The Insider's Guide to the McLaughlin Group

Ronald Reagan claimed he had The McLaughlin Group figured out: "John took a simple Sunday-morning discussion format out of the issues of our day and, using the insight, skill and great humility that have become his trademark, managed to turn it into a political version of Animal House."

Wrong! The McLaughlin Group owes nothing to the sonorous intonations of television's Sabbath pundits. Ex-Jesuit and former denizen of the Nixon White House, John McLaughlin recognized that the tube was no place merely to read op-ed pieces. So he turned to a format guaranteed to entertain audiences: the Jesuit classroom. It's so obvious that it's a wonder no one thought of it at the dawn of television: Ignatius Loyola meets the video age.

Before the White House job, before the television career, McLaughlin was a Catholic-prep-school master whose students reportedly called him Father God. McLaughlin groupie Fred Barnes acknowledges the connection: "John treats us like kids, but we're not afraid. We're old enough."

Well, maybe. Barnes, Eleanor Clift, Jack Germond, Morton Kondracke and Clarence Page all sport impeccable credentials, but even syndicated columnists, New Republic editors and a Pulitzer Prize winner must conform to the centuries-old formula. Groupies even report encounters with Jesuit-educated viewers who are on to McLaughlin's technique. The former students understand the panelists' plight, dealing with "an overbearing know-it-all" who attempts to elicit concise analyses of the subject at hand. The Jesuitical method provokes rapid-fire recitation while dangling the threat of humiliation. And no, McLaughlin did not adapt the name game to taunt Kondracke. The caricatured pronunciation of a student's name is the old Jesuit warning that it's time to (continued on page 219)McLaughlin Group(continued from page 176) stand and deliver brilliant exegeses or risk the consequences.

Of course, McLaughlin's charges want to be recognized by their teacher. They also want to rack up points by demolishing one another's arguments. Like students everywhere, they also talk outside of class.

It's easier to leave the Jesuits than "The McLaughlin Group":

"I'm forever Mor-Tahn," says Kondracke. "It'll be written on my tombstone." According to his friend Barnes, "Even Mort's kids call him Mor-Tahn now."

Morton Kondracke assays the higher meaning of "The McLaughlin Group"

"You really get people's gut feelings as opposed to what they think. You can't correct yourself. On a vaguely serious level, we're a reflection of sentiment in the country. If people watch week in and week out, they'll get a sense of where opinion is in the country. We have a small role in helping to ventilate the opinions of various groups."

Jack Germond assays the higher meaning:

"The McLaughlin Group put my daughter through medical school."

Good television, bad television:

"It's a good show when the professor lets me talk and isn't constantly interrupting me," says Kondracke. "There are shows when I barely get a word in edgewise. I don't like those."

Jack Germond on when it's time to turn off the show:

"When Barnes and I agree."

On the value of a prestigious position such as senior editor of "The New Republic":

Says Clift, "John tends to hammer on Morton, who can go either way on an issue and sometimes goes both ways at once. If McLaughlin's getting bored, he's going to cut Mori off."

On the value of appearances on prestigious television shows such as "The MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour":

Page: "I go on all the shows and McLaughlin is the only one that gets me a reaction in airports and hotels."

The care and feeding of fireworks:

Former groupie Patrick Buchanan charged that the "Israel Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States" were the only advocates of an Iraq war. That raised a fire storm in the national media. The eruptions are usually more local in nature. Barnes is fuzzy on the exact content of his remarks, which inspired Clift to let loose with a blast that included references to Adolf Hitler. "You try not to get spontaneously angry on television," Barnes says. "That time I did." But he claims he's developed effective countermeasures. "I maximize the times I use the term abortion on demand. That gets her goat."

Closely guarded secret:

There's hardly any venom in Barnes's voice when he says, "Eleanor and I get along just fine. We don't socialize."

Reading tea leaves:

Kondracke: "I correctly predicted that Violetta Chamorro would win the Nicaraguan elections. That wasn't off the top of my head. I'm reporting all week long and thinking of predictions all week. I don't want to be sitting there without one."

Germond: "I predicted, for no reason, that Republican Senator Charles Mathias would retire. When he did, his staff called me and asked if I'd known something they didn't. I said I write for the Baltimore Sun and if I really knew something, I'd put it in the paper."

Germond adds, "Yeah, I was wrong on the Kentucky Derby, but Pine Bluff won the Preakness."

Are the liberals taking over?

Barnes: "I'm the only conservative left. Liberals used to complain about the show being tilted so far right. Not anymore. I'd like to be someone of such strength and power that I would overcome all these other people. On foreign policy I get Mort. He's usually harder to predict. He's pretty good on values issues, but he's for gays in the military."

Depends on where you sit. That's not the view from the so-called whiner's chair, occupied by Clift.

Clift's perspective: "I'm slightly left of center, but I look like a far-out liberal in that group."

Women have to work twice as hard to prove themselves:

Clift: "At first I felt I just interrupted a men's game. They'd let me speak and then go back to what they were doing." Now, at least, the guys pay attention. "There's a lot of finger-pointing by Fred and Mort. It's that look of 'Now we're going to educate you.'"

Surprising revelation from Jack Germond:

"I'm amazed at the numbers and types of people watching this kind of stuff," he says. "And not just in Washington. Black teenage parking-lot attendants came up to me in Houston and told me they watch it."

How groupies get McLaughlin's attention:

Barnes: "I learned the hard way. Be very aggressive. Keep talking when someone else is. I slide out to the end of my chair and throw my whole body out. You've got to use a lot of body language to get McLaughlin to look your way."

"Watch the show with the sound off," Page advises. "It's not a talk show. I now see why Barnes jumps up and down so much." He adds, "It wasn't my Pulitzer that kept me above the fray. I just couldn't get a word in edgewise."

He'd go home and tell his wife what great points he'd made and she'd give him a blank look. She couldn't recall him saying anything at all. She suggested some sort of gesture would help, but Page's mother always taught him that pointing was rude. He devised an original move: "I throw my hands out like I'm rolling dice."

Clift: "I'm in that outside chair and smaller in body size, so I do have to come out of the chair a little."

Reports that liken Germond to Buddha may be exaggerated. Page claims that Germond will occasionally preface a comment by touching his nose.

No kneeling to the electronic media here:

Barnes: "I hold the printed word in high esteem. I know Mort does. I don't know about John anymore. We've all been reporters for years and years andwe still do a lot of it. John was never a conventional journalist or an opinion journalist except for a short stint at the National Review. We're superior in terms of being Washington journalists. He's superior in terms of being a television personality. 'John's perfect for television. He's a ham, a blowhard, histrionic, mean and abusive." He quickly adds, 'John's pushed the genre of the television chat show to a new area, and I'm delighted to be a part of it. He doesn't need me."

Kondracke: "If you want information, you should get it from the written word."

Germond: "My attitude toward television? I'm a print reporter."

Proof that Barnes needs to refine his television persona:

On Saturday Night lives, parody of the group, "Mike Myers plays me and he doesn't do anything."

On former groupie Patrick Buchanan:

Despite her judgment that Patrick Buchanan's Republican Convention speech was advocating a race war, Clift does have a fond memory of the former groupie: "Buchanan was a real gentleman. He never interrupted on the show."

Page: "Buchanan was easy to get along with. He thinks the wrong side won the Civil War. He thinks the South got a raw deal. I'd tell him, 'But, Pat, we'd still be property.'" Pat was a bully character. He would have beat me up in grade school. In college, I would have run around with him and maybe almost have been arrested like he was."

On the obvious:

"Did you ever notice that there's no substitute host?" asks Page.

They know what's on the. boss's mind:

Barnes: "McLaughlin? That's tricky. He's not the right-winger people make him out to be, despite loving the limelight and centers of power. John often goes with the wind. He flutters, depending on the circumstances, between right and center right. But he doesn't like to be pinned down. He's never been that conservative. He ran for the Senate from Rhode Island as an antiwar candidate, then wangled himself a job at the White House. He's agile."

Clift: "McLaughlin is much less a knee-jerk conservative than he's labeled. He's amazingly tolerant on social issues, almost a political libertarian."

Kondracke: "He's a Nixon-Connally Republican, with all the connotations that carries."