Americans Complain about Washington but Won’t Inform Themselves about It

By Jay Cost

Monday, April 30, 2018

The Fox News poll released last week is one of the latest to suggest that public opinion has settled in with respect to President Donald Trump. His job approval rating continues to bounce around in the low to mid 40s, while his disapproval rating is in the low to mid 50s. This stability is based on overwhelming support from self-identified Republicans. Unless some unforeseen event occurs, that makes a primary challenge in 2020 extremely difficult.

Fox News also found the people still to be in a populist mood. Fifty-five percent of respondents said that “political leaders in Washington look down” on people like them, while just 11 percent said they felt “like political leaders in Washington are in touch” with people like them.

This sort of us-versus-them spirit has long infused American politics. Indeed, it is possible to trace populist movements of one sort or another back to the founding of the nation itself. The Anti-Federalists were suspicious that the new Constitution represented a consolidation of power by the wealthy few. The Jeffersonian Republicans and Jacksonian Democrats had a similar suspicion. The Populists and Progressives of the late 19th and early 20th centuries fought against the concentration of wealth and power in the new industrialized economy. The late 1960s produced populists movements on both the left and the right. And the current populist mood has been a dominant feature of our politics for a decade.

It is well and good for Americans to be suspicious of their rulers. That is how the officials they elect are kept on track. But I frankly don’t have a lot of sympathy for this frustration anymore.

Do not get me wrong. I agree with the general sentiment that the “elites” think little of the average American. But the fact of the matter is that populist movements over the course of the centuries have opened up our political process such that, with the exception of appellate judges and Supreme Court justices, elites inevitably have to come back either to the people or their direct representatives.

That is, of course, the great revolution of the Constitution, which anchors government not on some hereditary nobility but on the people themselves. And think of all the changes that were made since the Constitution was finalized in September 1787. The Bill of Rights enshrined an elaborate jury system to check federal judges and prosecutors. The presidency has been opened up to popular vote. The 14th Amendment prohibited states from inhibiting political participation, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 put teeth on this protection. The Senate is now popularly elected. Primaries have democratized the political parties, essentially destroying machine politics for good.

There are very few corners of our government that cannot be changed if the people do not wish to change it.

The “elites” of today’s “establishment” continue to thrive because of the forbearance of the voters. Forbearance is not the same as consent. The former is a passive sentiment, while the latter is active.

Passivity is a good way to define the citizenship of the United States in 2018. The evidence of civic disengagement is manifest throughout the same Fox News poll, in big ways and small.

The biggest story of the day continues to be the investigation, into Trump and Russia, being conducted by Robert Mueller, who has been a top figure in American politics for well over a decade. Yet, according to Fox News, 27 percent of Americans have no opinion of him.

That is the same percentage that has no opinion of Mitch McConnell, who as Senate majority leader is perhaps the most powerful person in Congress. Shockingly, 43 percent of Republicans have an unfavorable opinion of McConnell — despite the fact that it was his efforts, more than anybody else’s, that kept Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat open until Trump could name a replacement last year. On the whole, nobody in the last generation has done more than McConnell to prevent a full-blown takeover of the judiciary by the American Left. Perhaps Republicans don’t care about that, but I’d say it is much more likely they don’t know about it.

A whopping 61 percent of Americans have no opinion of Kevin McCarthy, who, as the Republican majority leader, is the second-most important person in the House and quite possibly its next speaker.

A wide majority of Americans, 61 percent, say that they approved of the United States’ “using military airstrikes to punish Syria for using chemical weapons.” But 60 percent also said that the president should have received “the consent of Congress” first. Obviously, it is possible to support the strikes despite their not having received congressional approval, but it is much more likely that people just are not putting much thought into the details of the country’s Syria’s policy.

So I would say that the respondents to the Fox News poll have it exactly backwards. It is wrong to say that the elites in Washington are not in touch with them. Rather, they are not in touch with the elites in Washington.

None of this is to excuse the problems of representation and even corruption that emanate from our government — a subject I have written about extensively. Rather, it is to suggest that a cause of the problem (among many) is a disengaged, disinterested, and poorly informed American public.

Our system of government gives the people vast discretion to change the government as they like. But to use this power effectively, they first have to know a thing or two about the government.

If they do not, then how can they properly police public officials? And if they can’t properly police public officials, should we really be all that surprised that our leaders act with hubris toward and disregard for the public interest?

Beware ‘Conservative’ Celebrities

By J. J. McCullough

Monday, April 30, 2018

Watching the Sean Hannity show the other day, I heard four giddy words I can’t say I expected: “Up next, Piers Morgan!” Only a few days prior, after all, Morgan had been involved in one of his trademark Twitter spats — with Hannity mainstay Sebastian Gorka, no less — and it had ended with Morgan declaring America’s contribution to World War II overrated and unhelpful.

“Where would Britain be without you & your massive GUNS?!” Morgan had snippily tweeted at an American. “Speaking German,” replied Ben Shapiro, retweeted by Gorka. Morgan’s comeback? “It was really good of America to join WW2 two years later, after millions had died. Many thanks.”

That tasteful comment did not come up during the Hannity interview, which was instead a chummy exchange of shared disgust at the Mueller investigation, James Comey, and the latest dumb thing Joy Behar had said.

Morgan would have made a curious guest for a conservative talk show even without his recent foray into historical revisionism. To the extent he’s made any political brand for himself in America, it’s been as a hectoring anti-gun fanatic and generally condescending anti-American scold. Yet because Morgan has had some mildly sympathetic things to say about Donald Trump as of late (or at least hates some of the same people as the president) all is forgiven, and he’s now understood as “one of us” to some corners of the conservative base.

It was the same phenomenon that saw Kanye West’s remarkable rebranding last week. A tweet or two in the president’s favor and the man previously best known for calling George W. Bush a racist sociopath on live television and contributing such immortal lines to the canon of American music as “eatin’ Asian p***y / all I need was sweet and sour sauce” was reborn as a conservative folk hero. Perhaps West was taking his cue from Roseanne Barr, whom many on the right have given a similar mulligan for decades of far-left lunacy on the grounds she kinda likes Trump.

Conservatives are at their worst when they obsessively internalize leftist critiques, and no criticism has proven a greater font of conservative insecurity than liberal teasing that the Right is crotchety, backwards, and unhip. Much anxious effort has been exerted to prove these critics wrong, yet desperation rarely produces flattering results. The hurried search for conservatives with some progressive cachet — black, gay, famous, young, etc. — often manifests as low standards and embarrassing self-delusion, as the intellectual talents of various B-rate minds are inflated to heroic status the moment their public rhetoric drifts even the teensiest bit rightward.

It’s even worse than usual these days, given the very definition of “rightward” has become hazier than ever amid the rise of a fairly unideological Republican president and an increasingly visible fanatic far-left.

Since Trump plays his partisan role awkwardly, and is on the receiving end of a hysteria that often has little to do with politics, the president can come off a sympathetic figure, even if — perhaps especially if — one’s understanding of politics is fairly shallow. People who imagine themselves to be outspoken or uncouth outsiders with stylistic similarities to Trump can easily empathize with him, regardless of their policy opinions. This makes Trump a celebrity president who is often judged on celebrity terms, where arguments like “I just can’t stand him!” or “show those haters!” are considered sufficiently full opinions.

Meanwhile, the cultural crusades of the far left have become more conspicuous than ever through endless media coverage of language and thought policing at college campuses, newsrooms, and elsewhere. Again, regardless of the politics involved, this sort of thing is quite easy to engage with at a cultural level alone. Americans don’t like being told what to do or what to say, and there will always be a great deal of contempt leveled at anyone who affects the personality of a scold or busybody — and support for those who resist.

Conservatives can claim some degree of common cause with anyone who feels Trump is being given a hard time and thinks the colleges are going nuts, but this isn’t much. Identifying political allies exclusively on such thin criteria will invariably require turning a blind eye to all sorts of other deranged opinions, and redefining conservatism into a temperament of shallow irritation with some characteristics of American political culture circa 2018, as opposed to anything resembling a timeless or coherent philosophy.

An obsession with building up superficially cool but intellectually preposterous right-wing celebrities has already led to disasters such as Milo Yiannopoulos, and one can’t help but feel a grim sense of déjà vu as an ever-growing parade of semi-coherent supposed conservatives from Hollywood, pop music, and YouTube are hyped by conservative media outlets desperate for validation by young, hip audiences.

That said, critics do run the risk of snobbery. Conservatives have to be open to newcomers, and ideological newbies — particularly those who were on the left until five minutes ago — will inevitably spout opinions that are one-dimensional, badly articulated, or half-formed.

The key is sizing up the motive animating the alleged new right-wing personality. Does the rhetoric of the nouveau-conservative appear to be coming from a place of genuine political interest? Do his opinions reflect a desire to engage in arguments beyond the present moment? Or has he simply discovered a new way to get in front of the cameras and exploit the wishful thinking of a uniquely desperate audience?

Even Liberals Decry the White House Correspondents Dinner Fiasco

By Kyle Smith

Monday, April 30, 2018

The swells and grandees of the White House Correspondents Association expected to have themselves a hearty laugh blowing up President Trump Saturday night. Instead, the WHCA was so rattled that it pulled the pin on its little comedy grenade and threw the pin at Trump. It held onto the grenade and it blew up in its face.

It’s hardly worthy of note that the previously little-known comic Michelle Wolf’s act was mean-spirited, vulgar, and unfunny as she tore into Sarah Huckabee Sanders and said President Trump loves Nazis. If the comedy at the White House Correspondents Dinner were this biting every year, it might be interesting. But it isn’t. Every year, no matter who holds the White House, the viciousness is trained on the same side. When Republicans are in power, the jokes are aimed at Republicans. When Democrats are in power, the jokes are aimed at Fox News Channel. When Trump is president the barbs are aimed at Trump. When Obama was president, the barbs were aimed at . . . Trump.

The president has done a useful public service in exposing the sham for what it is: one of many opportunities the cultural leadership seizes, in any given year, to wheel the Trojan horse of Democratic-party propaganda into a supposedly politically neutral event. The Oscars and the Emmys and the Grammys and the Golden Globes do the same thing, but viewers have caught on and turned their attention elsewhere.

The average American does not watch the WHCD. (If it were one-tenth as important to the public as it is to the Beltway, it would be broadcast on NBC, not cable news.) But every year at about this time, because of the voluminous media attention, America is made vaguely aware that, by sheer coincidence, at a charity event during which both sides of the aisle put down their partisan banners and break bread together, somehow the Republican reputation has come to acquire a few more dents. Or Democrats have come off looking impossibly witty, cool, and glamorous.

Trump made a virtue out of necessity last year when he broke with precedent and boycotted the event: His hand was forced by the large number of organizations that announced they would not be in attendance, and if he had shown up, the story would have been how sad and joyless the affair was because of the dark pall he was supposedly casting over the country. By making a show of skipping the show, however, Trump exposed the event for what it is. He also partly delegitimized it. If a Republican president of the United States doesn’t feel welcome at a party at which he is traditionally the guest of honor, the event can hardly be nonpartisan.

This year, as Trump made the clever move of going to Washington, Mich., to spend the evening with ordinary Americans, the WHCD looked even more like a hacks’ orgy than usual. The event was such a disaster that even left-leaning Politico unloaded on it: “Being mean isn’t funny. It’s mean,” ran the top line of Sunday’s Politico Playbook newsletter, that fount of conventional wisdom. “Michelle Wolf took it too far,” read the text. “Make fun of someone’s politics. Make fun of their quirks. . . . But there’s no reason to be mean. Mean isn’t funny.” “Bullying is bullying. And it’s wrong. Always,” wrote Chris Cillizza, another conventional-wisdom dispensary, in his CNN column. Maggie Haberman of the New York Times took Sanders’s side, tweeting, “That @PressSec sat and absorbed intense criticism of her physical appearance, her job performance, and so forth, instead of walking out, on national television, was impressive.” “Media hands Trump embarrassing win,” said Mike Allen in his Axios newsletter

Trump’s approach to the WHCD is extremely Trumpian: bold, unheard of, seemingly counterproductive. But it worked: He has undermined its foundations. The dinner has become so hateful that even liberal journalists have become uneasy about it. Consider the contrast with George W. Bush: By showing up every year, Bush bestowed legitimacy on the gala. He honored it with his presence, and then he smiled and nodded and absorbed abuse. He played the liberal hacks’ game, on their turf, by their rules, knowing he would lose, and so he did. He lost like a gentleman, and that’s admirable in a way, but he still lost. He lost standing for himself and he lost points for his party.

Trump, by refusing to play the game, has made everyone notice that it’s fixed. Shattering norms and breaking with established precedents isn’t always wise, but whether you attribute it to shrewd instinct or blundering, Trump’s method can be a bracing response to institutions corrupted by their own partisanship. As he did with the Oscars and the National Football League before them, Trump has forced the WHCD to take a deep breath and think about whether it really wants to continue alienating half the country.