There has, rightly, been a lot of frustration from Democrats and others who fear a second Donald Trump presidency that President Biden’s declining verbal acuity is overshadowing the sheer heinousness of his opponent in press coverage.
Yesterday, the editorial boards of two of the nation’s leading papers sought to correct that.
The New York Times published an interactive featurette titled “HE IS DANGEROUS IN WORD, DEED AND ACTION.” The page design makes excerpting challenging but the gist is this:
Next week, for the third time in eight years, Donald Trump will be nominated as the Republican Party’s candidate for president of the United States. A once great political party now serves the interests of one man, a man as demonstrably unsuited for the office of president as any to run in the long history of the Republic, a man whose values, temperament, ideas and language are directly opposed to so much of what has made this country great.
It is a chilling choice against this national moment. For more than two decades, large majorities of Americans have said they are dissatisfied with the direction of the country, and the post-Covid era of stubborn inflation, high interest rates, social division and political stagnation has left many voters even more frustrated and despondent.
The Republican Party once pursued electoral power in service to solutions for such problems, to building “the shining city on a hill,” as Ronald Reagan liked to say. Its vision of the United States — embodied in principled public servants like George H.W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney — was rooted in the values of freedom, sacrifice, individual responsibility and the common good. The party’s conception of those values was reflected in its longstanding conservative policy agenda, and today many Republicans set aside their concerns about Mr. Trump because of his positions on immigration, trade and taxes. But the stakes of this election are not fundamentally about policy disagreements. The stakes are more foundational: what qualities matter most in America’s president and commander in chief.
Mr. Trump has shown a character unworthy of the responsibilities of the presidency. He has demonstrated an utter lack of respect for the Constitution, the rule of law and the American people. Instead of a cogent vision for the country’s future, Mr. Trump is animated by a thirst for political power: to use the levers of government to advance his interests, satisfy his impulses and exact retribution against those who he thinks have wronged him.
He is, quite simply, unfit to lead.
The Democrats are rightly engaged in their own debate about whether President Biden is the right person to carry the party’s nomination into the election, given widespread concerns among voters about his age-related fitness. This debate is so intense because of legitimate concerns that Mr. Trump may present a danger to the country, its strength, security and national character — and that a compelling Democratic alternative is the only thing that would prevent his return to power. It is a national tragedy that the Republicans have failed to have a similar debate about the manifest moral and temperamental unfitness of their standard-bearer, instead setting aside their longstanding values, closing ranks and choosing to overlook what those who worked most closely with the former president have described as his systematic dishonesty, corruption, cruelty and incompetence.
That task now falls to the American people. We urge voters to see the dangers of a second Trump term clearly and to reject it. The stakes and significance of the presidency demand a person who has essential qualities and values to earn our trust, and on each one, Donald Trump fails.
This is followed by rather redundant sub-features titled Moral Fitness Matters, Principled Leadership Matters, Character Matters, A President’s Words Matter, and The Rule of Law Matters. Needless to say, Trump badly suffers in comparison to Biden in all those categories.
Whether by coincidence or coordination, the Los Angeles Times followed suit with “One candidate is patently unfit for the White House. It’s not Biden.” After a short setup, they declare,
It’s unbelievable that the nation is spending so much time on the question of Biden’s verbal acuity, when the greatest concern ought to be that his challenger is a self-aggrandizing felon and twice-impeached election-denier. Trump fomented the Jan. 6 insurrection, shows contempt for the rule of law and shamelessly lies in pursuit of more power. He’s an authoritarian who admires murderous despots, wants to jail his political enemies and has publicly flirted with declaring himself a dictator on his first day back in office.
With fervent support from the Republican Party, he peddles cruelty, racism and misogyny, demonizing immigrants as “poisoning the blood of our country,” demeaning women‘s looks and intelligence, and using disgustingly fascist language to criticize his opponents as “vermin.” He’s a man who lied about his wealth for years to cheat on his taxes, whose business was convicted of criminal tax fraud, and who’s been denounced by many former aides and Cabinet members as a “malignant narcissist” who recklessly puts himself before the American people.
Trump is the only man in the presidential race manifestly unworthy of holding a position of power, and has no business ever returning to the White House. If the GOP had any decency left, its members would be discussing whether to dump Trump for a candidate who isn’t out to bulldoze democratic institutions in favor of autocracy.
Voters should resist viewing this contest through the politics-as-usual lens of past elections. This November is not about dueling personalities, middle-of-the-road policy differences, or as some might see it, an 81-year-old man being the lesser of two evils compared with a 78-year-old man. It’s nothing short of a referendum on our 248-year democracy, and a choice between a trustworthy public servant who upholds American values and a serial liar who wants to push the country into authoritarianism.
Leaders of the Democratic Party have to stop the self-defeating discussion about Biden’s fitness and decide whether to replace him or unify behind him. And Americans must start hearing more about how the records, positions and character of Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and any of the prominent Democrats being floated as possible replacements make them all unquestionably superior to Trump.
The Daily Kos‘ Mark Sumner (“Donald Trump is dangerous. The media is finally talking about it“) is not satisfied.
Numerous papers have dropped editorials calling for Biden to drop out of the race following an unsteady debate performance. They are still at it. Before the Times ran their column on Thursday, only The Philadelphia Inquirer made a similar call for Trump to depart after his debate responses were filled with lies and fantasies about everything from immigration to the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Thursday’s Times not only carries that editorial declaring that Trump is unqualified, but it also carries a front page notably less cluttered with thoughts on Biden’s viability as a candidate. That seems like a good sign ahead of the president’s press conference on Thursday.
Still, there seems to be more concern in the media over noting every entertainer who has a thought about Biden—or even those who might have a thought—than in the long list of former Trump officials who want nothing to do with their old boss. It might seem like the fact that Trump’s former vice president is refusing to endorse him might rate more attention than any actor. It should.
The challenge for the New York Times and others isn’t whether they will give Trump’s nastiness an occasional mention, but whether they will provide the kind of sustained and focused coverage that has been devoted to Biden’s status post-debate.
My position on this remains the same: Biden’s repeated embarrassing public performances are legitimately newsworthy and the fact that so many senior Democrats are trying to get him to drop out of the race is arguably the biggest political news story in generations.
But Sumner makes an interesting argument:
Analysis shows that among Black voters who watched Biden’s debate performance, 21% had their view of Biden negatively impacted while 70% said the debate had made them more likely to vote for the president. However, 57% of Black voters who didn’t see the debate said they were now less likely to vote for Biden, with only 43% more likely.
The big negative effect for Biden came not from the debate, but from people talking about the debate.
That’s almost certainly true. Two decades ago, writing on his own site, my co-blogger Steven Taylor, reacting to a press conference by President George W. Bush, observed,
[W]hile the overall presentation last night was rather ho-hum, that his responses have made terrific sound bites. I saw several clips last night on TV before going to sleep and heard several on NPR this morning driving into work. His responses sound reasonable, thought out, and calm. Further, they convey specific ideas in short snippets of audio/video.
[…]
I would reiterate that you should all pay attention to the sound bites and reevaluate the way one looks at the press conference through those lenses. I think that that aspect of the event was masterfully played by the White House. This is an especially salient point when one considers that most people will get their impressions from the sound bites, as most folks don’t watch these things, and even if they tune in, they don’t watch the whole thing.
It’s always the sound bytes and reaction that drives public perception of an event. And, I’m sorry, the fact that Biden came across as a befuddled old man during the debate was simply more newsworthy than Trump’s energetic Gish gallop of lies.
What’s kept the narrative alive for two weeks isn’t some nefarious plot by the press to elect Trump but rather the combination of continued stumbles by Biden and the growing calls by prominent Democrats for him to exit the race.
As I noted in my November 2023 post “Objective Journalism in an Objectively Uneven Contest,”
Because Trump is so much more rhetorically volatile than normal politicians, he gets constant media attention, often live coverage, which amplifies his remarks and drowns out the campaigns of his opponents. That’s bad! Too much coverage! But, when he says truly outrageous things, the media is supposed to call them out. Otherwise, we normalize the outrageous.
It’s not as if news of Trump’s horribleness isn’t being covered. Indeed, the reason anti-Trump media critics are able to criticize the under-reporting of Trump’s transgressions is that they’ve heard about them in the media.
A new Pew poll of registered voters, which I’ll address in greater depth in a separate post, finds that 64% think Trump is “mean-spirited,” 63% think he’s “embarrassing,” and only 36% think he’s honest. That he’s still slightly ahead of Biden in most surveys is disspiriting but it’s not because the press isn’t reporting on his awfulness.
