If CNN had any shame or respect for the citizens of a self-governing republic, the network would never air one of these idiotic events again.
The “town hall” format for televised debates and other media appearances ostensibly originates from the Norman Rockwell ideal of civic participation, in which a lone engaged citizen boldly stands up to question a political figure. That’s all well and good. But in practice, they became commonplace in presidential politics in 1992, the first presidential election year after the Cold War ended, when the clearing of the nuclear Sword of Damocles from over our collective heads liberated our politics to become unserious. Which is why the first of these town hall “debates,” between George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot, had a man ask the following question seriously to the candidates, with a genuine answer expected:
Could we cross our hearts; it sounds silly here, but could we make a commitment? You know, we’re not under oath at this point, but could you make a commitment to the citizens of the United States to meet our needs, and we have many, and not yours. Again, I have to repeat that, it’s a real need, I think, that we all have.
The format of these events engenders a false empathic connection between presidents or would-be presidents and the people lucky enough — or just pre-selected — to ask questions. The questioners typically reciprocate this connection, establishing political figures as essentially national caregivers who are somehow directly and mysteriously in touch not merely with the individuals who question them but more generally with an ethereal national will only they can discern. It’s a hideous spectacle unbecoming of a self-governing republic, and it has only grown worse since its origination. It should be abolished.
But it hasn’t been, which is how CNN organized one Wednesday night in Cincinnati, Ohio, with President Joe Biden, and anchor Don Lemon serving as “moderator.” With the help of the mawkish sheen inculcated by the format, Biden largely skated through a kind of CliffsNotes of current events by invoking either his preferred cliché or talking point of the moment or a variety of emotional or ironic rhetorical devices as he saw fit.
Biden, as president, must appear to be in touch with the national mood, a nigh-indecipherable metric that this format wants us to believe a president, aided by television, can discern. COVID is on everyone’s mind again, which is why Biden saw fit to stress his supposed commitment to “science.” “I do not tell any scientists what they should do,” he said. Asked by one questioner how he was going to restore America’s faith in science, Biden said he was going to “listen to the scientists . . . and not interfere, just let the scientists proceed.” This all sounds nice. But it elides the fact that science, valuable as it is as a tool and as a process, cannot ultimately make decisions that are fundamentally political in nature. The guidance it provides here should not be ignored or rejected, but it cannot simply be deferred to. After all, it is sometimes conflicted within itself, misguided, or subject to external influence or groupthink, as the lab-leak saga adequately reveals. Perhaps recognizing the emptiness of such deference, Lemon, in a surprising and welcome turn of journalistic probity, prodded Biden for specificity on questions relating to the return of children to school in the fall; his reply was that, “the CDC is probably gonna say everyone under the age of 12 should be wearing a mask in school, so that’s probably what’s gonna happen.” So there you go: That’s science for you.
Amazingly, the national mood as filtered through this town hall also demands that Congress pass Biden’s preferred bills. To the extent it was possible to discern why Cincinnati, Ohio, was chosen as the venue for this spectacle, it was so that the Brent Spence Bridge, which spans the Ohio River between Ohio and Kentucky, could be used as a political prop for the infrastructure bill Biden wants passed. Naturally, the questioner teed up to ask about this was in favor of spending federal money for the project, allowing Biden to begin his preferred spiel about how the bills will create jobs. Never mind that what little we know about the Democrats’ plans suggests a vanishingly small percentage of the proposed spending actually would deal with the classic infrastructure of roads and bridges.
When one audience member introduced an idea dissenting from this national will Biden sought to invoke through the town hall — the prospect of inflation — Biden trotted out another one of his platitudes du jour: Citing the ubiquitous Moody’s, Biden claimed his bill will “reduce inflation, because we’re going to be providing good opportunities and jobs and people who in fact are gonna be reinvesting that money in all the things we’re talking about, driving down prices not raising prices.” He treated similarly the discordant notes of a restaurateur, who claimed to be having trouble finding people to work. Biden ambiguously blamed the man for possibly not offering enough, suggested unemployment benefits may play a role, but then, pressed on this by Lemon, said he had “seen no evidence” that they had an effect. And anyway, the economy was recovering so well that people wouldn’t want to be waiters, especially once we got them free community college.
The event largely proceeded in this manner. If you’ve paid attention to recent debates and news cycles, it would all have been familiar: Republican bills at the state level to bring voting laws away from pandemic-era exigencies are “Jim Crow on steroids.” Democrats don’t want to defund the police, they want to give the police more money. Etc. It was all papered over with pre-rational invocations of contrived pathos, or a weird ironic affectation on Biden’s part that conveyed a sense that we should take him seriously (“I’m being deadly earnest”/”No, I’m serious”/”I’m not being facetious”/”Not a joke”/”All kidding aside”). The whole pointless exercise not only served as an indictment of the modern televised “town hall,” but also emphasized the ridiculousness of the conceit of a president’s empathic connection to the people that the format assumes and advances. He knows not merely what’s right for our policy but what we feel; “unity,” therefore, frequently bandied about during the proceedings, means Joe Biden and the Democrats should get their way. How convenient. If CNN had any shame or respect for the citizens of a self-governing republic, the network would never air one of these idiotic events again. But don’t expect that to happen anytime soon.