Ep 203 Where do TV Pundits Come From July 21, 2016

So where do political pundits come from?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

So for starters, let's define our terms. A pundit is someone you see on television, sometimes radio, other media outlets, who gives opinions and analysis. It's not a reporter. It is not someone who's just standing up, giving the facts. Today the following happened at the Pentagon. It's someone who gives opinions. If you watch cnn, if you watch fox, if you watch msnbc, you are going to see a lot of pundits, people who are in the studio giving analysis. Where do they come from? Why am I doing this story today? Well, it's the end of June when I'm recording this in 2016 and there is a new pundit amongst us on CNN, Corey Lewandowski. And forgive me if I'm not getting his name exactly right, I just spent some time googling it and had a hard time finding an exact pronunciation and I haven't seen him on TV a lot. He is the former campaign manager for Donald Trump and he has just been hired by CNN to be a regular contributor, a pundit essentially, even though they don't use that name. So he's someone they will call upon to interview him, but he gets paid to be interviewed and to give his opinions as opposed to just showing up for free as a newsmaker the way most people are. And this is frankly the most common way of becoming a pundit is to get booked on television so many times as a spokesman for a campaign, typically a presidential campaign or some other issue, you get a reputation of being good, being interesting, having great sound bites. In every election cycle, there's typically one or two or a handful of people who break through in a campaign season and now get to become a pundit. So for the Obama administration it's David Axelrod and we'll be talking about him in future shows because of his interest, not only in traditional media being a paid contributor for msnbc, but also as a podcaster. But look at, for example, 1992, you had James Carville rised prominence from the campaign getting Bill Clinton elected. Mary Matlin, now his wife, rose to prominence as the spokesperson for the George H.W. bush campaign going back to the 70s. Someone like a Pat Robertson, excuse me, Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan, David Gergen, high profile members of the Nixon administration and involved in their campaigns, then went on to prominence as pundit. So it's not a field you can typically just hop into or sign up for or take a class for it is something that often comes to you as a byproduct of having picked the lucky ticket when someone's running for president. More on punditry in just a moment.

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Some pundits make it for the long haul and some flame out. For example, Pet Robertson has been around. Excuse me, that's the second time I did that. Excuse me. They really are very different, although both conservatives and have both run for president. Pat Buchanan, I meant to say, is someone who's had a long, long career as a pundit. Now, he originally was a pundit of sorts. Back in the 60s, he wrote editorials for a St. Louis newspaper and gave opinions just on local TV. He attracted the attention of Richard Nixon, signed on for the campaign, and became a high level communications official and speechwriter in the Nixon administration. After Watergate, he went on to write a syndicated column and then started his own talk show. That talk show migrated to cnn. When CNN launched, there was Pat Buchanan. Here we are some 36 years later and he's at a lot of different shows on a lot of different networks. But he's still, 34 years later, a regular on the McLaughlin Group. Now here's the thing about Pat Buchanan. Whether you love him, hate him, share his politics, he doesn't just give partisan spin. If Bill Clinton gives a speech, he thinks it's a great speech and well delivered, he'll say so. He doesn't just give partisan spin and say that any Democrat is bad and every Republican is good. When he thinks a Republican has done a horrific job of managing a crisis, he'll say so. So he made this transition from being a Nixon partisan to someone who had conservative principles, and you could say paleo conservative principles, and then analyzing news, giving somewhat unbiased analysis through the prism of his principles. So when you hear Pat Buchanan giving opinions, you might not always agree with him, but you don't feel like he's just doing the bidding of a particular political party or a particular politician. And that's one reason why I think he has survived for so many decades as a pundit. He's consistently putting out new ideas, interesting ideas, even though, frankly, I don't agree with his principles or find them compelling. I do think he is at least an honest broker putting out interesting information. The big question for someone like Corey Lewandowski is will he make that transition? The Huffington Post, which as you would expect and imagine is hostile to CNN hiring A Trump spokesperson did a devastating takedown of some of his first few appearances, showing how he said Donald Trump gave the greatest speech ever, dozens of times. Obviously not the most insightful. It sounds like he's still acting like a Donald Trump spokesperson. That might work for the duration of one campaign, but it's not going to be something you can build a career on. Some people flame out. Some people are highly articulate, intelligent. John Sununu, famously the former governor of New Hampshire and the chief of staff for George H.W. bush, went on to become a commentator and one of the co hosts of Crossfire. It really didn't make it that long, got canceled and sort of went back into the world of lobbying, consulting, things that were not really about giving political opinions. It's not for everyone, but for those who like it and do well, it can be wildly lucrative because you can get revenue from TV networks, your own radio show, which in many cases is the is the most profitable. You can get book deals and public speaking appearances where you can get six figures as a speaker. David Axelrod is enjoying many of those revenue models. This does go across party levels. So David Gergen, Pat Buchanan on the Republican side, James Carvel on the Democratic side, Chris Matthews for that matter. Chris Matthews was someone who worked for Tip o' Neill and for Jimmy Carter, wasn't particularly that prominent in the Carter administration or campaigns, but that's where he came from. And here he is hosting a show almost 40 years later on MSNBC and has been on the air for decades. So that is kind of the trajectory. For those who come to me and say, I want to be a pundit, my advice is these days, just start giving your opinions and analysis on YouTube, start your own podcast, write every day on your own blog. Look for larger outlets, whether it's the Huffington Post if you're a Democrat, Town hall, National Review if you're a conservative, start building an audience of people who care about you. Build a fan base, build a relationship with it, and you can build your way up. You don't necessarily have to pick a winning ticket to build prominence. Laura Ingraham has a massive following with her talk radio show books. Ann Coulter, again. Some of you may find her distasteful, as I do, or you may love her, but she didn't rise in the pundit ranks because she was a campaign manager for a presidential candidate or spokesperson. She started writing books, becoming a TV commentator, and just by putting ideas out there in as provocative a manner as possible, there's no one route to becoming a pundit. But perhaps the easiest route is if you are in a high profile position in a presidential campaign, especially if your candidate wins. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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