Vice President Pence’s obsequiousness at a recent Cabinet meeting — “Thank you for seeing, through the course of this year, an agenda that is truly restoring this country. . .” and on, and on — might be appropriate at a Communist Party Central Committee meeting or at a despot’s birthday party.
.. The divestment of self-respect is a qualification for employment in the Trump administration. Praising the Dear Leader in a Pence-like fashion seems to be what the Dear Leader requires — not in the way we might need dessert after dinner, but in the way an addict needs drugs.
.. President Trump divides the world into two categories: flunkies and enemies. Pence is the cringing, fawning high priest of flunkiness
.. Any Republican president from the 2016 primary field would have appointed conservative judges, continued the offensive against the Islamic State, and cut taxes and regulations. (He or she would also, in all likelihood, have succeeded at an Obamacare replacement.)
.. Trump spent the political capital of his first year — the highest it will ever be — on a few, generic GOP goals.
- .. Trump has tried to undermine the credibility of important institutions — the courts, the FBI, intelligence agencies, the media — that check his power and expose his duplicity.
- He has used his office (and Twitter account) to target individual Americans for harm without due process.
- He attacks the very idea of truth in a daily torrent of despicable lies.
- The moral authority of the presidency is in tatters.
- He has made our common life more vulgar and brutal, and complicated the moral education of children.
- Racists are emboldened and included in the GOP coalition.
- He has caused a large portion of Republicans to live in an alternate reality of resentment and hatred,
- which complicates the possibility of governing and is likely to discredit the party among the young, minorities, women and college-educated voters for decades to come.
.. Almost all of Trump’s accomplishments are the work of traditional Republican policy staffers and congressional leaders. Almost all of Trump’s failures are functions of his character. And that isn’t going to change.
Want to Know Why Roy Moore Might Win? Blame the Media.
The anger against the mainstream media is deep-seated. And, as difficult it is for many to accept, much of the anger is justified.
.. the major networks, most major newspapers and cable news programs outside of Fox—has displayed a vexing double standard against conservatives.. Remember all of the hostile press conferences and exchanges that Washington reporters routinely had with the Obama White House, or when Obama’s daily utterances were challenged every day on CNN?.. Conservatives do remember, however, the endless attacks on Reagan’s mental abilities, on George H. W. Bush’s alleged out-of-touch elitism, and on his son’s various verbal miscues and alleged racial insensitivity... if any prominent mainstream journalists ever doubted the president’s intentions or his commitment to helping improve the lives of his fellow Americans
- .. Can the same be said of coverage of Reagan’s welfare reform program or
- George W. Bush’s effort to respond to Hurricane Katrina or
- the Republican Congress’ current tax cut plan?
.. Harvard’s, that showed 93 percent of Trump’s media coverage has been negative.
.. networks could end the customary two- or three- or four- on one panels
The Modern Epic of Denunciation
The media is driving the story line but we all are caught up in the moral drama.
We seem to have entered a period of nonstop mutual denunciation. This is particularly useful to the media, which can fill pages and airtime with nonevents that reporters and pundits invent and then cover. It is useful, too, in providing simple moral guidelines by which a person can establish superior virtue without having to do anything.
.. Yet Democratic condemnations of Al Franken began flowing within minutes of the story’s breaking
.. Pundits speculate that Republicans would prefer Roy Moore to lose his Senate race because, if he wins, he will be hung around their necks for years. They will be called upon repeatedly to denounce him, repudiate him, distance themselves from him. Like Odysseus, they will be on a long, difficult, epic journey. Unlike the “Odyssey,” however, their story will have no end or point.
What mainly drives the events of the “Denunciad,” as the gods do the “Odyssey,” is the media, which has discovered an endless fount of news—a sort of fire hydrant of youth. Suppose that Person X makes an inappropriate remark, and you are a news director charged with covering the story. By itself, it’s liable to fade pretty quickly, yet there are 24 hours of live updates to fill.
.. But, objectively speaking, many other things didn’t happen today either. Editors don’t pluck other non-occurrences from the ether and then send people out to cover them. Why is Mr. Trump waiting so long to condemn the Hells Angels rally in Nowheresville? The president hasn’t denounced North Korea in the past six hours: Does that signal a change in policy?
What the “Denunciad” demands, rather, is a public performance of self-righteousness—a moral dramatization.
.. America’s very own national epic, like England’s “Dunciad,” seems mostly to deliver lessons about how concerned we are with keeping up appearances and establishing some sort of moral pecking order.