Pretending that he’s a groundbreaking or cathartic or unifying figure won’t work. He’s been around too long.
Pretending that he’s a groundbreaking or cathartic or unifying figure won’t work. He’s been around too long.
‘T his team truly understands optics. These images will inspire our friends and shake our foes,” says Matt Dornic, casting an eye over a display of nation-affirming firepower to mark the occasion of Joe Biden’s inauguration. Er, make that fireworks power. Dornic, a supposedly nonpartisan spokesman for the supposedly nonpartisan CNN, attached to his sentiment, issued via Twitter, a picture of the fireworks Wednesday night on the Mall. An elaborate use of fireworks is going to make Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping tremble with unease? Why was this point not being made by CNN personalities when Donald Trump presided over a big fireworks display at the RNC last summer?
The next sound the media will hear is that of viewers clicking off CNN and MSNBC as the major American news networks become the equivalent of Putin’s media marionettes. Ratings will crash as viewers tire of the songs of state praise, and Fox News Channel will be the only TV news choice for those seeking substance rather than sycophancy. Is the transgender individual Rachel Levine, for instance, a sound choice to take a leading health-care position in the federal government? All we’ll hear about her on CNN is that she is ideal because of who she is, rather than because of her actual record, which is dismal. You might say appointing her amounts to valuing identity politics more than American lives, though you won’t be saying that on CNN.
Anyone who was an adult in 1993 can tell you that it was common then for women to have sexual dreams and fantasies about Bill Clinton — tall, roguish, powerful, and a robust 46 years old. The first Boomer president swept into office on a wave of panting ladies, adoring celebrities, and approving reporters. The adulation that met the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009 made the Clinton worship look like Beatlemania had grown into a full-on religion, with infatuation becoming a deep spiritual conviction. Obama was not only cool, he would lead us all out of the darkness, renew our souls, and repair our country.
And Joe Biden? Joe Biden isn’t sexy, he’s senescent. He isn’t transformational, he’s tired. His own close associates marvel at his incompetence.
He’s a congenital liar, a notorious blowhard, and a dimwit backslapper who brings to high office not the glow of a lightworker but merely the DNA of a used-car salesman. He owes his current position not to any accomplishments worth boasting of but to three passive characteristics: his not being Donald Trump, his not being Bernie Sanders, and his being plucked out of the Senate by Obama, who was so nervous about his own lack of Washington experience that he chose the party’s most avuncular figure to balance him out as a running mate (then discouraged Biden from trying to succeed him).
Joe Biden isn’t the first black president, he isn’t an unusually young president, he isn’t . . . anything interesting. He’s just a quintessential Washington blarney machine who managed to stay kicking until he floated to the top. Pretending that he’s a groundbreaking or cathartic or unifying figure won’t work: He’s been around too long. People know him too well. He’s not even interesting. And he’s not especially popular. An NBC poll released a few days ago put him at 44 percent approval, only four points higher than Trump. The RealClearPolitics polling average puts him at 50 percent. Obama came into office with approval ratings near 70 percent.
It’s a conundrum for CNN and the rest of the DNC-adjacent media: They would very much like to display their aversion to Donald Trump by treating him as the Voldemort of presidents (as MSNBC’s Brian Williams did the evening of Biden’s inauguration, when he avoided using the 45th president’s name in favor of the roundabout locution “twice-impeached private citizen”) but their efforts to plump up Biden as Mount Rushmore’s next model will fail. What then? They could turn their attention to the deviltry of Mitch McConnell (that’ll fail too; McConnell is intentionally boring and will not be tweeting all-caps conspiracy theories to delight Anderson Cooper). They could try to get some mileage out of Kamala Harris’s style choices, but if the public’s attention could be captured by pantsuits, Hillary Clinton would be starting her second term in the Oval Office. Or perhaps the leading news-media outlets will revert to their early 2000s style and become national crime blotters, regaling us with tales of missing blondes and unsolved murders.
My guess is that the media will be like post-holiday dieters who have sworn never to let another morsel of chocolate or glass of wine pass their lips. They can only hold out so long; the temptation is too great. Soon they’ll be demanding that Trump provide them with fresh outrages upon which to affix their obsessions. The same outlets that cheered when Twitter was yanked out of Trump’s hands are praying that he’ll take over a cable network, or start one, or at least become the next Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh. They won’t be able to handle Trump Withdrawal Syndrome.