State Bar Convention Draws Top Legal Eagles

A dream team consisting of some of the nation’s top legal and political minds converged Thursday in Kalispell for a wide-ranging discussion about the rule of law, the state of American politics and the role of the press during a conversation that opened the Montana Bar Association’s annual two-day convention.

Addressing more than 100 attorneys from across Montana, the high-profile panel at Red Lion Hotel included former President Barack Obama White House Counsel Robert F. Bauer; Robert S. Bennett, who most famously represented former President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal; former Montana Attorney General and Gov. Marc Racicot, who also served as the re-election campaign chair for President George W. Bush; Matt McKenna, a crisis communication expert and longtime spokesman and senior adviser to President Clinton; and Neil Livingstone, a crisis communication expert and former Republican candidate for Montana governor.

Moderated by Flathead District Court Judge Amy Eddy, the discussion topics centered on the role of news media in shaping the narrative of high-profile legal and political proceedings, the binding ethical and legal obligations that scrupulous attorneys should take care to follow, the mounting challenge of keeping pre-trial publicity at bay, strategies for dealing with public-relations crises, and the breakneck pace at which the modern news cycle spins, regardless of its accuracy.

The depth of the panelists’ expertise and experience was rivaled only by their collective disillusionment with the toxic tribalism of modern politics, the hive mentality that has come to dominate media coverage as 24-hour news coverage has become the new normal, and the Trump administration’s irascible disposition and aversion to civility.

McKenna, a Bozeman native who previously served as President Clinton’s senior advisor, said the state of political discourse in Washington D.C. has become fractious to the point of paralysis, and urged Montanans to avoid going down a similar road.

“I think that [former Montana Lt. Gov.] Karl Ohs and Marc Racicot were the tail end of civility in our politics in this state,” McKenna said. “This is a little bit doom and gloom, I realize, but it’s rough out there. I’m looking at a room of a hundred and some change of smart lawyers, and I hope you have some answers because our system is broken. And it has been broken for a long time.”

The panelists were uniformly supportive of the First Amendment and the freedom of the press, praising the role that quality journalism plays in holding powerful people accountable and informing the public. But they also discussed the inequity of certain brands of “gotcha” journalism and the “lamb-like” behavior of national reporters who gravitate toward a single storyline.

Bennett, who in addition to representing Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal also gained attention for his representation of Judith Miller in the Valerie Plame CIA leak, said he was recently dismayed by the national media’s frenzied coverage of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation process, particularly in light of recent allegations that he sexually assaulted Dr. Christine Blasey Ford at a high school party in the early 1980s.

“Not that there aren’t very good journalists, but the swarm mentality of the national media is overkill,” Bennett said. “What Brett Kavanaugh and Dr. Ford have endured will never leave their lives. It is a part of their existence, and we have had no conversation about where does the truth lie. It is a searing experience of enduring this press heat and intense focus from virtually every corner of the earth.”

Racicot said the amount of information available to a news consumer is so voluminous that it leaves an indelible impact on a story’s subjects.

“Nothing vaporizes and it leaves people dizzy with information from such a variety of different sources,” Racicot said.

McKenna and Bennett also criticized President Trump for his regular attacks against the press, including his proclivity for dismissing news stories critical about him or his administration as “fake news.”

“He is someone who tends to select the news he considers to be fake based on whether it is the news he wants to see,” McKenna said. “The news I don’t like is the news that I don’t find fair to me. But this business about deciding what is news is simply mirroring in the president’s conduct the problem that we see in the body politic as a whole. We can’t look each other in the eye and talk.”

The breakdown of civil discourse was a recurring theme throughout the 90-minute conversation, and prompted Racicot to harken back to a bygone era when partisan politics didn’t dominate the overarching theme of unity, freedom and fairness.

“I can remember the civil rights movement in the 1960s and the quality of our leaders’ character and the content of their souls was such that at the end of the day you had people of character and decency and not just a quest for power,” Racicot said.

Bemoaning the state of modern communication, which is trafficked in 140 characters, Racicot called for a resurrection of civil discourse.

“It is desensitizing us as human beings and we have to reinvent some ways for us to reengage as people where you really listen to each other, or else our future is at risk,” Racicot said. “[President Trump] has mastered the art of redirecting attention. The consciousness of America is very small now. It just comes in fragments so you can divert from one issue to another issue to another issue, and he has learned to do that to skew a number of frailties. Fortunately it has not yet invaded the judicial system.”

Eddy, the moderator, interjected that as a young mother to a sophomore in high school and a sixth grader, she has observed a level of thoughtfulness she said future generations don’t get enough credit for.

“I don’t think we give kids enough credit for how deeply they think about things,” Eddy said. “They are incredibly well informed through their social networks and they have contact with people they never would otherwise have contact with. They are incredibly educated and they are an important group of people.”