By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
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 senator Amy Klobuchar told MSNBC’s Andrea
Mitchell on September 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.”
Glamour
magazine ran an item headlined, “Yes, It’s Sexist to Speculate about Hillary
Clinton’s Health.”
Last week, Clinton herself was asked if discussion of her
health was sexist. She replied with a long, ironic “hmmmmmm” that typified her
gift for political subtlety and nuance.
The same day, the headline for Chris Cillizza’s Washington Post column captured the
prevailing attitude: “Can We Just Stop Talking about Hillary Clinton’s Health
Now?”
Five days later, after Clinton’s near-collapse at Ground
Zero, another Cillizza column carried this headline: “Hillary Clinton’s Health
Just Became a Real Issue in the Presidential Campaign.”
But that wasn’t the only whipsaw. On Sunday morning, the
Clinton campaign put out the explanation that the heat got to her. Social media
lighted up with corroborations that lower Manhattan was the meteorological
equivalent of the jungles of Borneo. Even New
York Times columnist Paul Krugman testified that it was indeed “muggy.”
My favorite take came from left-wing writer Leela Daou
via Twitter: “What we REALLY should be talking about is why it’s so damn hot on
a September morning” followed by the hash tags #GlobalWarming and
#climatechange. Not only is Clinton going to fight climate change, she’s like a
polar bear searching for an ice floe: proof that it’s real!
Then, hours later, the campaign admitted that it wasn’t
the heat, but pneumonia. The dervishes suddenly threw the gearshift into
reverse. Out with the meteorological hand-wringing, in with encomiums to
Clinton’s Stakhanovite stamina. Peter Daou (Leela’s husband and a former
Clinton adviser) tweeted, “Doing events with pneumonia shows how strong Hillary
is. Her detractors have now lost another one of their hit jobs. They should be
ashamed.”
Uh-huh.
I have no sympathy for the spinners; this is the life
they have chosen. And I have a word of caution for reporters who seem reluctant
to cover certain issues if they think it’s going to reward Trump.
It’s true that the Trump campaign and its subalterns in
conservative media have been dabbling in conspiracy-theorizing about Clinton’s
health. Indeed, the suggestion that Clinton’s pneumonia is a vindication of the
right-wing rumor that she’s brain damaged is ridiculous. That doesn’t mean,
however, that reporters should take the Clinton campaign’s word as gospel.
Journalism-school Jesuits have been saying that
presidential candidates’ health is relevant ever since FDR’s “splendid
deception.” And in her FBI interview, Clinton seemed to invoke her concussion
and subsequent blood clot as one of the reasons she couldn’t recall security
briefings. That’s news. Period.
Besides, the greatest gift the mainstream media could
give Trump, Drudge et al. would be to keep serving as Clinton’s praetorian
guard.
As this pneumonia episode demonstrates, Clinton’s real
problem isn’t her health but the entirely valid perception that she’s
dishonest, secretive, and exploits “the system” — including the support of the
mainstream media — for her benefit.
In 2008, news outlets openly speculated about whether
Senator John McCain was too frail to be president. NBC News ran an Associated
Press story under the headline, “1 in 4 Chance McCain May Not Survive 2nd
Term.”
People remember these things. When Clinton faltered on
Sunday, she not only humiliated her most loyal servants, who were kept in the
dark by a campaign terrified of playing it straight with voters and the media,
she also made countless people say, “Looks like Drudge was right again.”
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