Jeff Greenfield Recalls Hottest Topic in 1984 Presidential Election

Of all things, the most pressing issue on veteran political reporter Jeff Greenfield’s mind today was whether the country would, at some point, feel any empathy toward basketball player LeBron James, the Miami Heat’s vaunted superstar whose team lost the NBA Championship last night to the Dallas Mavericks.
 
“After the game he said all the people hating on him can go back to their pathetic little creepy lives,” Imus reported about James, doubting public sentiment would turn in his favor. Presumably, one of the people to whom James referred is Rep. Anthony Weiner, whose creepy life has been on display to the world for the last week or so.
 
“Frankly, I’m kind of tired of it,” Greenfield said, and recalled attending an endless political dinner where somebody once got up and said, “Everything that needs to be said has been said, it’s just that not everybody has said it yet.”
 
He suspected the photographs and conversation transcripts between Weiner and his online sexual conquests make this situation worse than what President Clinton faced in the late 1990s, because “there’s something about seeing these exchanges in the cold, light of day.” Interestingly, Greenfield added, “Weiner is very likely going to pay a much bigger price for virtual adultery than the President of the United States did for actual adultery.”
 
But Weiner is not the only politician acting recklessly lately: last week, 16 of Newt Gingrich’s staffers on his presidential campaign abruptly quit, leading Mike Lupica’s son Chris to marvel at the fact that as many as 16 people had supported Gingrich at all.
 
“This is a guy whose greatest enemy or adversary politically was himself,” Greenfield said of the former House Speaker and current Republican candidate for president. “He just does not have a gyroscope. He does not have a kind of control over his own belief that he is not just an ordinary politician, but an intellectual and an historian who thinks great thoughts.”
 
That Gingrich thought he could run for president but not campaign shows hubris, in Greenfield’s view. “I don’t know any political figure, no matter how impressive, who has ever succeeded at something like the presidency without just getting in and trying to do it,” he said.
 
Imus believes 2012 will Mitt Romney’s year, if for no other reason than The Book of Mormon won nine Tony Awards at last night’s ceremony, including Best Musical. “I think it’s written in the stars, Jeff,” Imus said.
 
Greenfield was hesitant to ascribe to Imus’s ridiculous theory, observing that many people thought the 1983 movie “The Right Stuff,” about astronauts, would propel astronaut John Glenn to presidential glory in 1984. Imus, however, had other things to worry about in those days.
 
“You know what I was thinking in ’83?” he said. “Why I couldn’t get a cocaine dealer who lived in Manhattan, rather than the guy I was dealing with in Queens.”
 
It was, Greenfield conceded, a pivotal matter at the time. “I remember people debating how inconvenient it was for you to get your cocaine,” he said. “I think it turned the whole New York primary around.”
 
That’s more like it.
 
-Julie Kanfer