After a long summer of denial and disparagement, even the most elite
precincts of the media establishment are trying to come to grips with
Donald Trump.
First it was the cable news networks, which instantly realized that
Trump was good box office, followed by the network morning shows. Then
some of the columnists who had dismissed him as a sideshow began to
grapple with his rising poll numbers, even those who continued to hammer
him.
That was followed by a series of faulty predictions that Trump was
about to implode because of this or that corrosive comment, to the point
that some talking heads simply announced that they were getting out of
the forecasting business.
Trump even scored a “60 Minutes” profile on Sunday for the season
opener--drawing 15 million viewers--and later declared that CBS anchor
Scott Pelley had been fair to him.
Now some other upscale outlets, rather late to the party, are joining
in the dark arts of psychoanalysis: What makes Donald Trump tick, and
how has he managed to completely upend the rituals and decorum of a
presidential campaign and play by his own set of rules?
What does it say about the electorate that he has struck such a deep
chord—and, I would add, what does it say about the media and political
insiders who suddenly seemed so clueless?
The
New York Times Magazine has just posted its profile by Mark Leibovich, the author of “This Town.” And he begins with an extensive
mea culpa:
“Initially, I dismissed him as a nativist clown, a chief perpetrator
of the false notion that President Obama was not born in the United
States — the ‘birther’ movement. And I was, of course, way too
incredibly serious and high-minded to ever sully myself by getting so
close to Donald Trump.
“I initially doubted that he would even run. I assumed that his
serial and public flirtations with the idea over several election cycles
were just another facet of his existential publicity sustenance. I
figured that even if Trump did run, his conspiracy-mongering,
reality-show orientations and garish tabloid sensibilities would make
him unacceptable to the polite company of American politics and
mainstream media. It would render him a fringe player. So I decided not
to write about him, and I felt proud and honorable about my decision.”
A good confession by Leibovich, who seemed charmed by the generous
access after negotiating with Hillary Clinton’s staff over, for example,
whether any depiction of her campaign office itself would be off the
record.
Unlike overly programmed politicians, he writes, “Trump understands
and appreciates that reporters like to be given the time of day. It’s
symbiotic in his case because he does in fact pay obsessive attention to
what is said and written and tweeted about him. Trump is always saying
that so-and-so TV pundit ‘spoke very nicely’ about him on some morning
show and that some other writer ‘who used to kill me’ has now come
around to ‘loving me.’’’
This is an important point: Journalists not only love that Trump is
available, but that he knows how to stir the pot and make news—even at
the risk that he will rip them afterward. There are few things more
frustrating than landing an interview with a presidential candidate and
getting the same canned sound bites we’ve all heard before.
So, a scene from the Trump jet:
“He kept flipping between Fox News, CNN and MSNBC, sampling the
commentary in tiny snippets. Whenever a new talking head came on screen,
Trump offered a scouting report based on the overriding factor of how
he or she had treated him. ‘This guy’s been great to me,’ he said when
Bill O’Reilly of Fox appeared (less so O’Reilly’s guest, Brit Hume, also
of Fox). Kevin Madden of CNN, a Republican strategist, was a ‘pure
Romney guy,’ while Ana Navarro, a Republican media consultant and Jeb
Bush supporter, was ‘so bad, so pathetic, awful — I don’t know why she’s
on television.’ Click to Fox News. Jeb Bush was saying something in
Spanish. Click to MSNBC. Hillary Clinton was saying she wished Trump
would start ‘respecting women’ rather than ‘cherishing women.’ (‘She
speaks so poorly, I think she’s in trouble,’ Trump said.) Click to CNN.
It showed a graphic reporting that 70 percent of Latinos had a negative
view of Trump. Click to Fox News. Trump asked for another plate of au
gratin.”
The Donald, never unplugged.
Another major piece appears in
New York Magazine
by Frank Rich, the former Times columnist, unabashed liberal and
consultant on “Veep” who doesn’t hide his disdain for Trump. He writes,
for instance, of “the quest to explain” how “the billionaire’s runaway
clown car went into overdrive.”
But Rich feels compelled to give Trump his due, even as a flawed
messenger: “It’s possible that his buffoonery poses no lasting danger.
Quite the contrary: His unexpected monopoly of center stage may well be
the best thing to happen to our politics since the arrival of Barack
Obama.”
Trump, he argues, “has performed a public service by exposing,
however crudely and at times inadvertently, the posturings of both the
Republicans and the Democrats and the foolishness and obsolescence of
much of the political culture they share. He is, as many say, making a
mockery of the entire political process with his bull-in-a-china-shop
antics. But the mockery in this case may be overdue, highly warranted,
and ultimately a spur to reform…By calling attention to that sorry state
of affairs 24/7, Trump’s impersonation of a crypto-fascist clown is
delivering the most persuasively bipartisan message of 2016.”
While allowing that Trump commits heresy on such matters as taxing
hedge-fund guys, Rich ultimately blames the Republican culture: “On the
matters of race, women, and immigration that threaten the GOP’s future
viability in nonwhite, non-male America, he is at one with his party’s
base. What he does so rudely is call the GOP’s bluff by saying loudly,
unambiguously, and repeatedly the ugly things that other Republican
politicians try to camouflage in innuendo, focus-group-tested
euphemisms, and consultantspeak.”
This is the last line of defense for the anti-Trump contingent: The
problem is not The Donald, it’s the way he caters to the dark passions
of conservative Republicans. But many Democrats are also fed up with
politics as usual, which is why socialist Bernie Sanders has improbably
pulled close to Hillary in the polls.
With his new tax-cut proposal, Trump has kicked off the second phase
of his campaign, one in which he’s offering policy as well as persona.
Asked by Matt Lauer yesterday what he would do if his poll numbers sink,
Trump said: "If I think for some reason it's not going to work, then
I'd go back to my business." But there's no indication he's going
anywhere for the foreseeable future.
And if other candidates spoke as openly and frequently with the media as Trump does, we’d have a better campaign.