Holding feet to the flame even if they’re fireproof
Like it or not, our political landscape is as much a stage as anything on Broadway. There’s a story to be told, and certain people are and are not in charge of telling it.
For most of political history, it’s been done by proxy. The politicians tell the story they want told, and it has been the reporters’ jobs to combine that with the actual facts and tell the real story. Have all reporters been equally good and equally honest about their jobs? Obviously not; Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson exist. But at the highest level, journalists have by and large been good at what they did, despite existing in a largely thankless biosphere of people with the most authority not liking what they had to say.
Ultimately, though, it was an elegant system. Politicians had plenty of access to say what they want, but there was always — even as TV news proliferated and the leaders’ outlets because less fettered — some form of check and balance on honesty, some small level of accountability that existed. A politician could, and often did, say whatever he or she wanted, but there existed a counterbalance (a “fourth estate,” you might say) that could raise its hand and say “Um, what about…” That often only resulted in the politician offering spin or changing the subject, but at least it existed, and that was valuable.
That has all but disappeared in many circles right now, to everybody’s detriment.
The internet is a, well, “net” good. I firmly believe that, even as evidence mounts that that might not ultimately be true. But one of its drawbacks is that it allows people to lie freely, and while most of those liars are anonymous and/or powerless, the biggest liar in the system is the guy with the most power in the world. And that’s a significant problem.
In Monday’s coronavirus briefing-cum-campaign rally, Donald Trump ran a several-minute campaign video disguised as … well, it wasn’t really disguised as anything. It was a campaign video. That he ostensibly used it to argue against claims that he had made mistakes doesn’t change what it was. He went on, as he has done throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, to turn every question into an opportunity to praise himself and his handling of the situation.
In a way, I don’t blame him! I wouldn’t want to stand in front of people and talk about how I had made mistakes either. That sounds awful.
But that’s also the job. Every day at 5 p.m., my wife and I watch Andy Beshear’s daily briefings before switching over to Trump’s. And every time there’s a problem in the process — the unemployment system can’t handle demand, or supplies haven’t been distributed, or, you know, people die — Beshear takes a minute to say that any blame for problems starts with him. Obviously, that’s largely for show, because people want to see humility, and because oftentimes the problems are or were unavoidable. But the “for show” part is a big part of what the job is.
Many of the problems with our response to the coronavirus pandemic were in ways unavoidable, and would have existed whether Trump was president or Bush was president or Obama was president or a giant talking goldfish was president (well, that last one is the case, I guess). I don’t for a single second believe that we could have a better president in office and be dealing with this pandemic having killed only six people, all 90-plus years old, all diabetic, obese, and already with heart failure. We could have the best possible person running the country right now and this would still be a massive problem — exactly how massive would be the debate, and while I think it would be far less serious under Obama, it would still be serious.
But if you can’t acknowledge even systemic failures (let alone personal, specific, individual failures), there is no chance the next time will be any better. If Trump’s only response is “10 out of 10!” and “I take no responsibility at all!” then we’re well on the way to screwed. And so far, that’s all we’ve gotten out of him.
Back to Monday. During the campaign rally, CBS’ Paula Reid took a minute to ask Trump what he did in February. It’s a seemingly innocuous question, but an important one — the Trump side’s main claim for success so far is shutting down travel from China earlier than many thought he should. And to be fair, it is one thing he did that turns out to probably have been the right decision, even if “travel ban!” is the “Lisa needs braces” of his presidency and he’d use it as his response to any problem up to and including “not enough people are traveling from X.” A travel ban is his hammer, and almost literally anything that comes up in the news is a nail. But hey, if you attack everything like it’s a nail, well, eventually you actually will find a nail to hit. (Of course, since the virus obviously did get here and spread like wildfire, “we banned travel from China” is only a tiny, tiny claim for success, but when all you have are tiny claims, you take your tiny claims.) But when the relative success of the Chinese travel ban is the only thing he and his supporters can point to, and it was followed by a month-plus of golf and rallies (literally — he golfed five times in February, had six rallies, and attended six fundraisers), and the virus did in fact get here, well, what did you do with that time?
Trump’s response was exactly what you’d expect. This is worth the two minutes of your time:
Again, it’s worth noting that any president would be likely to be facing the same problems (in type, if not necessarily in scope) as Trump. But at the very least, there would be some reflection. “In retrospect, it would have been better to start the assembly of ventilators earlier.” “We’ll use the problems here as a guidepost for the next problem we face as a country.” Something. Standing back and saying “We made no mistakes, had no failings, caused no problems, and anything that went wrong was literally unavoidable in every conceivable way” is a concession that next time things will be just as bad and oh well, have you watched OANN today?
That’s why what Paula Reid did was so important, and why it was so thankless. She grilled Trump, likely knowing full well it would go nowhere. Trump called her a fake. His supporters have likely been angrily tweeting her ever since (I will definitely not be looking at those mentions). She was never going to get an answer.
But that’s also the job. The benefits and drawbacks of the internet — unfettered access, but also unfettered lying — have made journalists’ jobs that much harder. Whether to even air the daily briefings has been a valid question of late. Air them, and you’re letting him broadcast his particular brand of propaganda to as wide an audience as possible. Air them but cut in with chyrons and follow-ups that point out how unhinged and untruthful he’s being, and you look like a biased sore loser. Refuse to air them, and you look like you’re just covering something up. When someone lies as regularly and as shamelessly as our president does and his supporters still have undying faith in him and his checks and balances refuse to check-and-balance, it’s like a cheat code. You can do whatever you want with no fear of repercussion.
Paula Reid is the closest Trump gets to having to answer for something. He was never going to admit any mistakes, but it’s still worthwhile and valid to make him have to refuse to do so.
The fourth estate is struggling for any number of reasons. The most popular one — dishonest media, incompetent reporters, etc. — is probably the least of the reasons, because by and large it isn’t true. Journalists at the biggest outlets (FOX excepted, and this isn’t me being biased, it’s provably true) who are dishonest or blatantly wrong once get publicly lambasted at a minimum. The ones who do it more than once are unemployed. Anonymous sources are anonymous to us, the reader, but the biggest outlets aren’t running them without significant vetting and verification. They aren’t. You could do that exactly once until, like the boy who cried wolf, you would lose any and all credibility, and that their public credibility has been degraded by outside forces anyway does not change that they can’t afford to just invent sources out of thin air anyway. That’s just how it works.
But the fourth estate still has the job of at least attempting to hold those in power accountable. That’s sometimes impossible, always thankless. That it is those things is frustrating, but not disqualifying. You still have to do them. Paula Reid’s interaction with Trump at Monday’s rally was infuriating and ultimately unproductive, but it still carried significant value. For a man whose feet have literally never been held to any flame in his life (somehow; I will never understand it), Paula Reid at least moved his toes close enough to a fire that he realized the fire was there. Even if that is only worth a tiny bit, it is worth a tiny bit. The man deserves to have his feet held so close to the fire that his slacks ignite (you know the “pants on fire” rhyme). Even a small move in that direction counts for something, and the fact that the move came despite a likely awful 18 hours of responses from cultists ever since means that much more.
There are thankless jobs out there. Sports official. School principal. In many ways, president, at least until this guy came in and made it a “praise me” fest. Journalist is way up there on that list. Others have it harder, both on a day-to-day basis and right now in particular, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t thankless. Like sports officials, journalists are by and large only noticed for something negative (whether deserved or undeserved). Like principals, they are mostly hated for holding people accountable for their actions. Paula Reid’s life is harder today than it was yesterday because she did her job, and she did it well. And doing so might have been pointless. Trump certainly ain’t gonna change as a result. It sucks.
But we’d be better if there were more people like her out there, doing their jobs and getting hated as a result.