Every time President-Elect Trump bashes the media, his
popularity pops upward. Why?
The feeling on the street is that however many lumps
President-Elect Donald Trump delivers to the media, just or unjust, they
deserve it. The approval rating of the media among americana ordinarius is on a par with that of Connecticut Governor
Dannel Malloy, hovering as I write around 24 percent. Approval ratings may not matter
all that much. Both Mr. Trump and his Democratic Presidential opponent, the
vanquished Hillary Clinton, were, according to fallible polls, highly
unpopular. The polls themselves, this time around, were highly unreliable. In
the post-election period, one imagines pollsters lying on psychiatrist couches,
the psychiatrists digging deeply into their psyches in an attempt to salvage
their sanity.
Is the media inescapably biased?
Possibly. Every writer or commentator brings his portfolio
of prejudgments with him as he writes. There is a custom among reporters within
the hard copy media to be “fair,” and being fair means providing space within
stories for the opposition to stretch its legs. It’s fair to say that an
overwhelming number of reporters here in Connecticut are liberal by
inclination. Most of them favor progressives. National polls confirm that the
left of center media looks favorable on liberals and progressives; conservatives,
not so much. But so long as reporters lean heavily on the “fairness” crutch,
their biases, they believe, do not prejudice their reporting.
Well then, are they fair?
Sometimes. It really depends on the individual reporter.
There are, still among us, reporters who believe it is their mission to follow
a story to the gates of Hell if need be, and to take a cue from God himself,
who is said to be “no respecter of persons.” But in the news business, it is
very easy to surrender to the current and go with the flow, which in a blue
state like Connecticut has a leftist undertow. It takes no great moral virtue
to swim with the current; that kind of swimming is really a surrender
to the force of the status quo. Swimming
against the current is always an ordeal, very discomforting. Then too, we often
forget that news is a business and as such subject to the most destructive failing
in business, which is mistaking the customer pool.
What should be more important to a political commentator: satisfying
Senator Gasbag, whose political sentiments as expressed in his ubiquitous press
releases reinforce your own, or demonstrating that Gasbag is a hypocrite and a
fraud, when fraudulence and hypocrisy become too obvious to ignore? The answer to this question becomes difficult,
to use the mildest of terms, when Gasbag is a politician-for-life who
represents an unalterable gerrymandered district. Why waste reportorial energy
on losers? The matter is made more difficult if Gasbag is a likeable character.
One wants to satisfy the familiar hale-fellow-well-met who provides good copy
and is on friendly terms with news editors. Close friendships between reporters
and politicians have destroyed many a good story. A newspaper’s real customers
are those members of the public who need the truth to make responsible
political choices, and the mission of a good reporter is to satisfy that need.
The mission of a good commentator is to be confoundedly obstreperous. It was
Joseph Pulitzer, after whom the coveted prize is named, who said good
journalists should have no friends.
In the past, the best commentators have been those who swim
against the tide of undigested thought.
To the ambitious politician, Henry Mencken was a barely
tolerable nuisance. A reader will search his political columns in vain for
instances in which he compliments presidents, though once he came within a
hairsbreadth of bestowing a backhanded compliment on Calvin Coolidge, about
whom he wrote: “In what manner he would have performed himself if the holy
angels had shoved the Depression forward a couple of years - this we can only
guess, and one man's hazard is as good as another's. My own is that he would
have responded to bad times precisely as he responded to good ones - that is,
by pulling down the blinds, stretching his legs upon his desk, and snoozing
away the lazy afternoons... He slept more than any other President, whether by
day or by night. Nero fiddled, but Coolidge only snored... Counting out
Harding as a cipher only, Dr. Coolidge was preceded by one World Saver [Warren
Harding] and followed by two more [Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt]. What
enlightened American, having to choose between any of them and
another Coolidge, would hesitate for an instant? There were no
thrills while he reigned, but neither were there any headaches. He had no
ideas, and he was not a nuisance.”
The Trump campaign was decidedly uncomfortable, but while
many people disliked the messenger, they thrilled to the message, because it confounded
and disappointed those who think it their business to confound and ultimately
disappoint what Mencken called the booboisie.
Politicians may profitably take several messages from
Trump’s successful campaign. Trump’s
depreciation of the media is accidentally correct. We need an analysis more
rigorous than that the media is unfair because it has been unfair to Trump. Barnum and Bailey campaigns work. Anxiety plus confidence equals impatience. The
American public, often anxious – it’s why they conquered the frontier -- is
impatient with politicians who place collegiality above real patriotism.
Americans increasingly are growing impatient with fat and well paid public
servants who are unable to make proper distinctions between the permanent and
temporary in politics. Politicians are, or should be, temporary, while the
enduring traditions of the country, always under attack by social anarchists,
should be permanent. Many Americans are growing impatient with politicians who
aim to regulate everything but politics (cf. U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal). All
the chatter about Constitutional prescriptions is centered in the notion that a
politics of limits is essential to democracy and republican government. It
really is true that anyone can become President.
If Trump is not
Mencken’s Coolidge, a tolerable politician, who is he really?
Who knows? It’s not the business of political commentators
to go poking about in men’s souls. Trump has billed himself as a scourge of
politicians, pretty much the way the progressive harridan from Massachusetts,
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, has billed herself as the scourge of Wall
Street. We know the anti-establishment establishment went for Trump in a big
way, and they were not disappointed by his success. Middle of the road
Traditional Republicans wept, and unappeasable Republican hardline rightists
shouted from their barricades their usual war woop – not enough.
Who are the members of the anti-establishment establishment?
On the Democratic side of the political barricades, they are
those commentators who style themselves progressives or populists; on the Republican
side, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Laura Ingraham and Joe Visconti.
Who, the reader might ask is Joe Visconti? Never heard of
him. Visconti was an early Connecticut
Trump supporter. He ran for governor in a 2014 Republican primary prior to the
re-election of Dannel The Just; that would be Governor Dannel Malloy. If the
reader is not one of the emigres who already have pulled up roots in
Connecticut and moved to Tennessee – to escape cruel New England winters and
tax fleecing progressives -- Visconti is determined to introduce himself. He bills himself as “Trump without the billions” and
already has thrown down several gauntlets: “BREAKING NEWS for the CTGOP - After being asked if he would run for Governor
in CT again, here is what Joe Visconti had to say: ‘Well one thing I can
guarantee is that I will not allow most of the CTGOP field to become governor
after they walked away from Trump and destroyed our chances for gaining more
wins in CT. Here are the names of those that I will never allow to be governor.
Mark Boughton [a Republican, the longest serving Mayor in Danbury’s history]
(voted for his dog for president, then tried to walk it back). Themis Klarides
[Republican House Minority Leader] who in the end turned on Trump over comments
he made after taking schizophrenic positions throughout the year. Tony Wang
who's people tried to block me last week putting up Trump signs in Fairfield
RTC office (more on this tool later). Toni Boucher who would not endorse Trump.
Len Fasano [Republican Senate Minority Leader] who running unopposed would not
support Trump, Joe Scarborough who turned into Mr. Never Trump. Heather Somers
& Paul Formica, traitors in the flesh. The list goes on. This time these RINOs
[Republicans In Name Only] don’t get a pass, I will be the CTGOP nominee [for
Governor] if any of these are our choices or I will bury this [Republican]
party in CT for a generation.’”
Of course, the above
mentioned politicians peremptorily dismissed by Visconti as gubernatorial
material have had some success. Connecticut Republicans did win seats in the General
Assembly; the Senate is now equally divided between Democrats and Republicans,
18-18, and during the last few elections Republicans gained quite a few House seats,
a Sisyphean chore in a state in which Democrats outnumber Republicans by a two
to one margin. It is true there were not many Republican office holders who
eagerly embraced Trump immediately after the Republican Party nominating
Convention.
Visconti was the
exception to the rule. His only public office was on the West Hartford Town
Council. Visconti withdrew late in the Republican gubernatorial primary and
threw his support to Tom Foley, the Republican Nominating Convention’s choice
for Governor. Politics is a reductive
process. Visconti’s early support of Trump makes of him a party of one among Republican gubernatorial aspirants. And he
cannot be dismissed as easily as he has dismissed other Republicans. Any
registered Republican who is able to garner sufficient contributions to enter a
Republican primary must be viewed as a serious candidate, because he may throw
the election to an opposition Democrat.
The national and
state Republican Parties may learn some few things from Trump’s campaign.
Given his background, a rich entrepreneur born to the
purple, Trump astoundingly was able to present himself to voters as Everyman.
He talked like the corner barber. Establishment politicians were dumb because
they had little practical experience in the real world. The domestic policy of
Democratic President Barack Obama – about whom the less said the better – was a
mess, and his foreign policy was a tar pit. Hillary Clinton was a crook and a fraud.
America, socially and economically, had jumped its track and must be righted. Foreign
countries had got the edge on us because our politicians were unable confront
them forcefully and successfully. The meaning of the United States – all we
have been and all we may be – is defined not by utopian aspirations but by our
borders, which are routinely violated by illegal aliens. ISIS must be destroyed.
The left of center media is unfair and complicit in our undoing. It’s time we
were unabashedly patriotic and nationalistic. Just as our borders, which ought
to be inviolable, define our land mass, so our republican form of government
defines our nation. Nationalism is not international provincialism; it is the form in
which our political being and spiritual substance has been set. The nation’s
good times lie ahead of us, not behind us. We can no longer afford to speak in
tongues. We must throw off political correctness and speak plainly … and so on
and on.
This messaging, and the manner in which it was delivered, struck a
chord with Middle America, the forgotten Americans, the guys and gals who pays
all the bills and who are seldom visited, said the New York Times in a rare
post-election confession, by reporters who do not venture out of their cubicles
to solicit the thoughts of americana ordinarius. Because Trump’s message was perceived as true, the messenger
was perceived as authentic. Americans always have been big on authenticity.
Is Trump authentic
or simply a masterful showman? In two years, when all the campaign masks have
been discarded, we will know.
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