Opinions without amplification: the problem is the equivalent of a trial where a judge only wants to hear opening statements.
We have opinions and we like to express them. We also have what we like to think of as reasoned positions, and we sometimes like to explain those at well. But anyone immersed in the stew of cable news these days is likely to see more of the first and less of the second: opinion-giving devoid of good reasons. For example, we are knee deep in arguments on health care reform. If a person expresses faith in a single-payer system built out from the expansion of Medicare–a common proposal–we need to hear their reasons. If given the chance they might add that it would have lower administrative costs, works reasonably well in Canada and elsewhere, and would simplify the administrative mess we now have. The problem is that our broadcast media give capable experts too little time to explain how such a system would work.
The topics happen to be political. But like aging divas in some old Broadway revival, none of the program hosts will not move from under the key light at the center of the stage.
One of our cable news networks, MSNBC, favors hosts who are almost always reluctant to allow guests even a New York minute to elaborate on a point of view. Chris Matthews (Hardball) is the worst at sharing time, shutting down sometimes thoughtful guests by asking long questions he then proceeds to answer. Others on the network are inflicted with the same need to dominate, sometimes even Rachel Maddow. To be sure, the gifted Maddow is less guest-centric and almost always up to the task of defending her reasons. But the overall impression is of a network that has turned their evening news lineup into a series of “shows” based on “branded” celebrities. (For the record, we should have news “programs,” not “shows.” A “program” suggests at least the possibility of unscripted discussion.) The topics happen to be political. But like aging divas in some old Broadway revival, none of the program hosts will not move from under the key light at the center of the stage.
CNN is slightly less star struck. Their on-air journalists, including Erin Burnett, Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer are able listeners and sometimes sharp questioners. CNN’s problem is that they have decided to add large panels of “experts” to comment on what is always “breaking News.” The pattern means there are as many as eight observers: party hacks and surrogates for the President, and sometimes a few people with real insight into governmental affairs (for example, David Gergen and David Axelrod.) But no guest is given more than a few seconds to make a point. Opinions, but too little amplification: the problem is equivalent to a court trial where a judge only wants to hear opening statements, but not supporting testifiers.
Older research put the average television news soundbite coming from an expert at about eight seconds, hardly enough time for anyone to clear their throats, let alone explain the intricacies of a policy proposal. Even in the expanded cable and streaming universe, the number does not seem to have grown. The guests are often decoration to add legitimacy to the proceedings, or to fill in important but minor holes of infrequent silence.
This matters because a true reasoned argument is a claim (assertion) and it’s good reasons. A claim alone is not enough. It’s intellectually crippling to only state assertions: the equivalent of trying to have a public debate via Twitter. All of this is made more poignant by the fact that true discursive media–the New York Times and Atlantics of the world–struggle to hold on to their readers. It seems that many Americans are too busy or distracted to remain engaged long enough to get full explanations. Instead, they get less about more, creating what political scientist Robert Entman once described as a “democracy without citizens.”
It remains to be seen how long Americans will accept a drama queen as President: how long it will be before their forbearance for the man who can’t fill the part is tapped out.
This site is all about maximizing the chances for success in connecting with others. But if we flip that goal over, we get an equally interesting effect by testing the limits of behavior a mile wide of the norm.
I’ve been thinking about this watching television news people on cable networks, trying not to register shock that the President of the United States has just trashed another convention of the presidency. News people are expert for keeping calm in the presence of disorder and rudeness. Serious and accomplished reporters can be very good for taking any act and trying to place it into a context that normalizes it for the beat they are covering. This is partly a function of their self-definitions as professional observers.
Those of us with shorter fuses may not have this kind of professional elan. But that’s what forbearance gives us: the use of euphemism and “just the facts” to keep an offensive act from devolving into a comedy of manners.
We would never think to associate public acts so careless and random as authentic examples of “presidential rhetoric.”
It’s not too much to say that this President has seriously undermined the conventional role functions of the Presidency. We would never think to associate public acts so careless and random as authentic examples of “presidential rhetoric.” But we’ve had over fifty days of them, and then on one recent Saturday: an astonishing and libelous tweet accusing President Obama of tapping phones at Trump Tower, followed minutes later by a second missive expressing giddy delight that a reality star was cancelling his show. These rants came a few days after Trump gave us the wide-eyed and definitive insight that “Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.”
Nobody? That must have struck analysts and experts in three previous administrations as news. No one else had apparently been able to grasp the complexities of American health care.
These combined responses and many more like them seem like evidence for what’s known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect, a condition where an individual with limited competencies lacks even the capacity to understand how limited they are. No wonder one of the dominant tropes emerging in the coverage of this president is of a man-child.
Donald Trump’s over 500 angry, misspelled and boorish Tweets alone would have disqualified him for leadership in most large organizations. Can we assume that one day these rhetorical ejaculations will greet visitors at his Presidential library?
To be sure, we grant every White House occupant some non-presidential moments: Nixon angrily shoving his press secretary toward journalists, Johnson showing photographers a surgery scar on his fat belly, Ford diving head-first down the stairs of his airplane, Clinton lying about his relations with Monica Lewinsky, George W. Bush commenting at a press conference on the British Prime Minister’s brand of toothpaste.
But nothing has scratched the mostly pristine finish of the institutional Presidency like Trump. He has entire seizures of misdirected utterance and grotesque overstatement. His willful ignorance, bluster and conspiracy-mongering, are not just unpresidential, but anti-presidential. His penchant for turning almost every claim into an accusation and most statements into shaky affirmations of his fragile ego has made his short tenure an unintended psychodrama: an embarrassment to be endured. His first address to Congress showed that he can follow linear thinking if it is fully scripted. Yet he seems uninterested in the kinds of details and substantive exchanges that the press and public long for. So it remains to be seen how long Americans will accept a drama queen as President. Like a school play, the mishaps and miscues are sometimes funny. But how long will we accept this bad actor before our forbearance is tapped out?
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Gary C. Woodward has written about the Presidencies of Woodrow Wilson, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
