Columnist.
Some recent headlines: "The Electoral College is an instrument of white supremacy — and sexism," exclaimed Slate magazine. CNN: "Math is racist: How data is driving inequality." From the NBC affiliate in Oklahoma: "'To be white is to be racist,' Norman student offended by teacher's lecture."
While many are starting to grasp the enormity of Donald Trump's victory, few seem interested in coming to grips with the significance of Hillary Clinton's defeat. It's understandable, for several reasons. Pretty much everyone was shocked by his victory, but liberals clearly are still in one of the early stages of grief.
For months there's been a running gag on social media about "Earth 2," where the 2016 campaign is a happy, normal thing. For instance, in mid-October, shortly after the release of the "Access Hollywood video," I joked on Twitter that, "On Earth 2 [the GOP] is 15 points ahead, looking to gain seats in Senate. Dems' October surprise on Rubio's water bill falls flat."
Let's work backward. Less than a week before the election, the Wall Street Journal and Fox News' Bret Baier reported that the Clinton Foundation has been under investigation for "pay-for-play" allegations for over a year — and that the Department of Justice may have been trying to monkey-wrench the effort.
The word of the weekend was "protocol." In deciding to tell Congress about a new trove of emails that may or may not contain classified information and may or may not relate to Hillary Clinton, FBI Director James Comey broke Justice Department protocol both by releasing information close to an election and by revealing details of an ongoing investigation. It was a "stunning breach of protocol," former Attorney General Eric Holder dutifully insisted.
"Doug is very transactional." This was an apt description of Doug Band, Bill Clinton's longtime right-hand man and the figure at the center of the latest WikiLeaks revelation. The quote comes from an unnamed former White House colleague of Band's in an illuminating 2013 New Republic profile by Alec MacGillis. Band, who touts himself as the founder of "Clinton Inc.," started out as a White House intern. He turned down higher-status jobs to focus on being the "body man" for President Clinton.
If you think 2016 will stop being weird come Nov. 8, please look at your calendars: This whole election process actually lasts almost an additional two months beyond that, finally ending when Congress counts the electoral votes in early January. But just because it's been a weird year, that doesn't mean it has to end badly. There's reason to hope. Consider independent write-in candidate for president Evan McMullin. He has virtually no chance of winning the election on Nov. 8, but he does have a shot at becoming president by the end of December.
"Let me say for the billionth time: Reporters don't root for a side. Period." This declarative tweet came from the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza on Oct. 16. The next day, Cillizza posted on Twitter, "Well, this is super depressing. NO idea why any journalist would donate $ to politicians." The "super depressing" story he was reacting to came from the Center for Public Integrity. According to its just-released study, more than 96 percent of donations from media figures to either of the two major-party presidential candidates went to Hillary Clinton.
Sometimes you can't just plan for the ball; you have to plan for the hangover, too. No matter how 2016 ends, there will be a headache that haunts the country for years to come. Let's start with the most obvious but less likely scenario: Donald Trump wins the presidency in perhaps the biggest black swan event in the history of American politics. Whether you think Trump's presidency would be an unfolding disaster of biblical proportions ("The Potomac! It's turned to blood!"), or the unfolding of a biblical prophecy to save America ("The Winning! So. Much. Winning!"), or something in between, no one can deny the enormous change it would represent, and the hostility and fear it would likely elicit from various institutions and constituencies, particularly the news media, but also Hollywood, higher education, our NATO allies, unions, left-wing activists and perhaps even Wall Street, the Pentagon and much of the federal bureaucracy.
"Celebrities serve as a kind of secular aristocracy in our culture."
To say I care about Billy Bush's career is overly generous. If you'd asked me two weeks ago who he is, I doubt I could have given an answer beyond, "The name is familiar," or, "Isn't he on one of those shows?" And by "those shows," I mean that undifferentiated hog trough of "Access Hollywood," "Entertainment Tonight," "TMZ," "Inside Edition," etc. But now, of course, I know who he is. He's the cousin of George W. Bush who's made a living in the worlds of infotainment, gossip, celebrity worship and distaff daytime "news," to be found in the crucial third hour of NBC's "Today." He smiles a lot, too.
"You can do anything. Grab them by the [genitals]. You can do anything." That was Donald Trump explaining to Billy Bush of "Access Hollywood" what it's like "when you're a star" in the now-infamous hot-mic incident 11 years ago. The remarks have been somewhat misunderstood by Trump critics and defenders alike. The defenders want to claim this was mere "locker room talk," as Trump insisted on the debate stage Sunday night. Well, I can report with confidence that men in locker rooms typically don't confess to sexually assaulting married women — and striking out!
The Hillary Clinton campaign is deploying former Vice President Al Gore to rev up the youth vote, the Washington Post reported this week. Stop laughing. The announcement elicited a lot of mockery from various corners of the right. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) scoffed on Twitter that he heard Gore is hosting a Clinton campaign event for millennials "sponsored by Alta Vista & featuring Ace of Base. It's gonna be the bomb..." For those of you too young or too old to remember, those used to be things.
"Jonah — We have come a long way together — and I like it! Thank you!" That right there is the full extent of my personal communications with Donald J. Trump. He wrote it by hand in broad felt pen on the very page my column appeared in the New York Post, mostly in ALL CAPS, followed by his signature (which looks a bit like an EKG reading). It came to me as a PDF via email on Sept. 4, 2015, under the subject header "From the office of Donald J. Trump."
"Congress' overwhelming rebuke of President Barack Obama on a bill allowing 9/11 victims to sue the government of Saudi Arabia — and the bitter finger-pointing that followed — was a fitting coda to the dysfunctional relationship between the Obama White House and Capitol Hill." Thus began a Politico article by Seung Min Kim posted yesterday. But it was the headline — which she probably did not write — that really completed the picture: "Congress disses Obama one last time."
The most exhausting thing about our politics these days — other than the never-ending presidential election itself — is the obsession with "shaping the narrative." By that I mean the effort to connect the dots between a selective number of facts and statistics to support one storyline about the state of the union. Narrative-building is essential for almost every complicated argument because it's the only way to get our pattern-seeking brains to discount contradictory facts and data. Trial lawyers understand this implicitly. Get the jury to buy the story, and they'll do the heavy lifting of arranging the facts in just the right way. President Obama understands this too. Just consider the way he talks about terrorism — often reassuring Americans that they're more likely to die in a bathtub accident than in a terror attack. And he's right.
This Monday we will see Hillary Clinton battle Donald Trump in their first presidential debate. It's difficult to capture the otherworldliness of it all. Most of the commentary centers around Trump — and for good reason. He's the X factor. Some see him as a brilliant, media-savvy disruptor, shaking the foundation of the political establishment. Others see him as a Rodney Dangerfield-esque character (with a touch of Peter Sellers' Chauncey Gardner) who managed to bluff his way onto the national stage, demanding respect. And that barely scratches the surface. Between friends and foes the descriptions get more ridiculous by the hour. He's Cincinnatus, he's Hitler, he's Reagan, he's "orange Muppet Hitler" (in the words of some celebrities), he's George Washington, he's some other kind of Hitler. And so on.
Many people are to blame for the rise of Donald Trump as a political force, and most of them reside on my side of the aisle. But that story is familiar by now. And we'll be hearing a lot more about it. Should Trump lose, conservatives will be lucky if the ensuing riot of recriminations falls short of outright civil war. Should Trump win, I'm hoping to get a tent upwind from the latrine at the re-education camp. (I kid, I kid.) Still, not all of the blame belongs inside the conservative family. Consider President Obama. One of the central insights of both the Obama campaign and administration (the difference is subtle but real) is that Obama benefits when his critics overreact. In 2008, then-political adviser David Axelrod coined the phrase "no drama Obama" to describe not only his client's personality but his messaging. By seeming unflappable in the face of criticism, Obama comes across as presidential. The more heated the criticism, the more presidential he seems.
I've never been a sports fanatic. In fact, I'm the kind of guy a lot of sports obsessives can't stand. I tend not to pay attention to anything until the playoffs, and even then it's entertainment more than passion. This can be a disadvantage in real life because, particularly among men, sports talk is a kind of safe space and common tongue all at once. I've seen it a million times in Washington, particularly in cable news green rooms. Two politicians or pundits who are diametrically opposed to each other ideologically manage to be friendly with each other solely because they can talk about the Nationals' roster or the Redskins' terrible coaching. I've also seen the same thing at airports, bars (and airport bars), in line at the DMV and in almost every other public space. Rich and poor, black and white, liberal and conservative, Southerner and Northerner: People from all walks of life can engage in friendly conversation about this widely shared cultural institution.
One of the most amusing spectacles of this election season has been the whipsawing of the loyalists. Repeatedly, spinners for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have been sent out to hammer this or that talking point, only to be left holding the bag when the candidate goes another way. So far, Trump has been narrowly ahead in this important competition. But after Sunday, Clinton may have taken the lead. For weeks, the official position of the chattering classes was that any inquiry into Clinton's health was "sexist." As Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on Sept. 2, "I have seen her personally. You've seen her personally, Andrea. She is in shape. She is strong. She just has a ton of energy. And I find this actually quite sexist when these guys are saying this. I think that that is not an issue at all and the American voters know that."
