Presidential Campaign Stumps Beltway Bloviators

“Without standardization, without stereotypes, without routine judgments, without a fairly ruthless disregard of subtlety, the editor would die of excitement.” Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion

Walter Lippmann was referring to newspaper editors when he made the above observation in 1922, but he could just as well have been summarizing the attitudes of television producers and commentators, web editors, and press journalists as they parrot each others’ superficial descriptions of the 2016 presidential primary, descriptions that could cause those who closely watch politics to die of boredom. We are awash in conventional language and repetitive tropes, often intended to “manufacture consent” (another of Lippmann’s signature terms) rather than reflect actual political deliberations, as I hope to illustrate in the following paragraphs.

The pressure to produce content has always been present among what used to be known as ink-stained wretches. However, the explosion of digital media outlets and television channels dedicated to political commentary has increased that pressure exponentially, even while the number of print outlets shrink, forcing journalists to call upon comfortable, previously vetted narratives, or on recently promulgated and therefore relatively fresh ones, when churning out the ever-needed product. Even those few, those fortunate few, who still have good jobs in print, who you would think might have at least a few hours each day to gather information and to actually ponder what that information might mean, must blog and twitter when not composing the stuff that will actually appear in their employer’s flagship outlet. The more allegedly successful among them may also spend their evenings adding to the cacophony of commentary offered up daily by the likes of Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC.

This election cycle has been particularly trying for those the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once characterized as the chattering classes. The campaign narrative has shifted so quickly and significantly that the punditry scrambles with growing futility to keep up. The party establishments aren’t just stymied, as many would have it, but appear to be disappearing with the same rapidity as the American middle class. The establishment is not peopled by the middle class, of course, but by the donor class, a group of power brokers that, given the struggles of favored candidates such as Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Hillary Clinton, have thrown up their collective hands at the antics of an angry and frustrated electorate.

The above candidates, you see, have electability, primarily because they are centrist or moderate, rather than fringe or renegade, too conservative or too liberal, with appeal only to the base, unable to garner the independents and cross-overs needed for success in the general election. As the shower of hackneyed terms that clutter the preceding sentence might suggest, this is the point at which the narrative really slides into utter confusion, at least in the minds of readers and viewers who might be paying a modicum of attention, or who might be prone to what educators fond of buzz-words like to call critical thinking.

The challenge created by these terms is that they begin to move what poses as analysis into the realm of policy choices, as opposed to horse-race coverage. Policy discussions demand both complex expression and greater concentration than either the pundit or the focus group member appears able to muster. How do you define these terms, and their relevance to what particular candidates might actually do if elected to office? How far out does the spectrum of American political thinking extend? If its extent is wider than the common experience of the Washington power-brokers, chatterers, and bloviators, then just how qualified are those folks when asked to determine who is centrist or moderate?

Donald Trump is not a true conservative, his opponents claim. Well, maybe that doesn’t matter if those who vote for him are even less clear on what a conservative ought to be or ought to do than those opponents are. Can a self-proclaimed social democrat win a Democratic primary, much less a general election? Bernie Sanders takes the time to explain he favors a form of governance similar to that found in some prosperous European democracies, and his poll numbers rise. Will Americans accept the higher taxes that must accompany a single-payer health system or a free college education? Bernie Sanders points to the thousands upon thousands of dollars Americans now pay in tuition and insurance premiums. Details, details. Will the electorate attend to his argument? Stay tuned.

But do remember than the establishments thought Richard Nixon unelectable in the mid-‘60s, and Ronald Reagan too much of a Goldwater Republican in the mid-‘70s, and Barack Obama an outsider launching a quixotic campaign in the winter of 2007. Don’t lean on those well-paid but clearly overtaxed pundits and their default modes of expression when deciding how to vote. And we’ll argue about what narrative actually unfolded after the election.

Neil Cosgrove is co-chair of the New People editorial collective and a member of the Merton Center Board.

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