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Two Kinds of Principled Punditry
For someone who has long since assumed Trump was an inevitable disaster, a silver lining of this awful year has been the ability to watch a presidential election without a dog in the fight. Doing so has made plain that there is substantial rot on our side that needs to be repaired, a fact noted by a great many people who have had a great many good ideas. This is my first post on Ricochet as a new member, which I decided to become because Ricochet seems like the ideal place to have and contribute to those arguments.
One argument that has been incredibly frustrating to witness between NeverTrump and Trump-supporting conservatives has been the fighting over the ethics of highlighting Trump’s awfulness as a commentator, or really anyone writing or speaking in public fora. What has made it frustrating is that the two sides seem to also have different assumptions about the nature of commentating, which has made the dispute a multidimensional one that few have acknowledged as such.
The two people who have been clearest about this second-axis dispute have been Jonah Goldberg and Ace of Spades, so I have chosen to name the two views of punditry after them. (Note: I commit in advance to apologizing to either or both if they object to my characterization of their views and renaming the schools of thought accordingly). Here they are, in their own words:
Jonah Goldberg, July 2nd:
In 2012, I wrote a column, “The Case for Mitt Romney.” In it, I tried to reassure conservatives who worried — understandably — that Romney wasn’t an authentic conservative. It is absolutely true that if you replace “Romney” with “Trump” it reads like a perfectly serviceable — even entertaining — argument for supporting the 2016 presumptive nominee. Some guy named Edmund Kozak at Laura Ingraham’s website read it and now shouts “Hypocrite!” in my direction. I get it. What Kozak doesn’t get is that I don’t see Trump the same way he does, or the way I saw Mitt Romney.
If John Kasich or any — and I mean any — of the other 16 candidates had won the nomination, I’d probably have written “The Case for John Kasich” by now. If I refused to do that, I would indeed be a hypocrite — or at least inconsistent (hypocrisy is a much misused word). Note: I can’t stand Kasich. But he meets my own minimal requirements for support. Trump, simply, doesn’t. [Lengthy list of reasons]
Kozak and many others either disagree with me on these points or they simply don’t care. If it’s the former, we have some substantial disagreements about what I think are obvious facts. If it’s the latter, then I take our disagreement as a badge of honor. If Roger Simon wants to describe that as “moral narcissism,” so be it. But, there’s a practical point here too. I plan on being in this line of work for a while longer. In the future, I want to be able to continue to say character and ideas matter without someone shouting, “Oh yeah, then why did you support Donald Trump?” […]
And that brings me back to Victor’s dilemma. He asks, “What is the rationale of trashing both [Clinton and Trump], other than a sort of detached depression that does not wear well in daily doses?” […] But the answer is staring him in the face: Because we’re supposed to tell the truth. I will say Hillary is corrupt, deceitful, and unqualified and I will say likewise about Trump — because that’s my job.
Ace, July 21st:
Sorry, I was on Twitter. I felt it was necessary to dispel the widely-held myth, adored by #NeverTrumpers, that somehow attacking Trump relentlessly does not aid Hillary Clinton, and that they are not choosing Hillary Clinton by choosing to be NeverTrump.
All choices have consequences. By supporting Trump, I am responsible for the consequences of a Trump victory — and those consequences could indeed be dire.
But a childish morally-unserious fantasy has infected the #NeverTrump not-so-intellgentsia, that they can agitate for Hillary Clinton — by relentlessly disparaging Trump — and somehow, they are not responsible for the consequences of the Hillary presidency they are bucking for. […]
I ask people: When you knocked Obama in 2012, and wrote posts and comments noting his flaws, did you think you were doing nothing to improve Mitt Romney’s chances of winning the presidency?
If so– why the [expletive] did you bother?
Of course, this is silly; everyone knows that when one buys ads attacking a candidate, one is helping that candidate’s opponent win.
The Ace School
“An Ambassador is as an honest man, sent to lie abroad for the good of his country,” is the famous quip by the otherwise obscure Sir Henry Wotton. The Ace conception of punditry is analogous, which we might define as a clever debater, sent to spin on TV for the good of his party. This view has the pundit as essentially engaged in a get-out-the-vote operation. There are a substantial number of voters who will stay home if they feel the situation is hopeless — *cough* Florida panhandle, 2000, *cough* — another group of voters who have misgivings about the character of “their” candidate, and yet another who will, for inexplicable reasons, vote for the candidate they feel is a winner. It is to these groups of voters that the Ace pundit is not so much speaking but, rather, marketing his message: “Our guy is a stand-up, straight-shooter! He’s winning, but still needs your vote! Come join the winning team!” The influence such a pundit does or does not have is a function of how well they make that sales pitch.
This view of punditry implies a highly cynical view of politics (but one with an uncomfortable amount of accuracy). According to it, voters need to be tricked into acting in their own interests, all politicians are scumbags varying only in which circle of hell they will spend eternity, and the silly twits who want it to be otherwise need to be lied to so they can go vote with a clean conscience. As distasteful as this view is, it is important to note that it is not amoral. On the contrary, it assumes that there are meaningful differences in the degree of rottenness among politicians and that choosing the less-worse is a positive good. It is akin to the Kissinger view of foreign relations. Nonetheless, in this conception the actual job of a pundit remains an inherently shady and disreputable one; at best sophistry and at worst outright dishonesty.
The Goldberg School
The other view of punditry — espoused most clearly by Jonah Goldberg — is that the primary audience to which a pundit speaks is the Deep State of donors, consultants, staffers, local bigwigs, and activists that surrounds each party and makes most of the important decisions. The functional purpose of speaking to this group is coordination. Each party’s Deep State is informal, dispersed, and comprises many people for whom politics is not their day job. Yet in order to function properly, they need to coalesce around specific candidates, specific pieces of policy, and prioritize their goals. This function used to be accomplished within the formal party structure, but for reasons best left to Jay Cost to explain, that no longer happens. It is an especially difficult function when the party is out of power. A party out of power is an organization with a thousand consiglieres and no don, but that doesn’t mean the job of consigliere isn’t an important one.
To the extent such punditry speaks to the general public, or the small slice that pays close attention to national affairs, it is entertainment akin to sports analysis; i.e., by speaking to them as if they are party insiders, the audience gets the vicarious illusion of actually being so. The color announcer on a sports broadcast may provide all manner of analysis and advice ostensibly for the teams involved. Not a single word of it will affect anything that subsequently transpires on the field.
The Ugly Choice and its Consequences
Count this distinction as yet another split the candidacy of Donald Trump has wedged from a crack to a crevasse. In an ordinary candidacy the same person can engage in both sorts of punditry without psyche-rending cognitive dissonance. Making the “Good Guy / We’re Winning” pitch for Bush, McCain, or Romney wasn’t gaslighting, even if the “we’re winning” part wasn’t always quite true. The problem Trump has created is that the standard pitch of an Ace pundit is so transparently false that anyone who can make it with a straight face is either so deluded or such a good liar that it would be foolhardy to take their advice seriously in the future if one is invested in the success of either the Republican party or the conservative movement. This year, a pundit has to choose: Be a good soldier for the party to the detriment of his respectability, or risk eviction from the party while hoping that sometime in the future the party’s Deep State will come to its senses and listen to his counsel. Being a distinction newly forced into the open, almost no one seems to have openly dealt with all the logical consequences of this choice.
First, neither view of punditry is exclusive. Both versions exist, and both need to exist. Ace’s exasperation at NeverTrump pundits involves the assumption that all punditry is Ace punditry, and those refusing to make the pitch are in some way not doing their jobs — Know your place, corporal! It doesn’t matter if the LT gave you a stupid order that will get half the platoon killed; salute him and get on with it — without any obvious recognition that anyone who fancies himself a Goldberg pundit will take it as a deep personal insult. It’s an accusation of hackery. If one feels the insult is deserved, then fine (that is exactly why Twitter exists), but don’t go making it unintentionally.
On the flip side, a Goldberg pundit who assumes all punditry ought to be the high-minded type is displaying a naiveté incompatible with analyzing real-world politics. Parties need good-soldier, Ace-style pundits for the same reason companies need marketing departments. There’s too much TV airtime and too much Facebooking deadtime for all of it to be filled with cogency and subordinate clauses. Hillary knows what the score is. She employs a brigade-sized force of online hacks to fill people’s feeds with talking points. As long as some people respond to the hackishly inane, you can’t cede the space to the competition. It is entirely true that such people are not to be entrusted with officers’ commissions, but neither should they star in the post-Trump show trials. Those should be reserved only for those with private cabins on the Trump Train.
A second consequence is one which Ace repeatedly (and correctly) hammers and many Goldberg pundits are uncomfortable admitting openly: Any professional commentator who laid down the NeverTrump gauntlet and stuck to it has, until November 9th, an alignment of professional interest with Hillary Clinton and diametrically opposed professional interest to the Republican Party’s nominee for President of the United States. This is plain fact. Even if one’s opposition to Trump was purely tactical in the sense of being predicated on the prediction he would lose disastrously, then it is in one’s interest that said disastrous loss actually come to pass now that the die is cast. It is always in the interest of a pundit to be proven right. That’s how one acquires credibility, the coin of the pundit realm. What hurts one’s credibility is denying this reality.
A Goldberg pundit should furthermore realize that continuously rehashing the “Trump is a loser” prediction is saying the exact same thing their Ace pundit counterparts on the other side would say, and that one is, in finance-lingo, “talking your book.” If one is surprised at receiving hostile reactions to saying the exact same thing as the hack segment of Democratic punditry or of facing accusations of being “on her side,” then one has not digested the reality that, as far as interests are aligned, it’s true.
The most common rejoinder from Goldberg pundits to this situation is that the alignment of interests is of no practical consequence. For those on the Ace side of the dispute, it is important to note that this is entirely consistent with the Goldberg theory of punditry. When the silent primary is long since past and the scrum of a general election is in full swing, the Goldberg pundit’s job is mostly over and done. All that remains for such a pundit is the evergreen meta-work of policing the honesty of news coverage. If one is calling out such a pundit for “betrayal,” then one is not granting them the assumption of good faith on an issue as central as what they think their job is. To assume bad faith in someone’s description of their own job is, again, a major personal insult. Don’t make those lightly, and don’t make them to people whom you consider friends.
Furthermore, it is wrong to insist that NeverTrumpers all “support Hillary” or are being mendacious by not “admitting” so. Some indeed do, and some might, in a gun-to-your-head-Trump-or-Clinton situation, vote Trump. However the election is not actually a gun-to-your-head binary choice. As a matter of good public choice theory, sitting out or voting third party (or advocating either) is entirely defensible as part of a long-term strategy. The great irony of voting coalitions is that the least reliable members have the most influence. This is part of the story of what has happened with evangelical voters and the GOP. Several million stayed home rather than vote for the DWI candidate in 2000. They were rewarded with major influence on Bush’s first term, in order to motivate them four years hence. As soon as the GOP pegged them as reliable voters, it immediately began treating them the way the Democratic Party treats African-Americans: as a hostage constituency that will settle for signals instead of substance. Influence can only be re-established with credibility, and credibility can only be re-established by action. An election where “your” candidate is openly contemptuous of you and is most likely a loser anyway is the ideal time to protest vote.
A third consequence of splitting punditry into Ace and Goldberg divisions is acknowledging that everyone in the Goldberg division is indeed a part of the GOP’s Deep State. No one wants to be “establishment” or “elite” in The Year of Populist Rage, and such terms have been warped and contorted to all manner of bizarre and silly meanings, but let’s not kid ourselves about the reality that there is such a thing and it needs a name. “Deep State” is better than “establishment” because “establishment” implies vastly more organization, structure, and formality than actually exists. It’s preferable to “elite” because it does not imply incomes, lifestyles, attitudes, or powers many Deep State members don’t actually have. Let’s propose an obnoxiously recursive definition of a party’s Deep State: If your words routinely reach the eyes or ears of multiple people you would deem members of the Deep State, then you yourself are a member as well. It doesn’t matter if you don’t ride the Acela. It doesn’t matter if your kids will have to take loans for college. If you have a literary agent and a speaking event agent, then you’re part of it, hands down. Self-effacing modesty is a virtue, insincere modesty is good manners, but in one way or another everyone who is part of the Deep State should be honest with themselves about that fact. “I’m not the Establishment!” has been the first, tenth, and last refuge of the irresponsible for the past twelve months, and responsibility is something of which the GOP’s Deep State will need much in the upcoming twelve.
For those on the Ace side grinning at the thought of NeverTrump pundits raising their hands to accept the dreaded establishment label, have some empathy for the truly awful situation they have within the Deep State. They have influence but not power, and they are currently stuck with responsibility for a course of action they advocated strongly against (not just Trump, but much of the situation that led to Trump as well). It is analogous to someone in corporate accounting who blows the whistle on shenanigans through the proper channels, is completely ignored, and whose reward for trying to do the right thing is getting his 401k stock match wiped out along with everyone else’s and then having to make the “No really! I blew the whistle!” claim when future employers give the stink eye to that line on his resume.
“Virtue signaling” is a much abused and misused term these days, but it is the absolutely correct response of a NeverTrump pundit this year. Those on the Ace side of the dispute (and Ace himself) love to use this phrase pejoratively, under the assumption that such behavior is inherently vain and useless. It is neither. Virtue signaling is indeed vain when the audience for the signal is oneself, or when the signal is made in lieu of tangible action that would actually be virtuous, but that does not apply to the situation here. The virtue signaling of a NeverTrump pundit has two distinct and important audiences: 1) The rest of the GOP Deep State that, come November 9th, will have to take account of how it is they lost the most winnable presidential race in a generation; and 2) independent and Latino voters with conservative instincts whom Donald Trump is currently alienating from the Republican party, yet whom the Republican party needs if is to have a governing coalition and thus to whom it will need credible messengers in the future. Having only influence rather than power, there’s nothing much for a NeverTrump pundit to do except to signal this is not my fault in Vegas-bright, flashing signage to those audiences.
If you’re on the Ace side of this dispute, do not hate them for this. Come November 9th, you’ll realize you need them.
Published in Politics
Thanks for linking that, this bit made me literally laugh out loud:
I have lived a life that has enabled me to know a lot of wealthy people and their children. Honestly and truly, I so admire those second generation children who not only keep their inheritance but are able to multiply it. So often children who inherit end up living lives of decadence and waste, leaving little or nothing for their own children. Trump’s children will be left even better financially than he was.
Why are you assuming that those voters didn’t change to another candidate once the primaries were over? I once backed Rubio. According to your assumption, I’m against Trump. Also, look at the total number of candidates in the race and total number of voters.
He’s pointing out that the chart confirms Jamie’s claim that the chart seemed to be intended to refute. He said Trump also had more people vote against him in the primary than previous winner. It’s a simple factual claim proven true.
The large turnout and number of candidates contribute to that fact. If a different candidate won he probably would also have more votes against him than any previous winner. That doesn’t make the fact meaningless, though.
Simply put I fear Trump far more than Hillary.
Trump will likely do far more damage to the Republic than Hillary. That said, I am not saying Hillary will not hurt America. She will. But Trump will likely hurt America more. Much more.
Both are Leftists through and through, going back decades. Hillary has used her ascribed Leftist beliefs to get ahead. Trump’s leftist beliefs come as a shock to most people, because of the face of it, his leftist beliefs are seemingly against his interests.
That’s the rub of it. Hillary is about as committed to her leftist beliefs at this point in her life as the Republican Establishment is committed to their supposed conservative ones. Meaning not very, and in very conditional way- only as far as it can help her.
The 911 Truther Trump, on the other hand despite his wealth, has always been a committed leftist progressive with a trade unionist bent, despite his temporary Conservative Con Act- he is a long time supporter of Universal Health Care, Cradle to Grave Welfare, Abortion rights, a Wealth Tax, Amnesty for illegals, Crony Socialism, Government control and worst of all, he hates the Constitution, particularly the freedom of expression and property rights. In addition to that, besides being a bigot, liar, crook, swindler and a narcissistic megalomaniac, he wants to sell us out to a true enemy of America, Vlad Putin, with whom Trump has heavily leveraged his fragile real estate empire to.
In all likelihood Trump would energetically pursue these Leftist policies to our great detriment. Hillary on the other hand , as she has during the campaign, would likely hide from the public and would likely not be able to rise from her present semi-comatose state to do the kind of damage Trump would.
She is also more committed to helping her crony friends on Wall Street who’ve showered her with millions and do not want her to rock the boat. In short she is the status quo candidate, while Trump, despite his faux conservative makeover for the campaign, is the true anti-American Leftist firebrand who dearly wants to remake America into a leftist trade unionist crony “socialist paradise” – that’s he means by “Making America Great Again”.
Come now. Exactly who is enforcing all these ‘musts’, ‘supposed-tos’, and ‘obligations’ which you posit? Absent enforcement, this is quaint but empty rhetoric. It’s unconnected to the journo-punditry that permeates political reporting. The era we are in now is best described, in my opinion, as that of opinion journalism. That’s the polite term for it.
We are even then, I see them differently also. I used to think they were people of substance, and now I know they are just shills worried about their rice bowl.
Yes . . . a worthy tactic in those circumstances . . . certainly fits under the rubric Helping Trump Defeat Clinton, so I’m not sure why you led with “Or.”
This makes no sense. So Ann Coulter doesn’t support trump to sell books? Or Hannity for ratings? No, these people support him on principle, but anyone who disagrees is just in it for the money…
Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds? Apart from being patently false, it just illustrates the whole mindset behind Trump supporters (and, incidentally, Bernie supporters, and the black lives matter crowd). If people don’t agree with us, they are greedy elitists who are out to get us.
Right…
So why not respond to my question? If there’s a one-word assessment of Trump, what’s the one-word assessment of Clinton?
BTW – I’m not arguing Trump is “good,” let alone is “good” because Clinton is “bad.” I’m merely arguing Trump is the better bet for conservatives.
I don’t think Trump has to prove what you say he does. Instead, he needs to demonstrate that she’s more of a whack job than he is. Corrupt Hillary is also Crazy Hillary, Venal Hillary, Dissembling Hillary, Incompetent Hillary, Lie-to-your-face Hillary, Lie-about-lying Hillary, Medically Unstable Hillary, Psychologically Unstable Hillary, Sexual Assault Enabling Hillary, Boring Hillary, Can’t Handle Press Conferences Hillary, Flip-Flopping Hillary, Pro-Sanger Genocide Hillary, Pro-war Hillary, etc. #ShootingFishInBarrelHillary
Good to see you are becoming agitated quite easily.
I stated a fact. If it upsets you, too bad. I have no respect for many pundits I used to respect. Simply a fact.
I am not sorry that upsets you so.
Trump winning represents a huge threat to their influence and incomes. Deny that all you wish, it will not make it go away.
It doesn’t upset me at all, it just makes you sound really foolish. You believe that there is only financial motivation for opposing trump… as if there can be no conservative punditry if he wins.
It is just so demonstrably false, so I was giving you an opportunity to back down from it. But trust me, it doesn’t bother me one bit if you want to spout nonsense and refer to it as fact.
You have new-found respect for people who agree with you, and you’ve lost respect for all those who don’t. Got it. That’s the sort of judgement that wins!
@tkc1101, the jr. High meathead tendencies are pretty amusing, by the way.
“Why you getting all upset?”
“Am I making you mad, bro?”
“I’m sorry these facts agitate you so.”
You must be a hoot at frat parties. Probably just going around winning conversations left and right. Nerds beware!
I am, for one. It’s my standard for which sources are worth reading and which are a waste of my time. Jonah Goldberg for instance is someone I respect and consider worth my time to read — and I enjoy the GLOP podcast as well.
Please back that statement up with anything I said. You folks are getting so desperate you are inventing quotes out of whole cloth.
I said there are people I have lost respect for. “New found respect’ appears nowhere except in your smear attempt.
Jonah Goldberg is one of the subjects of the original post. Those ‘musts’ are the standards he has for himself. That doesn’t mean he has set himself up as an authority where others have to follow those ‘musts.’
Jonah is beyond extraordinary … you can count me among his fanboys. I would suggest, however, the “an obligation to be truthful” is not the right yardstick for commentators except in the lowest-bar sense that they not talk about things like “when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor.” As your earlier clip of John 18 made clear, we’ve been trying to sort out what truth is for a very long time. Jonah need not accept the truth of John 18:37, for instance, in order to be the exceptional intellect, author, and commentator that he so obviously is.
Jonah being a slayer of cliches, one hesitates to call him the exception that proves the rule, but there you have it. [:-)
@hvts posted,
“who is enforcing all these ‘musts’, ‘supposed-tos’, and ‘obligations’ which you posit?”
I think Hillary and Donald are both inclined to it.
Hahahahaha, read your own writing. Yes, is my paraphrase of your accusation that pundits who disagree with you are only motivated by money. Feeling the Bern? Because it’s hard to tell the difference.
I’m smearing you, I’m getting angry, I’m feeling desperate… the projection is so astounding it’s almost cute. you just keep telling yourself these things, and remember, when Trump loses, it’s because of a conspiracy of all us greeeeedy elitists and self-interested pundits. *Wink wink*
Because so many folks keep telling me that voting Trump is the only indicator of being serious about defeating the Left! That a plan to cast a vote for anyone other than Trump, no matter the circumstances or reasoning behind it, is a plan to let the Leftists win.
That’s what the “Or” is doing there.
TKC, I think we had a conversation about this on a recent podcast. The guy who gets super emotional and angry, then starts telling everyone else to calm down. I’m not sure what part of “haha” led you to believe that I’m uncontrollably angry, but it appears that delusion is a theme of yours right now, so I’ll let you keep rolling with it. In the meantime, I’ll go pretend to take a valium if it makes you feel better about this conversation to believe you drove me to medication. Your world sound like a lot of fun… I’m sure it would be a nice place to visit.
You can make your juvenile and silly rants , just do not attribute to me things I did not say. Such is dishonest and the mark of a person of low integrity. And, sonny, I have not been to a fraternity party for over forty years.
You exemplify the group you support.
You’re adorable, TKC.
My integrity cannot be questioned. Why do you think I’m out here stumping for Hillary? It’s because I hate uneducated hard-working Americans in order to impress my liberal friends. I just sit here wishing you’d get a U-haul, already. It’s such a deep, deep conspiracy, and we’re all out to get youuuuuu.
Now that is hilarious. Did you get a hall pass from the editors? Here is Ryan, his Integrity Cannot be Questioned while he questions all others.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sarcasm
Ryan, sarcasm or no you are over the line here.
Okay Ryan. Time to dial it down or disengage.