"Trump Might Get Us All Killed, But..."

Some thoughts as Biden faces the press

In 2016, I was at a dinner event in New York City where the guest speaker was a very well-known political columnist approaching late middle age. He’d covered several presidential campaigns, written juicy bestsellers, dabbled in Hollywood, and was the type of writer who makes elections accessible and dramatic for non-political people, kind of like Maureen Dowd. (I won’t name names, because the event was off the record. He wasn’t Maureen Dowd.)

The crowd that night was full of non-political people, and we were just a few months away from Election Day, so the Columnist was extremely in his element. He talked about writing, and how he got to where he was, and so forth, and then at the end he summed up the presidential race.

“Giving Trump nuclear weapons might get us all killed. But Hillary Clinton is so bad at politics she shouldn’t even leave the house.”

As you might imagine, several things struck me about this comment, before even getting to the part about leaving the house. The first was that he just kept talking. He didn’t backtrack, or wince, or make an oops-I-hope-whoever-writes-about-this-on-their-Substack-eight-years-from-now-won’t-name-names face. He actually kind of smiled to himself. He thought he had just said something pretty smart.

The second thing that struck me about his comment was that when it came to negative qualities in a potential president, he thought that being a lunatic who could potentially kill us all and being bad at politics were equally bad.

How could a very intelligent person believe something like this? I suspect, if pressed, he would have laundered his opinion through the imaginary public. (“Politics is a popularity contest. That’s just a fact.”)

But I think what was really happening is deeper. Political reporters feel uncomfortable forming a public opinion on a candidate’s morals, or the potential impact of their policy agenda. They also tend not to like boring policy details, an instinct that, as I writer, I can sympathize with.

But since at least 1972, when The Boys on the Bus came out, it’s been not just acceptable but encouraged and lucrative for political reporters to pass judgment on politicians’ political skill. Which means that a) the kinds of people who care a lot of political theater tend to become campaign reporters and b) the people who become campaign reporters pay more attention to politicians’ political skill.

Maybe the Columnist’s comment is best explained by an old joke:

Late one night, a police officer finds an old man wandering in circles around a streetlamp. “Excuse me sir, is everything okay?”

“I’ve lost my keys,” says the old man, “and I came here to look for them.”

“And you’re pretty sure you dropped them below this lamp?”

“No,” replies the man, “I dropped them in that park over there. But this is where the light is.”

For many people who cover politics, political performance is where the light is. It’s the thing they examine most deeply, so it becomes the thing that matters most.

Which brings me to Biden’s terrible debate. I should say a few things here, beginning with the fact that I have no inside information. I have some vibes, like everyone else, and some relevant experience when it comes to political communication. But that’s it.

Still, I know enough people who know enough people that I think it’s safe to say almost no Democratic insider is concerned that Biden can’t handle another term as president. Nate Silver recently said he can’t imagine any Democrat would bet Biden would finish out a second term. But (assuming I was the kind of person who enjoys betting on the lifespans of the elderly) I would absolutely take that bet. While I’d imagine the schedule of an 86 year-old president will look quite different from that of an 82 year-old president, I think it’s unlikely that if Biden is president in 2025, he leaves office before Jan 20, 2029.

Democrats, myself included, aren’t worried about Biden’s next four years as a president. We’re worried about his next four months as a candidate.

This would be a lot easier if we were Republicans. Just look at Trump in 2016. After the Access Hollywood tape came out (which, obviously, was much worse than looking super old at a debate) the GOP tried to ditch Trump, then realized they couldn’t and embrace their new reality. But Democrats don’t work like that.

First off, we don’t have the conservative media ecosystem. The closest we have is celebrities and their social media feeds, a handful of MSNBC hosts, and my former colleagues in Crooked Media. If Biden can’t campaign like a traditional candidate, it’s theoretically possible that these other outlets could step in to make the case against Trump, and to some extent they’ll try. But this won’t work for two reasons:

• Many members of these groups - and in particular, celebrities - care a lot about performance. It’s the language they understand. Biden can’t make the case, “Listen, I look bad on TV, but I make up for it with my command for policy details, relationships with world leaders, and highly competent staff.” Celebrities are not going to accept the idea that looking good on camera is unimportant.

• Also - and this has been badly overlooked - most of the Democratic outlets spent the past nine months keeping Biden at arms’ length because of Gaza. They don’t want Trump to win, but they’ve felt uncomfortable saying anything like, “Biden’s been a great president” because they may not believe it, and because large parts of their peer groups and audiences don’t believe it, even if a majority of Democrats do. That makes it even less likely that the left-leaning media, which is already small and disorganized compared to the right, will go all in on Biden.

Second, we won’t have Wikileaks helping us out with a drip drip drip of October surprises. No one said being the party who stands up to Putin was easy.

Third, I think it’s hard to imagine just how gleefully many people in the mainstream political press are going to tear into Biden for any physical or verbal misstep between now and November. If, at some point, “the bottom is falling out” gets old, maybe they’ll switch to a comeback narrative. But remember where the light is. If it turns out that the debate wasn’t just one awful night, and Biden regularly struggles to perform on camera, then the central thesis of his campaign is that political performance doesn’t really matter. I would find that refreshing.

But to someone like the columnist from that 2016 dinner, who has dedicated his life to the idea that treating campaigns as theater is worth dedicating one’s life to, for Biden to win this election while looking terrible on TV would be a devastating personal blow. I don’t think anyone in the political press will actively try to sabotage the president. But I think reporters and pundits are human beings who respond to incentives just like everybody else - and that when someone’s identity is threatened they respond extremely aggressively.

Which is all to say: As Biden gets ready for his press conference, I think it’s important that we recognize the ways in which the culture of campaign journalism makes Biden’s job that much harder, and a second Trump term that much likelier.

The problem, of course, is that none of this is going to change in the next four months. In an existential election, we can’t just bemoan unfairness - we have to figure out how to win despite of it.