Is ignorance driving the right?

Posted on July 29, 2024 by Joe Weber

No, it’s all too well-informed

It was all too easy – and electorally fatal – for Hillary Clinton in 2016 to bemoan the “basket of deplorables” that she said accounted for half of Donald J. Trump’s supporters. She branded them “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic.”

The reaction she got was predictable. Trumpers began wearing T-shirts proudly sporting the “deplorables” moniker. And Trump went on to beat Hillary in the Electoral College vote, albeit falling behind her in the popular vote.

Certainly, that bit of middle finger-giving – that dose of philistine class resentment of Hillary – wasn’t the only thing that did her in. But it didn’t help.

As we think about who supports Trump now, eight years and one chaotic Trump presidency later, it’s all too easy to denigrate his supporters as sharing all those “ists” and “ics.” And, indeed, it’s likely many do.

It’s all too easy to cast them as underschooled and ignorant. We know that in 2016 white voters who had not completed college (44% of all voters) cast their votes for Trump by more than two-to-one (64% to 28%), according to the Pew Research Center.

But what then are we to make of those among well-schooled folks that Trump seems to appeal to? What are we to make of the 36% of college-educated voters who voted red back in 2020? Of 60% of Republican voters with a college degree, per a pollster cited by The New York Times, who still back Trump? In fact, the former president’s support among white, college-educated Republicans doubled to 60% over the course of last year, according to Fox News polling.

What are we to make of Kevin D. Roberts, who has bachelor’s, masters and doctoral degrees in history, and heads The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that would help staff a Trump Administration and set its policies? What of the many Harvard grads, such as Steve Bannon, Wilbur L. Ross Jr. and Michael Pompeo, who served in or otherwise advised the previous Trump Administration?

JD Vance, 2017; source: Middle Tennessee State University

Indeed, what are we to make of JD Vance, educated at Ohio State and Yale Law and now Trump’s vice presidential choice? Or of the likes of Elon Musk and the many venture capitalists, such as Stanford lawyer Peter Thiel, who back the pair?

While many of the folks who back Trump are ill-schooled, it’s clear that such folks — and many others — are not among them. They know exactly what they would get in a second Trump Administration and, presumably, they know it would serve their interests with tax breaks, anti-immigrant and isolationist policies, right-wing judicial appointments and the broad array of conservative aims that make up documents such as Project 2025.

It’s all too easy to contend that ignorance and poor education predominate among Trump supporters. With such a view, liberals and middle-of-the-roaders can feel superior, can look down their noses at the “deplorables.” They can pat themselves on the back for supporting Kamala Harris, a well-schooled Black-Indian woman (Howard University and University of California, Berkeley) who makes most of the right wingers literally pale in comparison.

But it’s wrong and dangerous to do so. Such a view underestimates the real threat that the Trumpers pose.

Reproductive rights, LGBTQ equality, the rights to a fair shake for Blacks and other minorities, the U.S. position in NATO and the world, enlightened educational systems, the ability to read books that discomfit us, the separation of theology from governance – all such things are at stake. Trump supporters would erode them all. And that’s not out of ignorance, but out of intentional, thought-out views (even if they repulse many of us).

Heather Cox Richardson; source: Boston Globe/Getty Images, via The Guardian

Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson suggests that the coming election will be as consequential as choices Americans made in the late 1700s, the Civil War era and the New Deal period. These were times when Americans resisted impulses toward dictatorship and disrespect for the principles of equality.

“It is up to us to decide whether we want a country based on fear or on facts, on reaction or on reality, on hatred or on hope,” Richard contends. “It is up to us whether it will be fascism or democracy that, in the end, moves swiftly, and up to us whether we will choose to follow in the footsteps of those Americans who came before us in our noblest moments, and launch a brand new era in American history.”

Indeed, there have been many ignoble moments in our history, times when the right came close to defeating the principles of democracy and equality. Many Tories opposed the American Revolution, preferring the rule of a monarch to an elected legislature. Enslavers and Klansmen long fought for dominance in the country. More recently, in the 1920s, antisemitic and theocratic figures such as Father Charles Coughlin, powered by radio, amassed followings. In 1939, American Nazis rallied in Madison Square Garden.

The lure of the strongman, of religious nationalism and of isolationism, has been potent in the United States for as long as we’ve been a country. And rarely have leaders acted like George Washington and Joe Biden in relinquishing power voluntarily.

Certainly, some of the folks behind Trump want to give into that lure again. They would launch us further down the path toward a narrow and intolerant Christian nationalism. Some would so out of class resentments and ignorance, but many — especially since we have ample experience with Trump — would do so knowingly, with clear intent and deliberation.

Trump’s flaws are legion and well-known, from his lack of morality and narcissism to his very real ignorance. But to the better-schooled among his supporters, he is a useful idiot. He is the one who will deliver for the self-interests of billionaires such as Thiel, for opportunistic hypocritical politicians such as Vance, Nikki Haley, Marco Rubio, etc., for policymakers such as those at The Heritage Foundation. To the evangelicals, he remains a sinner whom they see, nonetheless, as G-d’s weapon against sin.

After four shambolic and norm-shattering years of Trump, most Americans turned away from him in 2020. Will they do so again? There is a real risk that the anything-but-ignorant folks who see him as their water carrier will prevail a second time.

Most Americans turned away from racism and the other ugly isms to elect Barack Obama in 2008 and in 2012. They believed in democracy, the rule of law and the importance of American governmental institutions. This election will be another test of just what values they hold dearest. For them, too, it will be anything but a matter of ignorance.

Now we may get a real fight

Posted on July 21, 2024 by Joe Weber

Kamala Harris helped take down Trump once. Will she again?

Three and a half years ago, Americans decided that a mixed-race Black and Indian woman was capable of serving as president of the United States. They chose Kamala Harris to serve the proverbial heartbeat away from The Resolute Desk, as Joe Biden’s partner. This was one chaotic presidential term after they had picked a Black man, Barack Obama, to serve two terms in the White House.

But how will they choose now? If the Democratic Party taps President Biden’s vice president as its nominee – the logical choice – will America rise to the occasion? After ousting him from office in 2020, will they turn aside Republican Donald J. Trump a second time? Have Americans matured enough racially and in gender terms to look beyond identity politics to Harris’s qualifications, especially since they overlooked the ample skills and experience of a white woman, Hillary Clinton, in 2016, in favor of a white man with no political background and a checkered, bankruptcy-marred business history? (The Clintons are backing Harris.)

The polls are notoriously unreliable. But, at the moment, as Newsweek reported, the most recent analysis by election website FiveThirtyEight, released on July 17, showed Harris had a net approval rating of -11.8, with just 38.6 percent of those surveyed approving of her performance and 50.4 percent disapproving.

Dismal as such numbers are, the latest polling about Trump puts him behind Harris. A July 21 FiveThirtyEight polling analysis gave Trump a net approval rating of -12, making him slightly more unpopular than Harris, with 41.7 percent viewing him favorably and 53.7 percent unfavorably.

The margins surely would be uncomfortably close, as they were in the last few presidential elections. In 2020, Biden-Harris turned Trump into a one-term president with just 51.3% of the popular vote and 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. Trump garnered 46.9% of the popular vote, a figure that held up despite a national barrage of unsuccessful ballot challenges the former president launched.

Trump won office in 2016 with a similar share of the popular vote, just 46.1%, falling below Hillary Clinton’s 48.2%. Despite her success with voters overall, he bested her in the Electoral College, 304 to 227, by carrying the South and much of the Midwest and Northwest.

So, will Harris be the party’s choice, given her narrow lead on Trump at the moment? Can she boost her approval ratings enough to stay ahead of Trump’s beleaguered numbers? The Dems convene in Chicago on Aug. 19 and, in coming weeks there will be debate over whether she can win by carrying the party’s banner.

Despite Biden’s endorsement of Harris, there already has been talk of the party “leapfrogging” over her to tap a seemingly safer white male candidate. Names of governors such as Gavin Newsome of California, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and J.B. Pritzer of Illinois have been vaunted. So, too, has that of a white woman, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

And already, some observers argue that passing over her would cost the party big with Blacks, especially women – a constituency with which Biden was lagging. By this reasoning, she could bring out enough currently dissatisfied Black voters to carry the ticket over the top, even as she boasts of her mixed-race ancestry. She might bolster her chances with whites by tapping any of those governors as a running mate.

Whitmer, of course, could help deliver the key swing state of Michigan. Imagine, though, how a ticket with two women might send far-right voters around the bend. Consider what a stark difference that would represent from the elderly white male heading the GOP and his middle-aged white veep choice.

Of course, identity politics of this sort still matter — indeed they may be everything in this race.

But, looking just at her credentials, Harris couldn’t be better poised for it. Serving at Biden’s side since 2021, she has had an inside seat at the table in important policymaking choices, such as the infrastructure bill that is now pouring billions of dollars into the nation’s bridges and roads, the support of Ukraine, the strengthening of NATO, the difficult rebuilding of America’s stature around the world after Trump’s isolationist term. As Lesley Odom Jr. and Lin-Manuel Miranda might say, Harris has been in “The Room Where It Happens.”

Few vice presidents have been able to grab the limelight from their bosses, and it may be that Harris’s lackluster ratings simply reflect the public’s lack of knowledge of her. Only 15 vice presidents have gone on to serve as president and eight of them got the jobs because of their predecessor’s death. She will now have to show how she’s up to the post, first with the party and then the public — and all in a very short time.

Certainly, Harris brought an impressive resume to the White House. She earned her undergraduate degree in economics and politics at Howard University and her law degree from the University California, Berkeley, as the Arizona Republic reported in detailing her background. She served as a deputy district attorney in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office from 1990 to 1998 in her birthplace of Oakland, California. She specialized in prosecuting child sexual assault cases. In 2004, she was elected district attorney of San Francisco and served through 2010. She was an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, officiating the first same-sex wedding after California’s Proposition 8 was overturned, the paper reported.

Harris served as California’s attorney general from 2011 to 2017 after winning her first race in November 2010 by a slim margin over Republican Steve Cooley by 0.5% of a percentage point. On the consumer front, she won a $20 billion settlement for Californians whose homes had been foreclosed on and a $1.1 billion settlement for students and veterans who were taken advantage of by a for-profit education company, according to her White House biography.

Her law-enforcement background makes for a bright, bold comparison to the man who aspires to be the nation’s first felon-in-chief. Trump’s disrespect for the law is legend and his 34 felony convictions don’t sit well with many independent voters.

After her work in law, Harris was elected in 2016 to serve in the U.S. Senate. She served on the Senate’s judiciary and intelligence committees, until Biden tapped her to join him in the 2020 race.

Shyamala Gopalan and Harris, Source: People

Harris also brings an interesting family story. She is the daughter of immigrants, with her father, Donald J. Harris, an economics professor at Stanford who hails from Jamaica, and her mother, the late Shyamala Gopalan, a cancer researcher from India. The couple met at the University of California, Berkeley. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, is a former entertainment lawyer now serving as as distinguished visiting professor at Georgetown University Law Center. A Jew and the nation’s first “second gentleman,” he grew up in Matawan and Old Bridge, N.J.

At 59, Harris is two decades younger than the GOP’s geriatric former president, Trump, now 78. Much as Biden’s age-related deterioration has been evident, so has Trump’s, as seen by his numerous gaffes – confusing Biden and Obama, calling Argentina a person and accusing Biden of conspiring to overthrow the United States (all those from just one weekend in March). His litany of falsehoods in his GOP nomination acceptance speech made for great grist for fact-checkers.

If Harris is tapped by the party, would Trump be willing to debate her? One suspects she would demolish him, performing far better than Biden did in his troubling time on stage. Would he shrink from such a head-on fight? Without evidence, Trump argues she would be easier for him to defeat – but that is a claim that, first, Democratic Party members must now assess.

How will they choose? How will America?

Flooding the zone

Posted on July 18, 2024 by Joe Weber

Maybe some presidential election rhetoric should not be turned down

A longstanding maxim in the news business says “information abhors a void.” When we don’t know things, or know things only partly, we rush to fill in the gaps. Often, we are wrong and, sadly, misinformation may carry enormous weight.

The latest example is the reaction to the shooting of Donald Trump. We still don’t know why a disturbed young man took up arms against the former president. But that hasn’t stopped people from blaming the fiery rhetoric of one side or the other – pleas for putting oil on the waters, notwithstanding. Indeed, the absence of information has driven those who see opportunity here into overdrive (and it’s been rich grist for the inevitable conspiracists).

Before the shooting, would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks googled the phrase “major depressive disorder” and searched for information about Trump, Joe Biden, and Attorney General Merrick Garland, as we heard from The Washington Post and The New York Times. We also saw in The Times that he looked up events where Trump and Biden were speaking.

Does that mean he would have attacked whichever man was nearby? That it was just convenient that Trump was appearing not far from his home? That his motivation was less political (or partisan) and more psychological, i.e., a lost post-adolescent looking for a grandiose way to commit what is often called “suicide by police?”

We’ve seen several reports that Crooks had shown little interest in politics, though he was a registered Republican with one parent a Democrat and one a Libertarian. Those reports, and the absence of political matters on his phone or other communications, suggest that his motivation was something other than wanting to do away with a candidate who may or may not have infuriated him.

Still, the black hole that Crooks has created is being filled by Republicans, such as J.D. Vance, who eagerly blame Democrats and the media for demonizing Trump – an odd flip, since Democrats and the media are routinely demonized by such Republicans. It’s also being filled, to a degree, by Democrats, such as President Biden, who blame the hot rhetoric of the campaign for a toxic atmosphere, implying that such language drove Crooks to his mad actions.

One of the more seemingly sophisticated commentaries was offered by author Gerald Posner, who rushed into print in The Wall Street Journal just two days after the July 13 shooting to blame “incendiary political language.” From whom? Well, liberals and the media, of course. “The assassination attempt against Mr. Trump follows years of relentless attacks from left-wing media and many in the Democratic Party, who likened the former president to Hitler and claimed his re-election would end democracy,” Posner argued.

Posner, a lawyer and an investigative journalist who wrote well-regarded books about the assassinations of JFK and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., compares the “volatile atmosphere” in Dallas in 1963 and in Memphis in 1968 with today’s environment, warning that “reckless speech” can inspire an assassin. He makes the link, even as he undercuts his argument by acknowledging that we may never know the motivations of Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray, as we may never know what drove Crooks.

This is a classic case of correlation versus causation: I got up and the sun came up this morning, so therefore I must have caused the sun to rise. Similarly, people said nasty things about Kennedy and King, therefore those comments must have caused their killings. Today, people are saying nasty things about Trump, so it follows that someone would try to kill him. A lawyer such as Posner, frankly, should know better.

The questions his reasoning begs are legion. Here are a few: did critical things that people said about Trump drive Crooks? Or might it have been Trump’s own many vile comments, some of which incited the riot in the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021? Or might both those things have been irrelevant to a troubled loner who perhaps was looking for a way to write himself into history and do away with himself at the same time? Might it have been that Trump was just the famous politician on hand?

We may learn more as the FBI continues its investigation into Crooks. Perhaps his parents, acquaintances and workmates will shed more light as time goes on.

But we also may never know, as Posner sensibly admits. And, given that void, should the opportunists rule the day? Should Democrats and Republicans stop criticizing one another?

Certainly, Republicans are not holding back. “America cannot afford four more years of a Weekend at Bernie’s presidency,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said, referring to the ‘80s comedy in which two salesmen accidentally kill their boss and then pretend he is still alive. “Let’s be honest here. Biden is just a figurehead.”

And some argue that Democrats should not fall into a trap by backing off on warning Americans about the dangers of a second Trump presidency.

“Donald Trump really does present a threat to the norms of liberal democracy and the welfare of millions of US residents,” Vox commentator Eric Levitz writes. “Joe Biden truly supports the legality of medical procedures that some Christian conservatives believe to be murder. Rhetoric that describes in good faith our polity’s disputes will imply that our elections have life-or-death stakes — because they do.

“That Trump poses a threat to democracy should go without saying,” Levitz adds. “As president, he attempted to block the peaceful transfer of power by manipulating vote counts and instigating a riot on Capitol Hill. He has also outlined plans for undermining the independence of federal law enforcement while vowing to enact ‘retribution’ on his movement’s enemies.”

Those unaware of the profound effect a Trump presidency could have can turn to plenty of places for info. As The New York Times reported, and I’ve previously recounted, he would step up the trade war that already is riling global relations, imposing stiff tariffs that will drive up prices on broad ranges of goods for Americans. He would set up WWII-style detention camps to hold rounded-up migrants for mass deportations, try to end birthright citizenship, use the Justice Department to persecute his enemies, strip employment protections from tens of thousands of civil servants, purge intelligence agencies and other bodies of people whose work he dislikes, and he would cut taxes for wealthy friends, driving up the national debt anew.

Even more discomfiting things might come if Trump associates at The Heritage Foundation have their way. Their Project 2025 would reduce the size of federal agencies, ban abortion drugs, and overhaul popular programs like the Affordable Care Act, as a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writer reported. He argued that it could cause immense harm to “women of childbearing age, undocumented immigrants, public education, diversity, equity and inclusion programs, unions, and the LGBTQ community.” Critics say Trump would enjoy “unprecedented and potentially dangerous powers unlike any occupant of the White House in American history.”

Certainly, there’s no dearth of information about what a Trump presidency would bring. The problem is that his supporters either back his agenda or don’t bother to inform themselves about it, as they remain under his demagogic sway.

Sadly, no amount of information may swing enough devotees away from Trump’s magnetic lure. And it remains to be seen whether Biden could be persuaded to yield the ground to a younger Democrat who could better go toe-to-toe with the former president.

Still, filling voids with misinformation seems to help only Trump. And, in this regard, jailed former Trump adviser Steve Bannon once offered some perverse wisdom: “The Democrats don’t matter,” Bannon told writer Michael Lewis in 2018. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

The GOP and folks such as Posner are doing that to a fare-thee-well.

Can dawn break again?

Posted on June 30, 2024 by Joe Weber

This July Fourth will likely be a bleak one

As July 4 approaches, I feel myself in mourning. I grieve for my country and worry for the nation that my children and grandchildren are inheriting.

Unless something dramatic intervenes, we face a difficult choice in the fall presidential election. We elect a man who is decent, moral and right on his policies, but whose diminished capabilities will only decline further. Or we pick a man who has said he’d be a dictator (perhaps for more than just a day), whose personal morality is that of “an alley cat” (as his opponent memorably said), and who promises to sow chaos in government, domestic civil society and foreign affairs.

This is a Hobson’s choice, of course. The second route surely leads to disaster. But the first, the road we should take, spawns uncertainty, fear and doubt. Could we count on President Biden’s aides, colleagues and advisers to make sure he manages the reins of power well? Certainly, we could expect the seemingly more vigorous Trump to clutch and pull at such reins to monstrous effect, doing even more damage than such moves as packing the Supreme Court and lower courts has already done.

Yes, Biden’s deterioration is on full display these days. Without a teleprompter, he is at sea, a worrisome thing in a man who will need to deal with grave threats from abroad and mystifying polarization at home. It’s no wonder he’s lost the support even of longtime friends and loyalists.

Source: Getty Images, via New York Magazine

But Trump needs no electronic aids to showcase his bigotry, divisiveness, self-interest and ignorance. He need only to deliver his erratic and rambling speeches, ones in which he claims that “Catholics are being persecuted,” that people will be arrested if they say they “answer to God in heaven,” that terrorists “in record numbers” are coming over our borders, that Social Security and Medicare are “being destroyed,” that his conviction by a jury on 34 felony counts was a politically motivated “show trial,” that the 2020 election was “rigged.”

Trump’s claptrap, dishonesty and demagoguery are extraordinary. Out of sheer opportunism, this longtime huckster paints a dystopian picture that seems to sell. Never mind that unemployment continues to be at record lows, that government spending has led to improved roads, bridge and transportation systems around the country, that inflation is subsiding. Never mind that the reason the border continues to be a problem is that Trump, desperate for an issue to run on, deep-sixed a plan backed by conservative legislators that would have fixed it.

And what would the man do if he ousts Biden? As The New York Times reported, he would step up the trade war that already is riling global relations, imposing stiff tariffs that will drive up prices on broad ranges of goods for Americans. He would set up WWII-style detention camps to hold rounded-up migrants for mass deportations, try to end birthright citizenship, use the Justice Department to persecute his enemies, strip employment protections from tens of thousands of civil servants, purge intelligence agencies and other bodies of people whose work he dislikes, and he would cut taxes for wealthy friends, driving up the national debt anew.

And all that is just for starters. Trump would also further pack the Supreme Court and the judiciary with untalented ideologues who could wreak damage that no successor could undo. In foreign policy, he would greenlight Vladimir Putin’s expansive ambitions and embrace and embolden dictators in other places, such as Hungary and, perhaps, North Korea. He also might try to overturn a constitutional amendment so he could seek a third term to impose even more chaos.

I mourn the passing of the party of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, men with whom one might disagree but who were patriots committed to doing right by the country, not desperately seeking to salve damaged egos and shield themselves from prosecutions. I miss such aides as trade advocate Clayton K. Yeutter, whose actions enriched both the U.S. and much of the rest of the world. In his place, we have convicts such as Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro and Roger Stone, as well as extremists such as Stephen Miller.

We, of course, also have a long list of former Trump lieutenants who now disavow the man, including his own former vice president, who has declined to endorse him. Trump’s ex-chief of staff, former Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, said his ex-boss is “a person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators” and “has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.” Think Jan. 6, if you doubt the last point.

Indeed, Trump is a man who memorably mocked former POW and GOP presidential contender John McCain, saying “I like people who weren’t captured.” He ducked military service by faking a bone spur and more recently called fallen soldiers “suckers” and “losers,” as noted by Kelly.

As the nation’s first felon-in-chief, Trump would surround himself with toadies determined to march in lockstep with him, no matter the legal impropriety. They include potential vice presidential candidate Marco Rubio, who once called Trump a “con artist” but who now endorses him, and Sen. Ted Cruz, who once labeled Trump “utterly amoral” but now backs him.

And while Biden’s acuity is likely to decrease, Trump’s mental challenges have long been on sorry display and appear to have worsened. As his rambles have suggested, he seems deeply unwell. A Biden operating on fewer cylinders surely would be less of a danger than a rampaging Trump.

So, I grieve for my country. The only thing that gives me heart is that it’s possible American voters will make the right choice. Indeed, perhaps Biden will make it easier by stepping aside, clearing the way for a more vigorous person with similar sensibilities and sanity (though all indications so far are to the contrary). It’s possible that my fellow citizens will repudiate the corrupt and ideologically blind GOP of the Boeberts and Greenes. It’s possible that they will see through the party’s leading conman’s games.

But it’s hard at this point to be optimistic. Will the disaffected, gullible and ill-informed among our voters have their day? Will those rule who are taken in by slick TV-friendly imagery, who don’t school themselves beyond that? Will a minority of the nation again choose a would-be-tyrant thanks to a flawed Electoral College system? Recall that Trump won with just 46% of the vote in 2016.

If one can invoke Revolutionary War history, there were times when the cause seemed lost back then. Generals stumbled, turncoats betrayed their leaders, soldiers deserted. Yet, somehow the patriots prevailed. Can that happen again? Can dawn break after this darkening stretch? For now, it seems a long way off.

Time’s a wastin’

Posted on June 29, 2024 by Joe Weber

Can a successor to Joe Biden emerge in time, if at all?

In February 1968, CBS anchor Walter Cronkite editorialized on the air against the Vietnam war. After watching the broadcast, President Lyndon B. Johnson supposedly said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” And then, a month later, LBJ announced that he wouldn’t seek reelection.

Well, it seems LBJ did not in fact utter those words – which have been repeated in various forms over the years – and he never even saw that Cronkite program. Or so a revisit to the myth by journalism academic W. Joseph Campbell found. Johnson at the time was in Austin, Texas, celebrating the birthday of his longtime friend, Gov. John Connally, Campbell recounted.

“The Cronkite program was neither decisive nor pivotal to his thinking on Vietnam,” Campbell maintained. He suggested that the media exaggerated their role in affecting a president’s thinking.

I’m reminded of this now, after many journalism outlets and pundits have called on President Joe Biden to throw in the towel on the election after his disappointing debate performance. They want him to yield the Democratic nomination to someone – anyone – who could put on a better show.

The key question: will the media angst make a difference to the president?

“The president appeared on Thursday night as the shadow of a great public servant,” The New York Times editorialized. “He struggled to explain what he would accomplish in a second term. He struggled to respond to Mr. Trump’s provocations. He struggled to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, his failures and his chilling plans. More than once, he struggled to make it to the end of a sentence.”

Thomas Friedman, source: The Jerusalem Post

Echoing that, Times columnist and reported Biden-whisperer Thomas Friedman called on those closest to the president to persuade him to quit the race. “The Biden family and political team must gather quickly and have the hardest of conversations with the president, a conversation of love and clarity and resolve,” Friedman wrote. “To give America the greatest shot possible of deterring the Trump threat in November, the president has to come forward and declare that he will not be running for re-election and is releasing all of his delegates for the Democratic National Convention.”

More predictably – and nastily – The Wall Street Journal said the president looked like “a feeble man” with no business running. “Mr. Biden lost the debate in the first 10 minutes as he failed to speak clearly, did so in a weak voice, and sometimes couldn’t complete a coherent sentence,” the paper said. “His blank stare when Donald Trump was speaking suggested a man who is struggling to recall what he has been prepped for weeks to say, but who no longer has the memory to do it.”

Chiding those who encouraged or tolerated the president’s choice to run again, the WSJ accused such supporters of failing to heed warning signs of the president’s deterioration. “It was clearly a selfish act for him to seek a second term,” the editorial said. “But did they really think they could hide his decline from the public for an entire election campaign?”

Labeling Biden’s debate performance an “unmitigated disaster,” WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan argued that Democrats must “admit what the rest of the country can see and has long seen, that Mr. Biden can’t do the job. They have to stop being the victim of his vanity and poor judgment, and of his family’s need, and get themselves a new nominee.”

For my part, I give the president high marks on substance – indeed, despite his shortcomings, his mastery of many of the details he recounted was impressive. Regrettably, however, he seemed at times like a man desperate to recall and regurgitate those details — like someone grasping for lost memories. Certainly, he lost on style, with too many slips and too much confusion. And, as we learned way back in the Kennedy-Nixon debates, style and appearance make all the difference.

But can a man who fought so hard and long to attain the prize Biden did now give it up? Does Biden have enough self-awareness to pack it in?

It’s possible that some of the media outpouring will unsettle Biden enough to help him do so, but we are in uncharted territory here. History offers little guidance.

Despite the Cronkite myth, the media’s desertion of LBJ, it seems now, had little influence on his prosecution of the Vietnam war; it dragged on through President Nixon’s term years later. Moreover, it’s likely that LBJ’s decision to quit the election race was less influenced by the media than by impressive threats from challengers Sen. Eugene McCarthy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

For his part, Biden in the spring had a sole credible challenger. But that man, Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, racked up pallid results that persuaded him to drop out and endorse the president in early March. Before getting into the race, Phillips had called for a “moderate governor” to challenge Biden, who he said could not defeat Trump.

Now, if the media and pundits are correct, Democrats may have to scramble to a) persuade Biden to quit and b) find a credible challenger to Trump. Both seem like herculean tasks, complicated by the short time frame left.

It’s not that there would be a shortage of pretenders. Indeed, it seems likely that a free-for-all would precede the party’s convention, slated for Aug. 19-22 in Chicago. The names being vaunted include Vice President Kamala Harris, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky. Other potential candidates include Pete Buttigieg, the secretary of transportation, and Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Cory Booker of New Jersey.

Gretchen Whitmer, source: National Review

“If Democrats can somehow work through all of this, someone like Gretchen Whitmer would be a much tougher opponent for Trump on paper,” National Review editor Rich Lowry argued. “She’s a young, relatively popular governor in the key swing state of Michigan. She wouldn’t have to answer directly for any of Biden’s failures and has a history of presenting herself in campaigns as a non-ideological Democrat. ‘Fix the damn roads’ was her slogan when she first ran for governor.”

Would there be enough time for Whitmer or any of the others to mount a successful effort to knock Trump aside? Would they fracture the party in a desperate battle royal, carving one another up while Trump bides his time, taking potshots at whoever seems the most likely to emerge?

If Biden can be persuaded to step aside, it’s possible that the ambitious folks who could succeed him would do one healthy thing: they would deprive Trump of the media oxygen he so desperately depends on. Their fight, should it materialize, would dominate the headlines, superseding such things as his veep choice.

But the Dems would need to choose wisely. Not only would they need a person of substance, but that person must be able to skewer Trump while avoiding descending to his level. As many observers – even those at the Wall Street Journal – reported, Trump’s debate performance was filled with misstatements that he routinely echoes on the campaign trail. Highlighting them would just be the beginning for a credible Trump challenger (while Trumpists may not care about facts, reasonable voters might).

Making the case for taking Biden’s mantle would require passion, thought and vitality. It’s not impossible for those potential candidates to bring such qualities to bear, but it’s a tall order and time’s a wastin.’ At the moment, that job seems like a far easier task, though, than would be needed for Biden to recover from his debate disaster. Going forward, every appearance now by the diminished president would likely just deepen the hole he’s in.

Today’s Droit du Seigneur

Posted on April 19, 2024 by Joe Weber

Just how far does Donald Trump’s sense of privilege go?

Stormy Daniels, source: Apatow Productions, via Variety

Breathless announcers on CNN clued me in on the latest permutations of the Trump trial as I was assembling a desk we ordered on Wayfair. And it got me to thinking: did Trump ever put together IKEA furniture for his kids? Did he ever buy anything other than something gold-embossed, gaudy and pricey? Has he ever lived like a normal person?

It seems unlikely that this millionaire racist landlord’s kid would ever have roughened his short-fingered vulgarian’s fingers with do-it-yourself anything. With that thought, it seemed to me that the gulf between him and the ordinary folks he pretends to speak for widened just a bit more. Between the cossetted life he led and crimes for which he may at last face an accounting, that Grand Canyon-sized gap seemed just a mite bigger.

This is a man – a reality-show invention, really – who claims to be the voice (and the “retribution”) for millions of ill-schooled and disenfranchised Americans. But, as he pals around with his billionaire friends at his exclusive clubs and then coarsely rambles and rails before the proletarians at his rallies, does he really know how most folks live? Does he have anything in common with them? Would he ever welcome into his home or clubs people he has said he finds disgusting?

As his trial will demonstrate, Trump thought nothing of cheating on his pregnant wife (No. 3) with Playboy model Karen McDougal, though prosecutors will not be allowed to mention Melania’s pregnancy. Only a few months after his son was born, he cheated again, that time with porn film star Stormy Daniels. He had, of course, quite publicly cheated on the prior two wives. Do most of the evangelicals who cheer him on do that sort of thing? Do they think such behavior appropriate for a leader, an occupant of the White House, a place that in the past provided role models for children?

How can they embrace a man who believes his “star” status entitles him to grab women by the genitals and brag about it? Someone who would stride through the backstage areas of beauty pageants to gawk at teenage girls changing their clothes? Someone whose sexual abusiveness and dishonesty about it has cost him more than $83.3 million?

It is extraordinary that so many can turn a blind eye to the conspicuous faults of an habitual liar who uses the Bible as a prop. Presumably, they care less about his personal lack of morality and more for the opportunistic stances he takes on matters they care about, such as abortion and gay rights (for them, preferably, the lack thereof), and, perhaps, racist stances on immigration. To them, he is G-d’s flawed instrument, perhaps.

And yet one has to wonder how much lower our political and social culture can go that someone facing the panoply of unsavory criminal charges that he is can get within a hair’s breadth of a partisan nomination. How low has the GOP sunk? How did so many smart people in it – and there were many, even if one disagrees with them — become such dupes? How did the decent folks in the party let it be hijacked by Trump and the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene?

The trial, of course, is only incidentally about Trump’s personal morality and sexual wanderings. Legally, it is about his lying about them in financial disclosures, specifically covering up hush-money payments to his fixer, Michael Cohen, so they would not be revealed before his 2016 election. In effect, he denied voters a full picture of his depravity, one that arguably could have swayed some against him (despite his crack about shooting someone on Fifth Avenue).

And yet the underlying facts of the case – as will be showcased by his dalliance partners, Stormy Daniels and former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal – will again make clear for the American public just how unsavory this man is. Will that persuade enough voters, particularly women, that he doesn’t deserve the White House? The testimony is sure to prove sordid and his reaction to it – his brazen denials and pinched, furious demeanor, as well as his attacks on the judge and legal system – will offer still more profound insights into his character.

Mitt Romney, a principled Republican who would likely have made a decent president, has said he cannot abide the man because character is important in a national leader. He clearly found his former rival wanting.

Much of Trump’s extracurricular activities were widely reported, particularly in New York, even prior to the 2016 election. So, it’s entirely possible that this rehash will roll off the backs of his diehard supporters as it did before. Still, a detailed showcasing of his perversity could make a difference to younger voters unacquainted with his record. Moreover, it will bear the official stamp of court action, not just be dismissible as “fake news.”

The trial will provide some interesting sidelights, too. Will Melania and Ivanka Trump, his wife and daughter, show up by his side? Or will their absence suggest that they don’t want to be sullied still further by his vileness? Perhaps he will coerce them into appearing as things progress, but one can only imagine how either would react to the unsavory details the women in the case will provide. Certainly, they must be repulsed by his behavior, much as they have decided to look the other way on it.

In the meantime, it’s been enlightening to see how poorly he has looked as he has twisted solo in the wind. His constipated scowl suggests a guilty man who feels like he is facing judgment day and knows he cannot avoid it any longer. Soon, we’ll find out how decisive that judgment day will be.

The droit du seigneur in medieval Europe supposedly allowed feudal lords to have their way with any female subject, particularly on a woman’s wedding night. Trump’s privileged upbringing apparently made him think such practices could suit him, as well. Will American voters agree?

Is Trump Media proof of the Greater Fool theory?

Posted on April 2, 2024 by Joe Weber

Really, it’s a wonder investors have fallen for this falling outfit

A few decades ago, I wrote about scamsters active in the Denver penny stock market. This was a market in which hustlers such as the folks at Blinder, Robinson (known as “Blind ‘em and Rob ‘em”) would take public companies that made big promises but lacked assets, business plans, etc. The stocks would come out at $1 or so per share, rise as the firm’s salespeople hawked them, and then plummet as the lack of intrinsic value became apparent.

The underwriters and those in early made money, while suckers paid the tab by buying the shares. Sometimes, these penny deals involved shell companies, which had no assets or business, but were already publicly traded. Thus, they were ideal vehicles for other outfits wanting to go public — especially for merger candidates that didn’t want to tell much to investors at first. By contrast, legitimate companies, making initial public offerings, had to provide lots of information about themselves in elaborate pre-offering documents.

I’m reminded of this by Donald J. Trump’s Trump Media & Technology Group, which went public through a shell company (now dressed up as a “special purpose acquisition company”). By merging with a SPAC, Trump Media avoided having to make uncomfortable disclosures before going public that might have given investors pause.

For instance, Trump Media didn’t have to reveal that, as The Wall Street Journal reported, “it nearly ran out of cash last year and would have struggled to survive without the recent deal that took it public.” That disclosure, along with an auditor’s note saying the outfit’s “operating losses raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern” came out only after Trump Media started trading. The company lost more than $58 million last year, if anyone is counting.

Would smart investors have bought in anyway? Well, some traders would have – and did – as they played the rise and (mostly) fall of the stock. But would those who want to buy into a company with real business prospects have done so? Or would only devotees of Trump buy in, thinking they were getting a stake in a brilliant businessman’s newest venture? It has to pay off since the golden boy is running it, right?

Well, the fall to earth for Trump Media began, fittingly, a couple days before April Fool’s Day. The stock, which had opened at $70.74 on March 26 and added a bit to hit $79.38, started a deep slide from $69.70 on March 28 to $51.77 by April 2. That means that folks who bought at the opening have now lost nearly 27 percent of their investment.

Does this strike anyone as the Greater Fool theory in operation? Does it remind anyone of the penny stock world? Indeed, is it possible that Trump Media & Technology Group may someday fall to nearly nothing, as Trump’s casino stocks did a couple decades ago, when he ran those businesses into the ground?

A lot of people lost money when Trump’s casinos failed, and they weren’t just investors. Folks who had done work for Trump or were otherwise owed money by him lost big. Cushioned by his wealth – money that had come by way of his rich father and that he had siphoned off the gaming halls — Trump managed to float above the disaster.

All this was reported, and folks who followed Trump’s career had long known about his failures. But, even as his casinos were being managed by others for the benefit of his lenders, the broad public didn’t see him as anything but golden, a god whose name adorned their still-glittering Atlantic City gaming palaces. I saw this firsthand in reporting out a story for BusinessWeek when I spent time with Trump, including a tour of one of his bankrupt casinos where gamblers sought to touch him in hopes his good fortune would rub off on them.

Even then, long before The Apprentice put a glossy sheen on this much-tarnished mogul, the gulf between the real Trump and the Trump his devotees see was apparent.

Of course, before his newest business whimsy craters, Donald J. Trump will likely cash out of Trump Media. His 57% stake in the company is worth a lot less than it was on opening day, but it’s still worth a bundle. And in time he could sell it off in bits and pieces as he needs cash, perhaps to pay off one $454 million civil judgment levied against him or another one, for $83.3 million – both of which he will delay paying as he appeals, of course.

When this is all reported, do Trumpies just dismiss it as the work of the “fake news” media? Do they shrug off such reporting as simply the product of people with anti-Trump agendas? Do they look on the justice system’s operations as nothing but persecution of their hero? No doubt, some do, and they may even just avoid reading such accounts. There are none so blind as true believers, after all.

Reporting accurately on Trump raises major problems for journalists, though. For one, they risk losing a good part of their audiences.

The editor of Cleveland’s Plain Dealer recently addressed the challenge in a note to readers. “The truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his false bid to retain the presidency,” editor Chris Quinn wrote. “He sparked an insurrection intended to overthrow our government and keep himself in power. No president in our history has done worse. This is not subjective. We all saw it.”

As reported by HuffPost, Quinn expressed sympathy with Trump fans who were frustrated that their local news source does not “recognize what they see in [Trump].” But he suggested that won’t stop the coverage.

“The facts involving Trump are crystal clear, and as news people, we cannot pretend otherwise, as unpopular as that might be with a segment of our readers,” Quinn wrote. “There aren’t two sides to facts. People who say the earth is flat don’t get space on our platforms. If that offends them, so be it.”

It’s possible that some Trump devotees will chalk up the frothy debut of Trump Media and its likely slide over time to what they see as their leader’s business brilliance. After all, he’ll do well, probably. As Trump Media slides, he will be in a position to ride the stock down quite profitably; it’s all found money for him, much as was the case with penny stock insiders.

As for his investors? Perhaps they will have the satisfaction of knowing they helped their boy out in a pinch. They could consider their investment a donation, though the IRS might not agree. They could tuck their investment records into one of the Bibles Trump recently sold.

Of course, the smartest investors may be those who have avoided the stock but, instead, watch it slide from the sidelines. Perhaps they could take bets on how quickly the shares fall and on when Trump Media will crater altogether.

What Can Make Trump Fail

Posted on January 10, 2024 by Joe Weber

Can the media, doing its job, show voters the fatal flaws of their hero?

Source: Bloomberg via Getty Images/Axios

Despite scores of news stories about his astonishing legal woes, Donald J. Trump seems likely to coast in on a smooth glidepath to the Republican nomination for president. As the National Review noted, he is polling above 60 percent nationally and leads the field by 30 points in Iowa, where caucusing takes place Monday night.

In the face of his four indictments, 91 criminal charges and two impeachments, his supporters seem only to rally behind him. They seem persuaded by his claims that he is a victim of persecution, much as they feel victimized by the economic, racial, ethnic and social change he seems to stand against – he is their King Canute.

A short time ago, The Wall Street Journal ran “Trump’s Businesses Got Millions From Foreign Governments While He Was President,” a piece detailing how various governments enriched him with official stays in his hotels in Las Vegas and Washington and spending at his New York properties. When I posted a link to it on Facebook, a journalist friend sadly wrote: “Story after story, year after year, decade after decade, yet no legal team can put TFG away,” wrote BusinessWeek veteran Joan Warner. “From tax evasion to misuse of funds to election tampering to insurrection to rape, he gets away with is. The one truthful thing he ever said was that he could shoot a guy on Fifth Avenue and it wouldn’t make a difference. He was right.”

The disdain Trump’s supporters feel for the legal system is mind-boggling, of course, as is the system’s seeming inability to nail him (even as a clutch of his underlings, deserted by him, have been jailed or face criminal charges). Equally unsettling, though, is the disregard among the MAGA faithful for journalistic work that that has illuminated his perfidy – before, during and after his presidency.

Story after story seems to roll off their backs or, bizarrely, to deepen their enthusiasm for him. Are they simply not paying attention? Or, worse, do these pieces just entrench the idea that the elites – in the “fake news” media that Trump derides to great effect – are just unfairly coming after their hero again?

For journalists, the question arises: does any of that painstaking, diligent work make any difference? Indeed, might be it counterproductive?

Back when Trump was spreading lies about Barack Obama’s birthplace, researchers described the “backfire” effect. As NPR put it in a 2010 piece, this was the idea that “we base our opinions on beliefs and when presented with contradictory facts, we adhere to our original belief even more strongly.” University of Michigan researcher Brendan Nyhan, who did much of this work, said “it’s threatening to us to admit that things we believe are wrong.” And the way people – both liberals and conservatives – deal with the cognitive dissonance of facts versus beliefs is to “buttress that belief that they initial held.”

Of course, it helps if one can find media outlets that reinforce such beliefs. In the case of Trump, think Fox News, Newsmax, conservative talk radio and the like. They stand in counterpose to legitimate media, feeding their audiences a steady pro-Trump diet that flies in the fast of the steady anti-Trump coverage of the mainstream folks.

And then, of course, there are Trump’s own blasts on social media. One of his most recent jaw-droppers is a reposted video, “God Gave Us Trump,” made by a group of his supporters and featuring the AI-created voice of Paul Harvey, a voice that would resonate in MAGA world. While a bright person might think this a parody, it’s anything but. Trump followed that with a birther attack on Nikki Haley, reposting a piece that claims she’s not a citizen, even though she was born in South Carolina, because her parents were immigrants. With that, he attacks perhaps his most palatable rival – one who polls better against Biden than Trump does – and smears immigrants, all in one fell swoop.

But there is reason to believe that continuing revelations about Trump’s shortcomings, along with the legal actions, could undo him. He may sail into the GOP nomination because so much of the party has been highjacked by the far right, but his luck in a national race could run as dry as his bankrupt casinos of old if the media continue to highlight his canyon-deep flaws. The best evidence, of course, is President Biden’s election in 2020. While Trump drew an amazing 74.2 million votes in that race, Biden still bested him with nearly 81.3 million. And the Electoral College tally was an impressive 306 for Biden to just 232 for Trump.

Back then, the media had reported for years about the legion of missteps by Trump in the White House. And in the election coverage, journalists delivered a nonstop barrage of coverage of his dismayingly broad array of problems. The media there clearly made a difference, as they did in the midterm elections in which Trump-backed candidates fell hard.

So, will the media tip the scales again? Well, a sharp new focus on the perversions to our system Trump is likely to deliver if elected may help. Publications such as The Atlantic have drawn attention to how much damage he could do to institutions ranging from the military and regulatory agencies to law enforcement. The New York Times has opened a window on what he and his minions plan, from wielding the Justice Department to attack his enemies to upending trade policy.

More such coverage of life under Trump 2.0 may stir up more Biden support, even if it doesn’t peel away Trump backing, going forward (Trump’s fans don’t read such publications, it would seem). Indeed, it would seem unlikely that the Trump base will shrink (it had grown from 62.96 million votes in 2016), unless reports are true that many of his backers would flee him if he were convicted of crimes.

Seeing him hauled off to jail may rally his most diehard backers, perhaps dangerously so, a la Jan. 6. But that could strip away some of the less deluded among his crowds. Of course, he’s doing his best to delay trials that could lead to such convictions, betting that he could quash the federal efforts, at least, if elected.

But what remains puzzling is just why so many people continue to back him. His railings against immigrants and minorities, his barely concealed white supremacism, his disdain for globalism and his thumb-your-nose views of coastal elites all seem to find traction among his devotees, overriding his yawning gaps. His personal immorality continues to be a non-issue for evangelicals who see him as their deliverer.

No matter how much economic stability and restored global influence Biden brings, these other matters seem to make Trump unassailable among many of his supporters. Why is he their avatar, their flagbearer?

Part of his appeal seems to lay in the simple ignorance that seems widespread among his backers. He has long been cherished by the under-educated and our system of primaries seems to turn heavily on them. As The New York Times reported, college-educated people have long been deserting such important primary states as Iowa and other states in the Upper Midwest, leaving behind those Hillary Clinton memorably described as a “basket of deplorables.” Such folks may read little of anything, in fact.

More troubling, part of his success has to do with flaws in our version of democracy. Recall that Clinton actually beat him by a fair number of popular votes in 2016, garnering nearly 3 million more votes at 65.8 million nationwide. But she lost the Electoral College vote 306-232 because that probably outdated institution gives more power to voters in small states than they deserve. Indeed, there continues to be a sharp media focus on so-called swing states, as intelligent cries for abolition of the Electoral College continue to go unheeded.

Moreover, the two-party system puts the choice of our presidential contenders in the hands of an astonishingly small number of people. As a Brookings Institution commentator broke down the figures, some 10,000 people – split between 8,567 delegates to the Democratic and Republican conventions and the members of the parties’ national committees – choose the two contenders, the only real prizefighters in these elections. Most of those folks are representative of primary voter choices, of course, but those primary voters are always a fraction of the general electorate.

There remains hope that enough people can be persuaded – either in the primaries or in the general election – that we will be denied the continued hauntings of this supremely vindictive racist narcissist in the fall. Democracy, at least our flawed form of it, could prevail. It’s possible that even the legal system will rise to the occasion, despite him playing it like a fiddle.

What of the media’s role and effectiveness? More recent research about the “backfire effect” suggests that even deeply held beliefs may not be set in concrete. As researcher Nyhan put it, “corrective information is typically at least somewhat effective at increasing belief accuracy….” Misperceptions may persist for years, but he suggests that carefully targeting information and breaking what he calls the linkage between group identities and false claims can be effective.

In other words, if the Trumpists begin to see him as a failure, his hold on them may slip. We can only hope he fails in the courts, in time, and in some key primaries, and that the media can drive home word of such slipups. By shooting straight with honest decisions and reporting about a man who reviles them, judges, juries and journalists can make a difference, but all have their work cut out for them.

The dominance of dumbness

Posted on September 11, 2023 by Joe Weber

Anti-intellectualism has a long history in American culture

A friend set me to thinking about the long and unsavory history of anti-intellectualism in American life. This strand of our culture didn’t begin with Trumpism, of course, though the anti-science and anti-elites chords the former president strikes so powerfully are exceptional examples of it. Indeed, it’s not by accident that Donald Trump in 2016 singled out the group he had most affection for, saying: “We won with young. We won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with the poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.”

Nor has this phenomenon been exclusively a province of the right, which boasts of many ignorant folks but also the likes of the brilliant (if often distasteful) William F. Buckley. In fact, a most intriguing commentary on the phenomenon came in 2001 from conservative economist Thomas Sowell in “The Quest for Cosmic Justice,” where he wrote:

“From its colonial beginnings, American society was a ‘decapitated’ society—largely lacking the top-most social layers of European society. The highest elites and the titled aristocracies had little reason to risk their lives crossing the Atlantic, and then face the perils of pioneering. Most of the white population of colonial America arrived as indentured servants and the black population as slaves. Later waves of immigrants were disproportionately peasants and proletarians, even when they came from Western Europe … The rise of American society to pre-eminence, as an economic, political, and military power, was thus the triumph of the common man, and a slap across the face to the presumptions of the arrogant, whether an elite of blood or books.”

As a trip through Wikipedia reveals, there is much support for Sowell’s view. A minister in 1843 wrote about frontier Indiana (one of our most undereducated states): “We always preferred an ignorant, bad man to a talented one, and, hence, attempts were usually made to ruin the moral character of a smart candidate; since, unhappily, smartness and wickedness were supposed to be generally coupled, and [like-wise] incompetence and goodness.”

Such views have long infused our politics, sometimes with well-schooled leaders who either demagogued on this stream of thought or just warmed to it. Consider the 1912 thoughts of Woodrow Wilson, who, despite his doctorate from Johns Hopkins, said: “What I fear is a government of experts. God forbid that, in a democratic country, we should resign the task and give the government over to experts. What are we for if we are to be scientifically taken care of by a small number of gentlemen who are the only men who understand the job?”

American historian, author, and Columbia University professor Richard Hofstadter (1916 – 1970) poses for a portrait, New York, 1970. Two of his most important works are ‘Anti-Intellectualism in American Life’ (1963) and ‘The Paranoid Style in American Politics’ (1964). (Photo by Bernard Gotfryd/Getty Images)

A thorough discussion of this trend came in 1963 from Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter. In “Anti-intellectualism in American Life” he argued that anti-intellectualism was how the middle-class showed its feelings for political elites. As that group developed political power, he contended, it held up the ideal candidate for office as the self-made man, not a well-educated man born to wealth.

More recently, in 1980, author Isaac Asimov observed: “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge’.”

Since then, many folks have dusted off this theme. Journalist and author Susan Jacoby in her 2008 book, “The Age of American Unreason,” bemoaned what she called the resurgence of anti-intellectualism in the modern era. According to The New York Times, she blamed it on television, video games and the Internet, saying they created a “culture of distraction” that has shortened attention spans and left people with “less time and desire” for “two human activities critical to a fruitful and demanding intellectual life: reading and conversation.”

Certainly, the forces Jacoby pointed to exacerbate the cult of ignorance we are awash in. Still, history shows that it’s nothing new. The new media that preoccupy us now may just be building on that well-rooted base. One has only to look at the success of Fox News to see how deep that base is.

We might take heart, however, that there’s an ebb and flow at work. At various times in our history, we have swung from respecting (and electing) smart people to choosing ignoramuses. How else to explain descents such as that from Thomas Jefferson to Andrew Jackson (in just 20 years) and from Barack Obama to Donald Trump (in no time at all)?

It’s troubling, nonetheless, that politicians such as Ron DeSantis feel a need to play down or deride their elite-education credentials to try to harness votes from the masses that are less-schooled than they. After using Yale as a steppingstone to Harvard Law School and then entering politics, he soon realized that such credentials were “a political scarlet letter as far as a G.O.P. primary went,” as The New York Times reported. As he has sought to remake higher education in Florida, DeSantis has also said he would eliminate the federal Department of Education, among other agencies.

For his part, Trump has bragged — when it suited his purposes — about attending an Ivy League school, the University of Pennsylvania, even as he failed to mention that he had transferred there after two years at the less tony Fordham University, as The Daily Pennsylvanian reported. In fact, he claimed to have graduated first in his class in 1968 at the university’s Wharton School, though the school newspaper’s investigation of this did not bear that claim out. Indeed, he did not even make dean’s list that year.

He also has often derided intellectuals and pursuits such as reading. He told a reporter for The Washington Post in 2016 that he has never had to read very much because he can reach right decisions “with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I [already] had, plus the words ‘common sense.’ ” Moreover, Trump told the Post that he is skeptical of experts because “they can’t see the forest for the trees.”

Despite the choice of Joseph Biden in 2020, we seem now still to be perilously in a period when the pendulum remains far from valuing education in our leaders or elsewhere. Indeed, it’s troubling how few Americans today put a premium on schooling, a trend concomitant with the rise of book-banning nationwide. Our next election will be revealing about many things (not least of which are understandable concerns about the current president’s age), but it may also mark either a departure from the pendulum’s swing or its confirmation.

Trump TV Starts a New Season

Posted on May 8, 2023 by Joe Weber

Donald J. Trump is slated to appear on CNN on Wednesday night for what is being billed as a town hall. This raises a host of journalistic questions that I suspect will persist throughout the campaign. Already, folks are weighing in on the propriety of CNN granting this showcase.

As Kyle Pope of Columbia Journalism Review asks, for instance: “Do you give Donald Trump airtime or ignore him? Fact-check him in real time or let him discredit himself? Pick apart his most noxious ideas or hope they go away?”

So, let me join the parade with a few matters media outlets – and viewers — need to consider. First, of course, is whether the man is newsworthy. That’s an easy one – he’s currently the frontrunner in GOP circles in the race for the presidency and, like it or not, he did occupy that office. By definition, he’s newsworthy and many viewers – perhaps especially those who shun CNN – would want to see him.

This is different, of course, from the 2016 campaign – at least in its early stages. Back then, he had clown appeal and few, probably including many in his inner circle, thought his efforts were anything but a PR stunt. He offered comic relief. Now, he needs to be taken seriously.

The question then becomes: if he is to be taken seriously, how is he best dealt with? He is almost certain to lie, perhaps about the election results and certainly about the various legal problems piling up for him. One technique, of course, would be to call on various pundits who could disembowel him with facts.

Women who have alleged improprieties by Trump. Source: Time

But Trump is so shameless and effective at bluster – a master salesman who at least appears to believe his own pabulum — that he won’t respond the way a normal candidate would. A normal candidate would be set back on his heels by the truth. But he’ll barrel on through, keeping the limelight focused on his untruths as if they were real (likely to the applause of his supporters, who want nothing to do with a normal candidate).

Indeed, the problem raised by CNN allowing disinformation on the air was suggested in a CNBC piece. The author, Alex Sherman, referred to a promise that CNN chief Chris Licht made last year when he took over the outlet, a pledge to avoid putting on anyone who engaged in disinformation.

“The analogy I love to use is some people like rain, some people don’t like rain. We should give space to that. But we will not have someone who comes on and says it’s not raining,” Licht said in an October interview with CNBC.

He was referring to election denier nonsense, in particular, there.

But, as Sherman suggested, Licht appears to be backtracking. “This seems to be a case of Licht bending his own rules,” he wrote. “Clearly, CNN has different standards for Trump than it does spokespeople for Trump that cycle through cable news networks as daily guests.”

Still, CNN does want to treat this appearance in serious journalistic fashion. That will mean fact-checking of some sort, as CNN officials have acknowledged.

“We obviously can’t control what Donald Trump says—that’s up to him,” CNN Political Director David Chalian told Vanity Fair. “What we can do is prod, ask questions, follow up, and try to get as revealing answers as possible.”

That certainly sounds reasonable. The problem, of course, is what is reasonable in dealing with Donald Trump?

The sad fact is that in modern times we’ve never had a president like Trump or a candidate like him, either. In recent memory, extramarital shenanigans – or something as benign as tears — would disqualify a contender. Now, even an indictment (much less two impeachment proceedings) is insufficient. How low have we sunk?

So, let me make a modest proposal. On one of the innumerable TV talent competitions, whenever a judge finds someone unacceptable, he or she hits a button that puts a big red X on the screen. If a majority of the judges hits such buttons, the auditioner is bounced.

What if CNN did something like this with Trump? Each time he lies, a big red X and a loud buzzer could sound. As soon as he hit, say, six red Xs, he’d be escorted off the stage to the tune of the Beatles “Nowhere Man.”

The host would explain the rules in advance – perhaps in an effort to confine Trump to true statements. And after each lie, the host would explain the truth.

The only problem with this approach would likely be that Trump’s appearance would be short and CNN would then need to find a way to fill the airtime. Perhaps the network could then put on a credible candidate, from either party. Almost certainly, that would better serve the public than this town hall is likely to.

The Big Picture

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