Jim Geraghty has a new piece at the National Review titled "The Media Have Forgotten Why They Exist." In it he complains that rather than doing the hard work of laying out what the candidates stand for, most of the media is just cheerleading for their own side. I agree completely, but I see perfectly well why. They do this because 90 percent of the country has already made up their minds about how they are going to vote, including 95 percent of the people who read the news. So cheerleading is a much better business model than analysis.
Anyway, Geraghty asks whether Trump is even trying to win.
If, in his press conference last week, Trump had wanted to take down Kamala Harris, he could have spoken at length about her past declaration that “an undocumented immigrant is not a criminal”; her support for decriminalizing currently illegal crossings; her belief that illegal immigrants deserve free health care; her claim that Donald Trump “manufactured” a “so-called crisis” regarding illegal immigration; her contention that a border wall is “wasteful”; her support for reparations for slavery; her support for [long list of tax increases]; her desire to restore and expand the Iranian nuclear deal; her openness to an arms embargo against Israel; her vague positions on many issues relating to China; her rejection of preemptive sanctions against Russia before the invasion of Ukraine; her longtime support for taxpayer funding for abortion, etc.
Instead, Trump rambles.
He’s a 78-year-old man who doesn’t bother to read or listen to his briefers, can’t remember details, and can’t be bothered to try. As with his convention speech, Trump just goes out there and wings it and trusts his gut, offering meandering, half-recalled stories that come across as incoherent gobbledygook to the voters he needs to persuade. The comments section below will be aflame with furious cries that I am a Trump “hater,” and that if I somehow closed my eyes and pretended that Trump was an effective communicator, then the Republicans would win the election. Much like the candidate they adore, Trump’s fanbase is full of whiners always offering excuses and blame-shifting, marinating in a victimhood-obsessed way of looking at the world, a dead-end street in which everything is so unfair and no one has any agency. Trump could run a much better, much more persuasive, and much more effective campaign with much better chances of victory if he wanted to do so. He just isn’t willing to put in the work.
I appreciated this:
Harris’s thought process when speaking extemporaneously is an M. C. Escher painting, doubling back on itself; Trump’s is Jackson Pollock, careening and expanding in all directions, leaving a mess.
I'm going to vote for Harris, but she was my least favorite of all the Democratic contenders in 2020, and I won't pretend to be happy about it.
3 comments:
I love Trump speeches. What could be better and more useless than a stream-of-consciousness political speech? Throw whatever half-thought you have out there for consumption. And he's a genius at it. The only thing better would have been that comedian guy from way back when who specialized in nonsense speeches -- total gibberish -- but presented in such a way as to make the audience wonder why they can almost understand him but for some reason never quite can. Just when they think they understand something he says, it turns into nonsense, and they're left staring into space.
The sad thing about the Democratic Party is that there's not any real shortage of interesting, likable, and qualified candidates they could run - it's just that the the party leadership is afraid to support the kinds of candidates that younger voters would love, for fear of putting off older voters, and so we get these compromise picks of milquetoast seat-fillers who excite nobody, but in so doing offend nobody.
It's amazing that a 60 year old candidate is being embraced by younger voters as being "energizing" and "a breath of fresh air" in comparison to the previous runner. No one actively wanted Biden - people voted for him because he was competent and could do the job and because he wasn't The Other Guy. No one was excited to support Biden - they were just relieved to have an option that wasn't horrible.
Harris isn't exactly all that amazing herself, but in comparison, she's so much more preferable. And even just in terms of ticking boxes, she'll be the second African American president, and the first woman president, meaning even if you find her personally unexciting, voting for her is at least a historical moment in those regards.
Coming back to this...
Jim Geraghty has a new piece at the National Review titled "The Media Have Forgotten Why They Exist."
"The Media" in America has spent far more time throughout history being the lapdogs of wealthy elites than they ever have spent championing the truth or operating with any kind of journalistic integrity.
Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.
- Elbert Hubbard, 1914
The journalists would appear to be in an almost literal sense the priests of the modern world... the corruption of the priesthood occurred at the precise moment in which it changed from a minority organised to impart knowledge into a minority organised to withhold it. The great danger of decadence in journalism is almost exactly the same. Journalism possesses in itself the potentiality of becoming one of the most frightful monstrosities and delusions that have ever cursed mankind. This horrible transformation will occur at the exact instant at which journalists realise that they can become an aristocracy.
- G. K. Chesterton, 1901
“The American press is a shame and a reproach to a civilized people. When a man is too lazy to work and too cowardly to steal, he becomes an editor and manufactures public opinion.”
- William T. Sherman, 1862
I deplore with you the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity, & mendacious spirit of those who write for them: and I enclose you a recent sample, the production of a New England judge, as a proof of the abyss of degradation into which we are fallen. These ordures are rapidly depraving the public taste and lessening its relish for sound food. As vehicles of information and a curb on our functionaries, they have rendered themselves useless by forfeiting all title to belief. That this has in a great degree been produced by the violence and malignity of party spirit I agree with you...
- Thomas Jefferson, 1814
American media has been rotten, rotten, rotten, for almost all of its existence. It was only for a brief period in the mid 20th century that there was a push for "real" journalism - and it was never truly dominant, it was always the exception, demonstrated by exceptional individuals and promoted by exceptional companies or corporate leaderships.
But even at the height of journalistic integrity in this country, the bulk of reporting wasn't like that. Certain groups championed the idea of the media serving the people rather than private interested - of serving the pursuit of truth rather than the pursuit of profits - but they were always the minority, and were always struggling to push back against a tide of garbage, and they were inevitably overwhelmed.
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