A civil war rages in the United States disguised as a political campaign for the Presidency. It won’t end on November 5, no matter who wins.
It is an asymmetric contest aided and encouraged by people with an unhealthy vision of what the US Constitution means. Mainstream media isn’t helping. Social networking turns out to be a kryptonite for social behavior. Further roiling the waters are journalists who could not get elected as dog catchers but write endlessly about tactics the candidates should be using.
I know something about journalists, having spent six decades in media here and abroad. It frightens me that people are getting bad advice disguised as news, which is like trusting your barber to diagnose a serious medical issue instead of seeing a doctor.
The media is applying a vicious double standard here—letting Trump get away scot-free with his salads of nonsense while holding Harris to an unrealistic standard of cogency and candor. Robert Reich, economist, lawyer, and former cabinet official, has made this point more than once.
Trumpian rage is invariably filled with lies and fantasies, most evident in the illiterate social messaging he and his team use. This has gone on for so long that it has been normalized. There are Americans at all levels of our society who find this charming if not endearing, perhaps because so much of it is thinly disguised racism and misogyny.
If Kamala Harris speaks carefully on a contentious issue, she is criticized. The media wants more interviews, and when they happen, they criticize her for careful answers, perhaps forgetting that she is the Vice President of the USA and what she says has a larger audience than the mutterings of the other candidate who cannot put two cogent sentences together.
[An aside. I covered Newt Gingrich as a congressman in Georgia in the 1970’s. He always spoke like an ordinary guy trying to sound much more intelligent than he was. Trump always sounds dumber than he really is, or perhaps he just isn’t as smart as he likes to claim, or it's just cognitive decline.]
Michael Bender in the New York Times wrote Harris “often responds to unpleasant questions without answering them, questions the very premise of questions she finds unfair and can take it upon herself to reword a query she considers unhelpful.”
It’s elemental; most intelligent people learn to do that, especially politicians.
In a story in Politico, Jonathan Martin suggests many things: “Harris should say she’ll work with Republicans on behalf of all Americans and stand up to the extremes in both parties because, America, she knows the dirty little secret is many GOP lawmakers she served with are as exhausted with extremism and extremists like Donald Trump as she is.”
But Martin can’t resist advice she doesn’t need nor want: ”Harris ought to consider preemptively naming Mitt Romney as her secretary of State. Don’t even do it in exchange for his support. It would be more powerful if she says she’ll name him to the post without perceiving a Trumpian quid pro quo.”
Trump’s knowledge of economics must be measured against the multiple bankruptcies he has created in various business endeavors. Her economic plan is half the projected cost of Trump’s, which he says will be paid for with Tariffs, which are taxes on consumers. The “tell” on Trump’s grasp of reality is his refusal to debate if it involves fact-checking. Thus, the only interviews he will do is with sycophantic right-wing hosts and journalists who do not question his utterances.
I remain hopeful that many people will be honest with themselves in the voting booth. If family relations demand a certain response, they will fake their answer to keep peace in the family. Fewer votes for Trump compared to votes for down-ballot Republicans will indicate if I am correct.
Let’s end this essay where we started. Media has double standards.
Journalist friends insist The Wall Street Journal’s news standards have nothing to do with its editorial position. How do we “explain” a vitriolic opinion piece about how FEMA has failed in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene? I get it. This is the Murdoch-owned paper giving one for the Trumper. The Trump campaign has weaponized this false theme as an election issue.
They want you to forget when Trump was tossing rolls of paper towels to Puerto Rican hurricane victims in 2017 or taking $155 million from a FEMA budget for border issues when he was building a partial wall that Mexico did not pay for as he had claimed.
It doesn’t surprise me that a New York Times. Sienna College poll last month revealed that 25% of respondents said they did not know enough about Harris, probably because they were too busy paying attention to Taylor Swift. Only 10% of the people polled said they did not know enough about Trump. This makes perfect sense because the other 90 % know he has no business being president at age 78 for temperamental or intellectual reasons, plus with felony convictions.
The attacks on the government response to hurricane disasters are rational only to Trump because he wants to paint the Biden-Harris administration in any negative light he can invent. Among people of character and morality, questions of politics or religion are never asked before services and help are provided.
By: Kenneth Tiven