All Encompassing Scandals and Reality

Most coverage of the issue is framed around discussing whether or not Obama and Biden did anything wrong—there is literally no evidence to suggest that they did—rather than focusing on how the Trump administration is guilty of weaponizing American intelligence agencies for political ends by perpetrating this falsehood.

Drawing historical analogies to Trump’s behavior is more or less impossible—there is no true analog. The best I can do is this: Imagine if, in 2012, President Obama had deputized a U.S. attorney to investigate claims that 9/11 was an inside job perpetrated by the Bush family, while asserting that the GOP engaged in illegal espionage against his campaign because the government was investigating the Tony Rezko scandal. And that he somehow tied Mitt Romney to the fiction, too.

Set aside the fact that this would be Wuhan batshit level crazy that would have caused people to wonder if Obama was even mentally fit for office. There is a 100 percent chance that these actions would have become the all-encompassing scandal for the rest of Obama’s administration.

I can draw an analogue; perhaps that because I remember Watergate.  But part of the problem with history and analogues is that history is always a matter of looking backward, looking through a lens that wasn't there when past was present.  The sanctification of "Woodstein" and the certification of Watergate as an actual scandal occurred after the movie, which occurred after the book, which occurred after Nixon had resigned and Ford had pardoned him.

It was the pardon that did it for most people.

The press never really focussed on how the Nixon administration was guilty of "weaponizing" (like "existential crisis," I refuse to take this neologism seriously, not that I can stop it) American intelligence agences for political ends.  Trump wasn't wrong when he said Nixon's mistake was the tapes.  Trump did learn from Nixon, and not just about keeping an historical record.  But if you imagine the nation exploded in anger over the reports from the Washington Post and the hearings under Sam Ervin (with a cast of characters that would confuse a Russian novelist and a list of allegations and assertions that would take a team of scholars centuries to unravel), and why, oh why, can't we have that again:  it's because we never had it.

I think there is truth in that last paragraph, about Obama, but because Obama was:  a) the first black man to be President (neither McConnell nor Trump have ever forgiven him for that); and b) because Obama was a Democrat.  LBJ used the power of the Presidency ruthlessly, but he did it on behalf of governance, in order to benefit "We the People" (he enriched himself from government service, like making sure the only TV station in Austin that broadcast on VHF, back when that mattered, was "KLBJ."  That restriction was still true when I moved to Austin in the late '70's.  But LBJ didn't do that when he was in the White House.).  Nixon did it for the same reason Trump did:  to benefit Nixon.  Same reason he had a "secret plan to end the war" in '72.  He didn't implement that plan in his first term, because he wanted a second term; because the plan was the debacle of people trying to climb onto the last U.S. helicopter out of Saigon, and the Vietnamese "boat people."  Ah, yes, I remember it well.

But under Nixon, as now, corruption was something that occurred in "third-world countries."  It didn't occur here, and the imagination to form the narrative that it could simply didn't exist.  Our news lives and dies by narratives, not by "just the facts" or "All the news that's fit to print."  Scratch that, the latter is the narrative:  "Fit to print."  Corruption is not "fit to print" until it is confirmed by a jury verdict.  Otherwise the news would be treating Michael Flynn as the convicted felon he is (he plead guilty), not as a person who might have a legitimate bid to exoneration (he has none).  And true, there is a lot of news out of the Trump White House, but there's always a lot of news out of the White House.  That's why they have a dedicated Press Room in the building.  Presidents are always "distracting" away from whatever they've done that doesn't reflect favorably on them, pointing to news they'd prefer the media report on.  Trump is just clumsier about this than most politicians, and the press is just more loathe to admit the emperor is buck naked and plainly unfit to be in charge of a two-car funeral procession, or to be in possession of anything sharper than a rubber ball, even when that situation is as plain as the sunrise.

Tim Miller pays attention to a picture of Stacey Abrams in a cape, because she's campaigning to be Biden's VP, and even claims she is the best pick Biden could make because of the voters she would bring in (quick, name anything Stacey Abrams has done besides run for Governor of Georgia.  Now name the "silent majority" she would bring to the polls. Yeah, I can't, either.).  It's this attention to Abrams that bugs him, because we should all pay attention to what Miller is paying attention to:

Put all this together with beyond the pale defamation and the COVID lies and the Trump family went exponentially further than any previous president in eroding our norms rhetorical, political, and legal — and that was just one weekend.

But that is the pre-eminent problem of press coverage:  the press never puts everything together.  Watergate was known in retrospect, first from the book, then from the movie.  Reading a Russian novel in serial form from daily episodes where even the author doesn't know how it ends or who's going to be on stage next is no way to make sense of the narrative.  We all remember John Dean, but while his testimony was crucial, it was the tapes that brought Nixon down, and the Saturday Night Massacre, and the parade of clowns and charlatans obviously connected to the White House who were paraded before Ervin's Committee and testified to the nonsense and idiocy that was the Nixon Administration.  It was a rogue's gallery of yahoos and nincompoops and self-important fools, and exposing them was like pulling away a piece of trim and finding the termites swarming on the backside of the public facade of competent government.  Maybe it's because of Nixon that we aren't surprised government is full of pests now.  Or maybe that's because the GOP has been preaching that lesson since Watergate.

And We The People let them; because a narrative is always easier to understand than the complicated truth.