a TV panelist on "Popolitika" and columns in Maariv enabled him to establish the "Shinui" party, win a seat in the subsequent Knesset and rise to a cabinet post IN the next national election.
His decision probably was facilitated to a certain extent by the fact that Israel's political world has become a virtual playground for journalists-turned-politicians. The Labor party's chair, Sheli Yachimovich, was a familiar voice on Kol Yisrael (the Voice of Israel) for several decades. Daniel Ben-Simon and Nitzan Horowitz transformed themselves from Haaretz correspondents to members of the Knesset, the former for Labor and the latter for Meretz. Before their switchovers, Nachman Shai of Kadima, who served as TV Channel One's military affairs reporter, already had qualified as a veteran parliamentarian as had Uri Orbach of Yisrael Beiteinu, a right-wing political party stalwart who previously worked as a reporter for an orthodox daily.
All of these journalists-turned-politicians have a common shortcoming: None of them entered politics at the rank-and-file level, but only as full-fledged parliamentarians with relatively secure seats and guaranteed salaries -- not to mention the lavish perks available to Knesset members. They never experienced the challenges of working their way up their respective parties' ladders to popular leadership or coped with subtleties of inter-personal relations with active and influential party colleagues who do not necessarily hold prestigious governmental offices, local or national.
Nor did any of them ever become public officials before making their debuts as Knesset deputies. That shortcoming differs sharply from the careers of such genuine national leaders as Franklin D. Roosevelt, who served as governor of the State of New York prior to his entry into the White House or Winston S. Churchill, who was a member of Parliament and a cabinet minister before his unexpected elevation to the premiership in 1940, (due to the exigencies of World War II and Great Britain's precarious military situation during the conflict's initial phase).
New and especially charismatic candidates often have unique objectives. If Lapid had emerged as the champion of the grass roots campaign for "social justice" this would have been easily-understandable.
Likewise, if he had come up with a serious and reasonable solution to the dispute with the Palestinians of the West Bank (other than 'two states for two peoples)' his candidacy would have attracted considerable interest if not innocent curiosity. Even more impressive would have been for him to have advocated a formula for dealing with the Gaza Strip's Hamas regime and its potentially deadly launching of home-made Qassam rockets and Grad missiles at Israeli territory. Had he done so, his cause would have
attracted considerable support.
The bottom line is that entry into national politics should not be reduced to the level of a popularity contest based on the impact of personality rather than original ideas or proposals the objectives of which might solve urgent problems.
By the same token and with all due respect and sympathy, No'am Shalit's surprise announcement that he too decided to vie for a Knesset seat as a veteran and loyal Laborite -- this after the entire nation had agreed on a non-partisan basis to jeopardize its security by consenting to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to trade more than 1,000 Palestinians imprisoned for terrorism for his son, Gil'ad, who had been kidnapped by Gaza Strip gunmen.
There seems to be something inherently wrong in the widespread notion that the relentless and ultimately successful public relations drive he conducted along with his wife, Aviva, proved his ability to succeed in politics.
Since when is a public relations success a logical prelude to political activity?
Do his fellow Laborites expect him to introduce new techniques and skills to their seemingly hopeless bid to restore the preeminence their party enjoyed from 1948 to 1974?
A footnote to all this derives from the hackneyed saying, 'tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you who you are.' Lapid reportedly is backed by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a man who is waging desperate legal battles against charges of corruption and malfeasance, not to mention several cronies prominent in the realm of dubious financial or business activity to whose inner circle he (Lapid) reportedly belongs. If this is true, Lapid may be a marked man once his political ambitions are put to the electoral test.
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