Making the click-through worthwhile: From the nation’s airports to Congress to the 2020 campaign trail, headline-grabbing culture-war spats arise, squeezing out discussion of more substantive and difficult issues; two New York Times reporters warn the political-journalism world that the debates that occur on Twitter do not reflect real life in America; and an unveiling of a new batch of data about the gun industry in each U.S. state.
The More Time You Spend on Culture-War Politics, The Less You Focus on Other Problems
The editors observe that “Chick-fil-A faces explicit, official retaliation [by government agencies] not for any incidents of discrimination in its stores, but rather for the constitutionally protected freedom of expression of its associated foundation” and declare it intolerable.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal is demanding that the IRS hand over six years of Donald Trump’s tax returns, ostensibly to prove that the Internal Revenue Service is properly auditing Trump’s returns. Many of us suspect the real aim of demanding the returns is to overcome Trump’s refusal to disclose them and sniff through them, looking for embarrassing details.
Pete Buttigieg challenges Vice President Pence, “If you have a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.”(Never mind that it’s far from clear that Pence has a problem with who Buttigieg is.)
The country has real problems: opioid addiction, economic anxiety and insecurity, a long-term debt and unstable entitlement programs, a rising suicide rate, ensuring that every child and young person gets an education that prepares them for a changing economy. But at this moment, the single most popular thing that political leaders of either party can do is “go after” figures and institutions associated with the other side.
The biggest menace that Chick-fil-A presents to gay Americans is through the long-term threat of higher cholesterol, but Democratic lawmakers behave as if it must be driven from the nation’s airports. Think about the ideological blinders you must have on if you’re on the management board of a mid-sized airport, and you look upon the long lines, frustrated travelers, delayed flights, fraying infrastructure, spotty wireless, spotty signage, infrequent shuttles, and over in the corner, two businessmen desperate to recharge their phones and battling like gladiators over access to the last power outlet, and conclude that the Chick-fil-A sandwiches are the biggest problem that you need to address.
The notion that the IRS is somehow negligent in its duties regarding Trump is implausible; even if we didn’t have the existing evidence of the partisan passions within that government agency, Trump would still be a big and juicy target for any ambitious tax investigator. It is reasonable to believe that if any of the methods Donald Trump used to minimize his tax bill over the past decades were provably and indisputably illegal, the IRS and prosecutors would be all over him. It is easy to believe that Trump and his accountants used every legal method to minimize his tax bill to the fullest extent and got into gray areas, but again, if at any point in the past decades the IRS thought it had a winnable case, why would it hesitate?
In his autobiography Shortest Way Home, Buttigieg describes his relationship with Mike Pence as governor as “long and complicated” but the tension appears to lie almost entirely with Buttigieg. He describes cordial meetings with Pence as a congressman, “I was surprised with how affable, even gentle he was.” He writes that “the governor seemed determined to be a friend to South Bend. His office was always open to me, and he often appeared in our area for factory tours, ribbon cuttings, and other events, always with something good to say about our city.” He appoints Democrats to state boards. Pence declares at a local event, “South Bend is so blessed to have an energetic, innovative, forward-thinking, creative mayor in Pete Buttigieg.” Pence talks with Buttigieg about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which some contended would legalize discrimination against gays, and the worst Buttigieg can say is “It was clear from the look in his eyes that he had made up his mind.”
Back in 2015, Pence tweeted that if he saw a restaurant owner refuse to serve a gay couple, he wouldn’t eat there anymore. And when asked by a local television station what he thought of Buttigieg’s coming out, he replied, “I hold Mayor Buttigieg in the highest personal regard. We have a great working relationship. I see him as a dedicated public servant, and a patriot.”
Buttigieg can never muster any examples of Pence being rude, hostile or hateful, but his book keeps lamenting “the complications of being openly gay in Mike Pence’s Indiana.” It’s as if Buttigieg knows his intended audience is expecting a tale of Pence sneering or denouncing the mayor, but the then-governor keeps failing to live down to expectations.
As mentioned above, we’ve got bigger, more substantive problems to worry about on the national scene. Wage growth and automation; energy security and independence; the cost of higher education and whether it’s fostering genuine free thought, debate and inquiry; protecting our citizens at home and abroad from those who would seek to harm them. We just held a whole Ideas Summit tackling these big issues. But that’s not as much fun as “getting those guys!” — and it’s neither as widely covered by the national media, as quickly spread on social media, or as rewarded by the voters.
Twitter Is Not Real Life, Part Infinity
The New York Times’s Nate Cohn and Kevin Quealy offer a cool graphic and article laying out how the vast majority of Democratic primary voters are not like the ones who are loudest and most active on social media. They’re more likely to identify as moderates or conservatives, more likely to say political correctness is a problem, don’t follow the news as closely, and be African-American. They add that polling might even “understate the leftward lean of the most politically active, Democratic Twitter users, who often engage with political journalists and can have a powerful effect in shaping the conventional wisdom.” Cohn asked the Democrats who follow him on Twitter how they classify themselves, and 29 percent said “very liberal” and 48 percent said “liberal.”
The question is . . . how many political journalists realize this? How many political journalists keep that in mind when assessing who’s up and who’s down and what “the mood of the party’s grassroots” is?
How Big Is the Gun Industry in Your State?
The folks at WalletHub have put together an intriguing measurement of much a state is “dependent upon the gun industry,” although I think a more accurate moniker would be just measuring the gun culture in each state. They gathered the data on firearms-industry jobs per capita, gun sales per 1,000 residents, and gun-ownership rate.
In the category of firearms industry jobs per capita, there was a three-way tie for first, among New Hampshire, Idaho, and Montana. But when you measure which states have the highest tax revenues from firearms industry per capita, Wyoming, Maine, and Alaska come out on top. The highest rates of gun ownership are in Alaska, Arkansas, and Idaho.
The survey found a five-way tie for first in most NICS background checks per capita: Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, West Virginia, and Idaho.
I’ll be covering this year’s NRA Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, and each year I go, I marvel at just how many small American companies make up the gun industry. Besides the manufacturers, there are hundreds of companies that thrive from making associated gear, from holsters to gun safes to hunting equipment to cleaning materials to targets and skeet. Gun control activists talk about “the gun industry” and picture a bunch of guys in suits, which is not a particularly accurate portrait.
ADDENDUM: Congratulations, University of Virginia Cavaliers! As somebody on sports radio said, they’ve just created the greatest “yes, but” in sports history. As in, for years to come, someone will chuckle, “Only one number-one seed has ever lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament,” and someone else will inevitably respond, “Yes, but they came back and won the championship the following year!”
To paraphrase the brilliant Remy, it’s such a relief to see “Virginia” trending on Twitter and know that for once, it’s not about a politician wearing blackface.